Jeremy A.A. Purves

Greetings. My name is Jeremy Purves and I decided to become a Personal Family Lawyer after the experience of working in many different law offices and studying the history of the legal profession. Over the last hundred years, there have been momentous changes in the practice of law, many of which have increasingly formed lawyers’ roles as specialized hyper-advocates who engage in conflict, win or lose, while billing by the hour. This transformation de-emphasized a lawyer’s more traditional role as counselor who assisted clients in creating structures and planning designed to prevent future conflicts and avoid the excessive costs of litigation.

As someone who enjoys the role of advocate, I still practice limited and carefully selected litigation cases in the courts. But I’ve now become a Personal Family Lawyer because I have resolved to focus the majority of my work upon bringing back the old role of counselor to the profession of law. A good lawyer ought to help and counsel clients to avoid future conflicts, not to create more conflict that clients are then required to pay by the hour to resolve. Any family’s wealth preservation is far more likely to grow and be passed down as a legacy to future generations by wise and informed deliberative process, not by needlessly disputing in the courts. Any good business practice thrives best on cooperation and honesty, creating, rather than destroying, mutually reciprocal relationships. I can tell you that I take great pleasure in helping clients and their families establish plans that protect them and that establish a foundation from which to preserve and pass down their most important assets (human, intellectual, financial, and spiritual) to the younger generations.

As to background, I graduated after taking my exams early in my last year of law school at George Mason University School of Law in 2006 just before I was deployed for a year in a gun truck platoon in Iraq, serving with my brothers- and sisters-in-arms in the United States Army. My military experience only re-enforced my conviction that, while it is good to always be prepared for a fight, it is far far better to work towards peaceable resolution, planning, and preparedness. Anyone who can establish structures for the resolution of future problems and for the preservation of valuable resources is doing much needed good work in the world.

Since graduating from law school, I have spent time volunteering for political campaigns, participating in City Council legal research projects, preparing a Constitutional Law college textbook, and working with a grassroots lobby firm in Washington, D.C. After returning from my tour of duty, I moved back to California and worked over six years in both criminal and civil practice in Stanislaus County, including trials and preparing appellate briefs for the California Court of Appeal and the California Supreme Court. Since then I have worked for over an additional seven years in Santa Barbara in estate planning and family law, and I have now chosen to concentrate on Trusts and Estates. Towards this end, I am also currently working to become a Certified Specialist with the California State Bar in Estate Planning, Trust, & Probate Law.

As a student of classical philosophy, I am currently in the middle of researching and writing two books: one describing the history of ideas regarding the legitimacy of law, and another exploring the intellectual foundations of political philosophy. My leisure hours pleasure and relaxation consists of basking in the light of my wife’s smile or laughter, reading long books (Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Aquinas, Shakespeare, Dr. Johnson), and drinking Single Malt Scotch. See also pipe tobacco, the sea and ships, Johann Sebastian Bach, early mornings, Opera, Ballet, Symphonies, Index Funds, approximating the Stock Market average, and bagpipes.