The Cicero Law Firm LLP

Focus and practice areas

Jill M. Cicero founded this Rochester firm in 1990. Since then it has kept to estate planning, trust and estate administration, and the gift and estate tax matters that come with both. The firm describes its practice as exclusive to those areas. In my opinion, that narrow scope tells you something before you read a single attorney bio: the firm picks its work, and the same field comes back day after day.

The firm's work covers two connected stages of a client's estate. One is planning, done while a person is alive. The other is administration, handled after a death or once a trust is running. Both draw on the same body of New York and federal law, so a firm that does one often does the other.

An exclusive focus like this is a real choice in a mid-size legal market. Many Rochester firms run estate work as one department among several. The Cicero Law Firm LLP puts all of its attorneys on the same subject, which tends to build depth in the parts of the law that repeat, like the tax thresholds and the Surrogate's Court procedures behind most of these matters.

What the estate planning work covers

On the planning side, the firm prepares Wills, trusts, powers of attorney, and health care proxies. It also advises on federal and New York estate taxes and on federal gift taxes, and it prepares federal gift tax returns for its planning clients. These are the documents that set how property moves and who has authority to act for someone who needs it.

Each document does a specific job. A Will directs how assets pass and names an executor. A trust holds property under set terms and can carry on past the owner's death. A power of attorney lets a named person handle financial matters during life. A health care proxy names someone to make medical decisions on the client's behalf. Together they form the base layer of most estate plans in New York.

Taxes and keeping a plan current

The tax work runs alongside the drafting. Federal estate tax and New York estate tax use different thresholds, and gifts made during life can change how an estate is taxed at death. Gift tax returns record those transfers so the figures hold up when an estate is later valued. In my opinion, keeping the drafting and the tax filing under one roof is part of why planning clients come back for administration.

Estate plans are documents that need review over time. Life events like a marriage, a new child, a move to another state, or a large change in assets can make an older Will or trust out of step with a client's wishes. The firm's planning work covers these documents and the health care and financial authorities that go with them, which gives clients one place to revisit as their circumstances shift.

How estates and trusts are administered

Administration starts when someone has to settle an estate or run a trust. The firm assists Executors, Administrators, and Trustees through that process. Its work here includes probate pleadings, federal and New York estate tax returns, inventories of assets, fiduciary income tax returns, and the documents that close out an estate or trust.

A fiduciary carries real legal duties. An executor or trustee has to account for every asset, keep the beneficiaries' interests first, and file the returns that the state and the IRS require. Getting the inventory and the accounting right protects the fiduciary as much as the estate, and it is close, detailed work. The firm's role here is to guide that process and prepare the filings that go with it.

The firm also advises fiduciaries on the practical steps, such as collecting and transferring assets and paying the estate's debts and expenses, and it represents trust beneficiaries about their interests. In New York, administration generally moves through Surrogate's Court, where an executor files the Will, gathers and values assets, settles debts and taxes, and distributes what remains to the beneficiaries. Court deadlines and filings set the pace, which is one reason fiduciaries bring in counsel to keep the record straight.

How the team is built

Three attorneys carry the firm's work, and each came to it after time in estate practice. Jill M. Cicero, the Managing Partner, is a graduate of Cornell Law School. She has served as Chair of the Monroe County Bar Association Trusts and Estates Section and as President of the Estate Planning Council of Rochester, both roles tied to the field the firm works in.

Amanda C. Agins, a Partner known as Mandy, has practiced in estate planning and administration for nearly fifteen years. Before joining the firm, she was a partner at Harris Beach PLLC, now Harris Beach Murtha, in its Wills, Trusts and Estates group. She is a magna cum laude graduate of SUNY at Buffalo Law School and of Colgate University.

Mackenzie Glaze Kellermeyer, a Senior Associate, works on estate planning and the administration of trusts and estates. She helps clients design and put estate plans in place, and she advises fiduciaries and beneficiaries during administration. Before this firm, she was an associate at Harter Secrest & Emery LLP and at Pullano & Farrow PLLC, both in their Trusts and Estates groups. She is an alumna of Case Western Reserve University School of Law and Bucknell University.

Shared background in the field

A common thread runs through the three bios: each attorney worked in trusts and estates before settling into this firm. Agins came from the Wills, Trusts and Estates group at Harris Beach, and Kellermeyer worked in the Trusts and Estates groups at Harter Secrest & Emery and Pullano & Farrow. That shared grounding means the firm's work stays inside one area of law across every desk.

Who the firm works with

The firm states that it has nearly 1,500 clients, and that most of them are high-net-worth individuals. That client base fits the work it lists, since estate and gift tax planning tends to matter most where holdings are larger or more layered. High-net-worth estates often involve business interests, multiple properties, or gifts made across several years, all of which push the tax and drafting work the firm handles. As a reviewer, I read the combination of a long track record and a single focused practice area as the firm's main strength, and its own pages support each part of that.

The firm's pages give each attorney's law school and earlier firms, though they leave bar admission years unstated. The firm has run since 1990 under Jill M. Cicero, and its three attorneys all work in the same field. It holds to estate planning and trust and estate administration as its whole practice.