Nielsen Law PLLC

Focus and practice areas

Nielsen Law PLLC handles estate planning and probate work from an office in Austin, Texas. The firm's named services are estate planning, special needs planning, estate administration, trust services and business planning.

The document work covers revocable living trusts, generational planning, special needs trusts and charitable trusts. The firm also prepares living wills along with financial and medical powers of attorney.

The second half of the practice starts after someone dies. Nielsen Law guides clients through estate administration, probate and guardianship. That includes court probate cases and private trust administration, depending on what the deceased person left behind.

What those matters usually involve

Some general context helps here, and none of it is a claim about this firm's own outcomes. A Texas probate case runs through a county or statutory probate court. The executor named in the will applies to open the estate, the court validates the will, and letters testamentary give the executor authority to act.

Trust administration takes a different path. A properly funded revocable living trust passes to a successor trustee without a court filing, so the work is more administrative than adversarial. The trustee inventories assets, notifies beneficiaries and distributes under the trust terms.

Guardianship is the most court-heavy of the three. A Texas guardianship proceeding requires medical evidence of incapacity, a court-appointed attorney ad litem for the proposed ward, and ongoing annual reporting once a guardian is appointed.

How the team is built

Liz Nielsen founded the firm and leads it. She is board certified in estate planning and probate law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, and she practices exclusively in estate planning, special needs planning and estate administration.

Her background before the firm covers two settings. She was an associate attorney at an Austin estate planning firm, and earlier she was in-house legal counsel for an Austin nonprofit. She earned her J.D. with honors from the University of Texas School of Law.

In my opinion, the board certification is the single most useful data point on the site. Texas certifies attorneys in this field only after documented experience in the area, peer references and a written examination. Fewer than one in ten Texas attorneys hold certification in any field, which makes it a verifiable marker rather than a self-description.

The other attorneys

Elizabeth Ziegler is an Austin native who grew up in the Georgetown area. She graduated cum laude from the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism, then took her J.D. at St. Mary's University School of Law.

Her law school work points in the same direction as her practice. She focused on estate planning and legal research, interned with the Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid office, and spent time in Probate Court No. 2 of Bexar County. Courtroom exposure to probate before admission is a useful thing for an attorney who now works in the field.

Katlyn Winters grew up in Seguin, Texas. She graduated from Texas State University with a Bachelor of Arts in political science and a minor in sociology. She attended St. Mary's University School of Law in San Antonio, where she received her Doctor of Jurisprudence and graduated cum laude.

Two of the three attorneys share the St. Mary's law school background. All three practise in the same area, which gives the firm a narrow professional profile for a shop of this size.

Special needs planning and why it sits apart

Special needs planning appears twice on the site: once as a service line and once in Liz Nielsen's own exclusive practice areas. That repetition suggests it carries weight in the firm's day-to-day work.

The legal problem in this area is specific. A person receiving Supplemental Security Income or Medicaid can lose eligibility if they inherit money directly. A special needs trust holds the assets for the beneficiary's benefit while keeping them outside the eligibility calculation.

Drafting these instruments carries real technical requirements. Federal and state rules govern what a trustee may pay for, and a poorly drafted trust can trigger the exact loss of benefits it was written to prevent. Families in this position usually need the trust coordinated with the rest of the estate plan, which is where the firm's combined estate planning and trust services line up.

Business planning alongside the estate work

Business planning is the one service that sits outside the pure estate and probate track. On the site it appears next to trust services in the same list.

The pairing is common in Texas practices of this type. A business owner's estate plan has to answer what happens to the company on death or incapacity, which pulls in buy-sell agreements, entity documents and succession terms. Generational planning, also listed by the firm, covers similar ground for families holding assets across more than one generation.

What the site does and does not state

The firm gives its principal office as Austin, Texas, and lists a single Austin location. It says it is accepting new clients.

The site does not state a founding year for Nielsen Law PLLC, and it gives no bar admission years for any of the three attorneys. Titles for Elizabeth Ziegler and Katlyn Winters are absent as well. As a reviewer working from the firm's own published material, those gaps are worth flagging for anyone comparing listings on credential detail.

What the site does document is checkable. The board certification is verifiable through the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. The law schools, degrees and honours for all three attorneys are stated plainly. The service list matches the practice areas the attorneys describe for themselves.

The firm maintains a Facebook page, an X account and a LinkedIn profile for Liz Nielsen. Its copyright notice carries the year 2025.

A law school distinction tied to the practice

One further credential adds useful detail to Liz Nielsen's academic record. During law school, she received the Dean's Achievement Award for her performance in Wills & Estates. The named subject has a direct connection to her later estate planning and probate work.

The award supplies more context than the J.D. honors designation alone. It identifies the particular course in which she earned recognition and places estate law within her formal training. For a directory reader comparing attorney biographies, that subject-level detail helps explain the academic foundation behind her chosen field.

Elizabeth Ziegler's clinical case work

Elizabeth Ziegler received her J.D. in 2020. Her law school experience also included work as a student attorney in the St. Mary's Civil Justice Family Law Clinical Program. The cases assigned to her concerned estate planning and estate administration.

The student-attorney role is a distinct part of her background because the record attributes actual case work to her during legal training. Those assignments covered both planning during a client's lifetime and administration after a death. This experience adds practical context to the estate planning focus identified in her biography.

The placement within a family law clinic is also relevant. Estate questions often arise alongside broader family concerns, and the record shows that her clinic work addressed estate matters within that setting. The listing does not describe the individual cases, so the useful point is the stated subject of the work rather than any claimed result.

Office and listing details

The firm's street address is 8705 Shoal Creek Blvd in Austin. This gives prospective clients a precise destination beyond the city designation. The supplied telephone number is 512.522.2890, and it is the only phone number in the record.

The listing uses "Nielsen Law" as the short name and identifies the legal entity as Nielsen Law PLLC. Keeping both forms visible can help readers match the directory entry with correspondence or formal documents that use the full entity name.