About the Course
Introduction
This CLE course will discuss legal issues attendant with advising family offices established by high-net-worth individuals and families. The program will discuss the Investment Advisers Act, employment and executive compensation, and U.S. and foreign income tax issues.
Description
Family offices are centralized entities focusing primarily on wealth management services for high-net-worth individuals and families. Offices provide a variety of personalized services for the family, including tax, estate planning, investment, and charitable giving.
Depending on the nature of the family office (e.g., single-family vs. multiple-family office), there is a range of compliance obligations relating to investment adviser regulation. Those obligations include possible SEC oversight, compliance programs, record retention, cybersecurity, and a plethora of other matters that SEC-regulated advisers must address. However, the SEC exempts certain family offices from registering as investment advisers or commodity pool operators and from certain related compliance.
Formation decisions are critical. Family offices, traditionally structured as a limited partnership or limited liability company, provide investment management, tax, accounting, and concierge services to family members and various family entities. There are ways family offices can structure themselves in a particularly tax-efficient manner. Tax reform disallowed deductions under Code Section 212 but reduced the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, allowing for certain organizational and investment structures that can improve tax efficiency.
Employment decisions (both hiring and firing), ERISA obligations, and executive compensation structures are areas of risk for family business offices. Offices must appreciate wage-and-hour laws, labor law standards, and legal developments regarding restrictive covenants and noncompete agreements to help family businesses mitigate their legal exposure.
Listen as our experienced panel of attorneys explains and offers best practices for crucial legal issues in advising family offices.
Presented By
Ms. Duval works with fund managers, sophisticated family offices, and other private capital investors on tax and entity structuring, investment planning and execution, and private fund formation and management. She advises fund managers and investors on the structuring and formation of private funds. In her guidance to clients, Ms. Duval reviews and negotiates fund documents across a variety of private fund types, including private equity funds, real estate funds, hedge funds, digital assets, and venture capital. She provides tax and structuring advice on co-investment opportunities and direct capital investments across a spectrum of asset classes. A tax lawyer by training, Ms. Duval understands the tax rules related to private foundations and other charitable organizations and advises on the associated challenges when these entities or related individuals are parties to an investment. In her role as trusted counsel for family offices, Ms. Duval guides the structuring and servicing of family offices and transactional work related to their investments. She also advises family offices and private foundations on such issues as social capital and grantmaking.
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Mr. Ghazi works extensively with global families on domestic and international tax and estate planning, including pre-immigration and expatriation strategies, inbound and outbound investment structuring, and planning for gifts and bequests to U.S. beneficiaries. His family office practice focuses on the formation and restructuring of family offices and private trust companies, the design of incentive equity and carried interest programs for key personnel, and partnership tax planning for family offices and principals, including direct investment and co-investment structures. Mr. Ghazi frequently serves as outside counsel to family offices and fund sponsors, drawing on his previous experience as deputy general counsel and managing director at a $70B+ multifamily office, where he advised on tax, governance, and investment structuring across various asset classes. He also advises asset managers and sovereign wealth funds on designing tax-efficient real estate, private credit, and infrastructure investment structures
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This 90-minute webinar is eligible in most states for 1.5 CLE credits.
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Date + Time
- event
Thursday, July 23, 2026
- schedule
1:00 PM ET/10:00 AM PT
I. The role of the family office
II. Legal aspects of designing, implementing, and operating a family office
III. Tax issues and considerations
IV. Current regulatory compliance concerns and recent legal changes
A. The tax planning implications of OBBBA
B. Evolving AI regulations
C. Data privacy protection requirements (domestically and internationally)
D. Governance
The panel will review these and other key issues:
- What are the regulatory compliance issues for counsel assisting in structuring family offices?
- What is the scope of the SEC exemptions for a family office registering as an investment adviser?
- What are some of the key tax issues for family offices?
