Insights

McGrath North is proud to announce that it has achieved significant recognition by Best Lawyers® in their 2026 edition. This year, 47 of our attorneys have been honored across 61 distinct practice areas in The Best Lawyers in America®, and 14 of our attorneys have been recognized in The Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch® across 21 practice groups. This recognition showcases the firm’s deep expertise and commitment to delivering exceptional legal services, as well as highlighting the exceptional abilities and potential of our emerging leaders in the legal field.  

There is a famous story told in engineering circles about Charles Proteus Steinmetz—the “Wizard of Schenectady”—one of the most brilliant electrical engineers in American history. Steinmetz was the man who early 20^th century industry called when the most complex technical problems stopped an entire factory in its tracks.  

Family Business Leaders, who must balance logic and emotion, legacy and innovation, are especially prone to three specific mindset traps that neuroscience has named and studied.  

If you’ve never created an Estate Plan, the State has created one for you—through its default laws of intestacy. If you’ve never hired a financial or private advisor to design your Financial or Wealth Plan, you still have one—it just may be reactive, uncoordinated, incomplete and ineffective. If you’ve never created a Tax Plan, you still have one—it just might not be saving you any taxes. If you haven’t thought through your business Exit Plan or Succession Plan, these are still unfolding, by default, not by design.