John Legare Williams

My father was the first tax lawyer in Delaware. He trained a couple dozen other lawyers over the years from 1960-1999, many of whom went on to lead other law firms and trust departments at banks. He started his own law firm and incorporation service in 1974. When I finished law school I wanted to take this opportunity to have him train me, in what I called “home schooling.” I have worked with him since 2001 and have turned the incorporation service into an e-commerce business. He is still practicing law part time. I enjoy seeing my father almost every day and have tremendous respect for family businesses. After five summers of founding and running a driveways sealcoating business from 1993 to 1997 during high school and college, I developed an entrepreneurial perspective. I even experienced a business break-up when I was only 19 years old. After hauling 100 tons of coal tar and seal coating 500 driveways, I was ready for a change. This experience taught me an appreciation for hard work. During law school I had two summer clerkships, one in the Court of Chancery and another in the Delaware Supreme Court. I joined The Williams Law Firm, P.A. in 2001 and sat for a number of bar exams and have passed: Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts.

Learning the law has been a joy. I have enjoyed the intellectual side of the practice of law and helping business owners solve problems. Most of my practice is general in that we represent small businesses and families with estate planning matters (pour-over wills, revocable trusts, living wills and durable powers of attorney). I also assist as Delaware Qualified Trustee for a handful of Delaware Dynasty Trusts and Delaware Asset Protection Trusts. In addition to estate planning, I am involved in litigation, mostly estate and business litigation, particularly business-divorce cases. I have had recent cases in the Delaware Court of Chancery (4-day trial in April 2015 over a large family farm in Dover), Superior Court (fighting large developers while representing a dairy farmer with the oldest century farm in Delaware) and Bankruptcy Court (corporate bankruptcy preference actions). I work with lawyers from across the country to move their admission pro-hac-vice in matters ranging from the Court of Chancery to Delaware District Court to the Delaware District Bankruptcy Court in Chapter 7 and Chapter 11 filings.

I have also enjoyed working with business owners, especially multi-generational family businesses and entrepreneurs on various transactions in all stages of the business life-cycle. I enjoy writing opinion letters for Delaware LLCs involved in multi-million dollar commercial mortgage backed security financing across the country, from multi-family housing to office buildings to commercial shopping centers.

Finally I operate a Delaware incorporation service and registered agent business under the name Agents and Corporations, Inc. with 16,000 entities including Pinterest. These Delaware entity services are available through an e-commerce website: https://www.incnow.com. I call this work in drafting LLC operating agreements, entity engineering.