An associate in Milbank’s Trusts & Estates Group from 2010 through 2014, Brad continued his trusts and estates work at Brown Brothers Harriman, where he is now a Senior Vice President in their Private Banking division. Brad spoke with partner David Stoll, who co-chairs our Pride affinity group, about his career, including his growing practice advising LGBT individuals on their estate planning concerns.
Please tell us a bit about your path to Milbank. Did you always want to have a career in the law?
In college, I majored in math and philosophy and went on to earn a Master’s in philosophy. I was on the path to earn a Ph.D., but I began thinking I needed to be doing something more practical. I really enjoyed the academic side of philosophy and thought that law school was a good mix of both the academic and practical. It turned out that trusts and estates is the perfect combination as well – it’s a very intellectual field of the law but with all sorts of practical implications. So I was fortunate in that my career turned out to be much like I’d anticipated when considering law school in 2004; I spend a lot of my time thinking, researching and writing.
I eventually earned my LL.M. in taxation at NYU, and spent three years as an associate at Proskauer Rose. I was looking to branch out and get more experience in trusts and estates, so it was a no-brainer to come talk to Milbank, which has a best-in-class T&E group.
What did you like about being part of the T&E group at Milbank?
I appreciated that they really encouraged intellectual and academic pursuits. Within two or three weeks of my arriving, Austin Bramwell, a partner in the group, came to my office with an idea about an article. He was so good at coming up with ideas and asking people to help write them up. Everyone in the group is so smart and intellectually engaged; the tone was, “You’re here, you’re clearly smart enough, let’s do this.”
In the same spirit, I appreciated that they didn’t give out work based on what year you were – giving administrative tasks to junior associates, or more sophisticated work to mid-levels, for example. That was never the case at Milbank. And there was a lot of mentorship that went along with that, from the beginning. Partners like you would invite me to meetings with clients where I got to witness plans. One exciting thing I worked on was a private letter ruling for the IRS – you let me do it from start to finish – it was so cool for me to be able to do that. Private letters are complicated and expensive, with so many details to get right, or else, and you handed it off to me with confidence.
And it was successful, we got the ruling – we’ve even used it in the past week!
For an associate it’s incredibly satisfying to work on something like that. And all of this has helped me so much in my current role, helping clients think through their plans, talking about them, revising them, and writing about these issues.
Aside from the work, Milbank is such a collegial place; I’m still close with many of my former colleagues. As a gay man, it was nice to go there and have LGBT role models and peers. It wasn’t a problem to mention your boyfriend or your husband; it was really natural. The Pride affinity network is social and fun, and people there are also willing and able to talk about how being gay works with their careers. I never came across anyone at Milbank who felt uncomfortable in his or her identity, regardless of what group he or she was in. I think that’s hard to say about many corporate law firms. I have friends at other firms who still haven’t come out, or at least not to their bosses, or still feel like they need to refer to their “spouses” at work.
They should send me their resumes!
It really does help to have LGBT people in positions of power. We do here at Brown Brothers as well, which is great. It was one of the things I was most nervous about leaving Milbank – you sort of take it for granted after a while that you can be who you are and no one thinks twice about it. But everyone here has been wonderful too, even better than I’d imagined.
And now, you’ve managed to weave your interest in LGBT issues into your current role; can you talk about that?
I came to Brown Brothers at an interesting time, in 2014. That was right when the Defense of Marriage Act was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but before the Obergefell ruling which made marriage equality the law of the land. So at the time, there was a lot to say about LGBTQ wealth planning. The landscape was a mess; in certain states you could get married, in others you couldn’t, and all our competitors were talking about those things. After 2015, post-marriage equality, I noticed that our competitors had dropped off the map in talking about these planning issues. But in my own life, I was getting married, we were going through the surrogacy process and preparing to have kids, and I realized, wow, there still is a lot left to say.
So on our website, we look at issues like legal versus ceremonial marriage – just because you can get married, should you, and the implications of that legal decision that could be good or detrimental. Then, with surrogacy, there are the legal battles around IVF; you have to decide what happens to all that genetic material upon death or divorce. It’s a complex legal battlefield. New York is just sorting this out in their statutes. For instance: What’s the legal definition of a descendant, does it include posthumously created children?
Additionally, when it comes to wealth planning, many LGBTQ people in generations before my own were disowned by their families, and didn’t have children or get married. So there’s a group of people who are aging without descendants or any sort of natural inheritors of their wealth. If they are charitably inclined, there’s a lot we can do to assist them in that direction. A lot of these issues might not be important for all LGBTQ individuals and couples, but they are definitely important for some, and can have enormous ramifications.
What do you like most about your current role?
Being at Brown Brothers is like working at a 200-year-old startup, with a long-term point of view and a general partnership structure that is now unique on Wall Street. If you come to the partners with a plan or idea and it’s a good one, they’ll run with it. That’s how this LGBTQ initiative came to be; I had the opportunity to present it to the partners and I said, there are a lot of wealthy LGBTQ individuals and couples, and I think there’s a lot we can say to them and can do for them. But it’s going to require money. So I had all these facts and figures, and after I made my case they said, “How much do you need?” Their take was, if it makes sense from a financial perspective let’s do it, which was great to hear. Of course, now the onus is on me to make sure it did make sense – which is why I spend probably a fifth of my time working on this and trying to reach new clients.
So that’s a large part of my role, business development and continuing to think about how we can help. I enjoy speaking and writing, and spend a lot of time doing that. I’ve published three or four articles over the past year, had over 40 speaking engagements, and I’m talking to the media about tax reform – it’s fun.
It sounds like it’s not just business development, it’s really about doing something you genuinely enjoy.
Exactly – and I don’t think I’d be able to do that without my Milbank experience. That's the truth. The way they fostered that academic, intellectual angle was so important to my career.
What else does Brown Brothers do with respect to LGBT – do they also have an affinity group?
Yes, we have a Pride network here – it’s pretty active, with a lot of outreach to our nearly 6,000 employees across our offices. There was one event we did with partners of the firm who have LGBT family members; we got them together to talk about their experiences of either raising or being a sibling of an LGBT family member. It was the most well-attended internal event in the history of Brown Brothers, with more than 600 people in attendance – it was really moving and powerful.
We also work with the Sage project, which helps LGBT seniors and operates a community center for them here in Manhattan. I continue to work with the Gay Men’s Health Crisis as well, helping those with HIV/AIDS prepare their wills.
And with all this, you’re also a new dad…
Yes, my husband and I have twins – and a dog who is devoted to protecting them! Getting married and going through this process of having kids has given me new perspectives that can be beneficial to all my clients, whether or not they’re LGBT.
Brad, thanks for taking the time to catch up.
Thank you, David!
