James Ward went to law school at 53 and has been helping clients ever since
Published in the June 22 – July 5, 2016 issue of Morgan Hill Life
CLICK HERE TO SEE OUR BUSINESS PROFILE VIDEO WITH JAMES WARD
By Robert Airoldi
Photo by Marty Cheek
James Ward at his desk in his Gilroy office. He works in the area of elder law and estate planning.
A map of the world hangs in the Gilroy law office of James Ward covered with scores of pins stuck in different locations representing all the places the estate planning attorney has either visited or lived. It’s a demonstration that he has had a life of traveling all over North and South America, Europe, Australia, Asia and dozens of islands dotting the map.
His love of travel no doubt is in his DNA. “My grandparents were world travelers, and would take off for Europe every other year or so, buy a Volkswagen and travel. When they got home they’d gather the family and show the slides they’d taken. That’s where I got the travel bug,” he said.
Ward, now busy helping clients in his Estate Planning and Elder Law office, doesn’t travel as much as when he was young, but he still finds time to get away for vacations.
His road to become a lawyer was long and varied. After graduating from the University of California, Davis with a degree in agricultural economics and business, he earned a masters degree in agronomy, a branch of agricultural science that deals with the study of crops and the soils in which they grow. From there, his career took off and he sold vegetable seeds all over the world. He did that for more than 20 years, before he got into banking and finance, real estate finance and lending. Then he worked for high-tech companies before ending that chapter of his career as a consultant then partner at KPMG, one of the countries leading accounting firms. He also sold software for a time.
Then, out of the blue, when he was 53, a law school in Rhode Island offered him a full-ride scholarship. Off he went toward his new career. He finished the three-year program in 2 ½ years and decided to work helping people plan for the legal issues when they pass on. He continued his education with a postgraduate law degree (LL.M.) in estate planning at the nationally renowned program at the University of Miami School of Law.
The high population of retirees in Florida resulted in also studying in the area of elder law and making the decision to combine the fields of elder law and estate planning to best serve clients across a wide spectrum of ages, family circumstances and needs, he said.
After working in elder law and estate planning at a firm in Florida, he returned to Gilroy and opened his own law practice focusing solely based on these two areas of legal help. He enjoys estate planning and said after all these years, he’s found his passion. “I don’t like litigation,” he said. “I get to help people by identifying problems and working with them toward a solution. It’s very gratifying.”
His basic advice for people is to find an attorney who deals with and focuses just on estate planning and elder law, he said.
“If one is not doing it regularly, they may not see problems that can occur with bad documents,” he said. “Remember, money creates emotions, especially in our society with so many blended marriages. How do you protect your money to go to your children and still protect your spouse? We don’t know the order of death. It’s important to have a plan for either one to die first to protect the kids. What if the survivor remarries? You can’t use a vanilla, cookie-cutter advice for everyone.”
JAMES WARD
Location: 7888 Wren Ave. Suite D-140, Gilroy
Contact: (408) 847-4800 or visit www.wardesq.com
