Laura Weir Vale

Born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, I am a fifth generation Texan on both sides of my family.  I have lived in San Antonio, Austin, and New York City, and I love them all.  

At the college level, I graduated Magna Cum Laude with Departmental Honors to obtain a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Barnard College, which is the women’s college affiliated with Columbia University in New York City.  During college I performed intensive undergraduate research working for a social psychology professor, in the advanced studies of “procedural justice” as well as “psychology and the law”.  Procedural justice relates to the fairness of procedures while distributive justice is about the actual outcomes of those procedures.  In this research on procedural justice, I performed experiments, employed statistical analysis on the data gathered, and ultimately co-authored scholarly research articles with my professor publishing the results.  Our area of focus within the field of procedural justice was looking at the role of “voice” in perceptions of fairness, i.e. whether participants had an opportunity to have their say and be heard by the decision maker.  It turns out that “voice” is the determinant factor in high ratings of procedural justice, and procedural justice is causative of and correlated with: (1) support for institutions, (2) support for leaders, and (3) support for, satisfaction with, and compliance with decision-making and distributive outcomes.  One big takeaway is that people need to have their say AND they need to be heard.

I graduated from law school at the University of Texas in Austin in 2005, was licensed by the Texas State Bar in the same year.  During law school, I was awarded the Dean’s Achievement Award for my academic performance in a course on equine law.  My love of horses showed up in my law school performance!  Growing up I had been an equestrian, owning horses, riding for pleasure and competing in dressage competitions, hunter jumper shows and three-day eventing.  Additionally in law school, I served as the Managing Editor of the Texas Journal of Women and the Law, publishing a note on same sex marriage and the 1^st and 14^th Amendment of the US Constitution. During law school, I worked on incorporating a non-profit organization dedicated to sports safety, with a focus on Texas high school sports, in particular high school football in Texas, and lobbying the Texas legislature for important changes to sports safety in public schools.

During my early years in practice, I worked in mass torts in asbestos litigation and personal injury plaintiff litigation, specializing in depositions and pre-trial discovery work.  For over a decade I served as general counsel in my family’s medical equipment and medical supply business, ensuring legal compliance with Medicare, Medicaid, private insurers, Texas Workforce Commission, EEOC, FDA, OSHA, ADA, DOT, company policy, and healthcare accreditation standards and overseeing all legal aspects of 4 affiliated ancillary healthcare companies.  During the latter years of my time in business, I handled the legal part of our family business forming new affiliate entities, dissolving affiliate entities, acquiring competitor businesses, selling businesses, preparing and marketing our company for sale, and the final sale of the business, merger with its acquiring entity and exit from the market—in other words, mergers and acquisitions.

In recent years, I have practiced in a variety of areas of the law including family law, probate and estate planning.  My practice currently focuses intensively in probate and estate planning.   My background in family law dovetails nicely with my work in probate and estate planning, as both practice areas deal with the characterization and disposition of community property and separate property under Texas law.  I continue to assist clients with uncontested family law matters such as uncontested divorce and custody agreements, legal adoption, pre-marital property agreements and post-marital property agreements.  Indeed, premarital and postmarital property agreements are part of a comprehensive estate plan.  My law practice is now concentrated in uncontested guardianship, uncontested probate, heirship determinations, property deeds including transfer on death deeds and lade bird deeds, affidavits of heirship, and of course, wills and trusts.  I am a State Bar member of the Real Estate, Probate and Trust Law group, a Notary Public in the State of Texas, Attorney Ad Litem in Probate Courts in Bexar County, Comal County and Kendall County, and I have certified statutory training for Attorney Instruction Related to Guardianship Issues.  I truly enjoy speaking with my clients and learning their life stories.  I love getting to offer legal solutions that truly help them.  My goal is to engage in a collaborative, thorough estate planning process with my clients which results in effective, customized estate plans, and smooth, efficient probate when we are in probate court.