Brown Borkowski & Morrow

Focus and practice areas

Brown Borkowski & Morrow works from a single office in Farmington Hills, Michigan, in Oakland County near I-275 and I-696. Clients come from the Detroit metro area and from across Michigan.

The firm describes its focus as business and estate planning. Around that centre it also handles family law, real estate, probate and trust administration, and elder law.

On the business side the work includes entity formation, contract and business disputes, business and civil litigation, mergers and acquisitions, shareholder and partnership disputes, and commercial and industrial property tax appeals. That is a wide business menu for a firm of this size, and in my opinion it points to a practice built for closely held Michigan companies with owners who need both transactional and courtroom help from the same office.

Business and corporate matters

Entity formation and shareholder disputes tend to be two ends of one story. The documents a client signs at the start (operating agreement, buy-sell provisions, capital contributions) become the evidence when partners fall out years later. A firm that does both sees how the first choice plays out in the second.

Business property tax appeals are a distinct piece of the practice. In Michigan these run through the local board of review and then the Michigan Tax Tribunal, with deadlines fixed by statute and by the class of property. Valuation evidence and assessment records carry the argument. It is technical work that sits apart from general commercial litigation, and the firm names it as its own area.

Estate planning, probate and elder law

The estate planning side covers wills, trusts, powers of attorney, probate, estate administration and Medicaid planning. Trust administration appears as a separate listing, which matters because administering a trust after a death is a different job from drafting one.

Medicaid planning in Michigan runs on a five-year look-back at asset transfers, so the timing of any gift or transfer shapes eligibility. Probate administration moves through the county probate court, with an inventory, notice to creditors and a final accounting along the way. Clients often meet all of this at once when a parent's health changes. Having elder law, probate and trust administration under one roof means one office can carry a family through the sequence.

How the team is built

The site names seven attorneys. Susan Leigh Brown, Thomas J. Borkowski, Jr., Matthew N. Morrow, Mary A. Mahoney and Sara Gorman Rajan are shareholders. Lauren C. Alshab is an associate attorney and Kathryn E. Gasior is a litigation associate.

Five shareholders to two associates is a top-heavy ratio by the standards of small firms, where a single owner supervising several juniors is more common. As a reviewer, that structure is the most useful signal on the page. It suggests the day-to-day work lands with senior lawyers, and it fits a practice that spreads across business, family, estate and real estate matters, since each area needs someone who owns it.

Three of the shareholder names appear in the firm name itself. The other two shareholders, Mahoney and Rajan, joined the ownership group without the sign changing, which is ordinary in Michigan professional corporations and says something about how the group grew.

A dedicated litigation associate

Kathryn E. Gasior's title, litigation associate, is worth noting on its own. Many firms this size give every lawyer a general title and sort the work informally. A titled litigation role means contested matters have a home.

The firm lists business and civil litigation, shareholder and partnership disputes, contested probate territory and family law among its areas. All of those can end up before a judge. Filing deadlines, discovery schedules and motion practice reward someone whose week is organised around them.

Family law and real estate

Family law services cover divorce and separation, child custody and support, property division, prenuptial and postnuptial agreements, and adoption. Michigan divorce runs through the circuit court, with a statutory waiting period and, where minor children are involved, the custody factors set out in the Child Custody Act guiding the judge.

Property division is where the business practice and the family practice meet. When one spouse owns a share of a closely held company, valuing that interest becomes a central question in the case. A firm that handles entity formation and shareholder agreements already reads those documents fluently.

Prenuptial and postnuptial agreements sit in the same overlap. So does real estate. The firm advises on residential and commercial transactions, and a marital home or an investment property often has to be untangled alongside everything else.

What the record shows

The firm says it was established, and the site gives no year. It has one office and one address, and the attorney list is short enough to read in a minute.

Brown Borkowski & Morrow offers free initial consultations and can arrange weekend and evening appointments. Credit cards are accepted. Those three details are practical rather than promotional, and they tell a client with a weekday job that a first meeting can happen without taking leave.

What the website does well is name people and name work. Seven attorneys appear with titles. Eight practice areas appear with their sub-areas spelled out, down to Medicaid planning and industrial property tax appeals. In my opinion that specificity is more useful to someone choosing a lawyer than any general statement about quality would be, because it lets a prospective client check their own problem against the list before they pick up the phone.

What the site leaves out is individual attorney background. Law schools, bar admission years and case histories are not laid out on the pages our research reached. A client who wants that detail will need to ask for it at the first meeting, and the free consultation is the place to do it.

The picture that emerges is a Michigan business and estate firm with a family law and real estate practice attached, run by five shareholders out of one Oakland County office, serving Detroit metro clients and clients statewide.

Individual experience behind the practice

The attorney records add useful detail about the experience behind the firm's published service list. Susan Leigh Brown earned her J.D. from Wayne State University Law School in 1987. Her work includes employment law and civil rights, along with personal injury and insurance coverage litigation. Automobile insurance matters are part of that record. These areas place her business work alongside disputes involving employers, insurers and individual claimants.

Thomas J. Borkowski, Jr. brings an accounting background to corporate, tax and estate matters. He received a B.S.B.A. in Accounting from Central Michigan University in 1990 and his J.D. from Thomas M. Cooley Law School in 1996. His experience includes business transactions, guardianships and conservatorships. He has also represented clients in probate and estate administration proceedings before courts in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and Genesee counties.

That county-level experience gives prospective probate clients a more concrete point of reference than a general practice description. Probate procedure is statewide, but each matter moves through the court for the county with jurisdiction. Prior work across four populous Michigan counties shows familiarity with several venues in the region the firm covers.

Real estate and business education

Matthew N. Morrow has academic training directed toward property development. He earned his J.D., cum laude, from Michigan State University College of Law in 2016, followed by an LL.M. in Real Property Development from the University of Miami School of Law in 2017. His stated work includes landlord and tenant matters and construction law, as well as employment questions. The advanced property degree is a relevant credential for clients whose legal issue depends on how a site will be acquired, developed or used.

Morrow also holds bachelor's degrees in Political Science and Political Theory and Constitutional Democracy from Michigan State University. Earlier in his career, he was an extern at Holland & Knight LLP and worked as a legal assistant. Those details give some context for the route he took into practice.

Litigation backgrounds outside the main menu

Mary A. Mahoney earned both a J.D. and an M.B.A. from the University of Detroit Mercy in 1988. She also holds a University of Michigan bachelor's degree in Economics and Linguistics. Her practice record includes labor and employment work, criminal defense and civil rights matters. For this reviewer, the combined legal and business degrees are especially relevant where an employment dispute turns on workplace decisions or company records.

Sara Gorman Rajan's background covers commercial and civil litigation, domestic relations, corporate law and bankruptcy. During law school, she was an oralist on a national moot court team during the 2001 to 2002 period. She was also selected for publication in "Who's Who: American Law Students." Bankruptcy experience adds another dimension to her commercial work because financial distress can alter the forum, available remedies and timetable in a company dispute.