Marc J. Bloostein

Background

Bloostein's documented formation took place in the northeastern United States. He studied at Brandeis University in the Boston area before attending Cornell Law School in Ithaca, New York.

Brandeis was founded in 1948 as a nonsectarian research university in Waltham, Massachusetts, and was named for Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis. Its establishment came in the years after the Second World War, when American higher education expanded rapidly. Cornell University, which houses the law school he attended, was founded in 1865 and is a private university that also serves as New York's land-grant institution.

Education

Bloostein earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brandeis University in 1985, graduating magna cum laude. The university's postwar founding reflected the broader expansion of American higher education in the decades after the Second World War.

He then received a Juris Doctor from Cornell Law School in 1988, graduating cum laude, while serving as managing editor of the Cornell Law Review. Cornell Law School was established in 1887 as part of Cornell University. The Cornell Law Review is a student-edited journal, and his editorial role there formed part of his legal education.

Career

Bloostein was admitted to practice law in Massachusetts in 1988, the year he completed his law degree. He began in the private client group of Ropes & Gray LLP in 1989 and became a partner of the firm in 1997. Ropes & Gray is a Boston firm founded in 1865, and its private client group advises individuals and families on estate planning, trust administration, and fiduciary matters.

He later became a partner at Choate, Hall & Stewart LLP, a Boston law firm, where he provides estate planning advice to high-net-worth individuals and families. His practice includes trust and estate administration, advising fiduciaries and beneficiaries, and serving as trustee for multiple family trusts. He also advises private equity and hedge fund principals on structuring funds to create estate planning opportunities.

Alongside his practice, he teaches as a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School, where he offers a course on estate planning. Harvard Law School, founded in 1817, is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. He has also co-authored the annual supplements to Newhall's Settlement of Estates and Fiduciary Law in Massachusetts, a Thomson Reuters treatise originally written by Guy Newhall, and he has written legal articles on trusts and on First Amendment doctrine. Early in his career he held a clerkship with the Honorable Stanley Brotman, a U.S. judge.

Achievements

• Played a key role in the 2012 enactment of the Massachusetts Uniform Trust Code, serving on the ad hoc committee that reviewed and revised the uniform act and co-authoring the committee's report. The Uniform Trust Code is a model statute drafted by the Uniform Law Commission to modernize state trust law, and its adoption in Massachusetts updated the Commonwealth's rules governing trusts.

• Chaired the subcommittee that recommended the Uniform Trust Decanting Act for enactment in Massachusetts. Trust decanting allows a trustee to transfer assets from an existing trust into a new trust with modified terms, and the proposed statute provided a legislative framework for that practice.

Works

• article

  • Ferri v. Powell-Ferri: Expansion of Common Law Trust Decanting in Massachusetts

    (Article by Bloostein in the Boston Bar Association journa...)

• law review article

  • Core Periphery Dichotomy in First Amendment Free Exercise Clause Doctrine: Goldman v. Weinberger, Bowen v. Roy and O'Lone v. Estate of Shabazz

    (Article by Bloostein published in volume 72 of the Cornel...)

    1987

• legal treatise

  • Newhall's Settlement of Estates and Fiduciary Law in Massachusetts

    (Thomson Reuters treatise on the settlement of estates and...)

    2021

Membership

Bloostein is a fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, a professional association of trusts and estates lawyers whose fellowship is conferred by invitation.

He also served as co-chair of the Trusts and Estates Section of the Boston Bar Association from 2011 to 2013. The Boston Bar Association is a bar association for lawyers in the Boston area, and its practice sections allow lawyers to exchange expertise within specialized fields.

• Fellow

  American College of Trust and Estate Counsel , United States

• Co-chair of the Trusts and Estates Section

  Boston Bar Association , United States

  2011 - 2013

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• A former law school classmate and longtime friend wrote in an online endorsement that Bloostein is 'one of the most diligent and hard working lawyers I've ever known.'

References

• Marc J. Bloostein, Choate, Hall & Stewart LLP profile Firm biography describing his estate planning practice, his trust and estate administration experience, his work with private equity and hedge fund principals, and his teaching at Harvard Law School.
• Marc Bloostein, Harvard Law School faculty profile Harvard Law School faculty page describing his role as a lecturer on law, his estate planning teaching, his role in the Massachusetts Uniform Trust Code, and his education at Brandeis University and Cornell Law School.
• New England Fellows Institute biography of Marc J. Bloostein Biography describing his partnership in the private client group of Ropes & Gray LLP, his estate planning specialization, his trust decanting work, and his managing editorship of the Cornell Law Review.