Best Lawyers in Florida, United States for Closely Held Companies and Family Businesses Law
Florida is home to more than 23 million people, hundreds of industries and a wide range of legal needs. From individuals navigating personal matters like divorce or estate planning to businesses managing complex contracts or regulatory hurdles, legal guidance plays a critical role in daily life across the state.
Florida’s unique economic drivers—tourism, real estate, agriculture and healthcare—create specific legal demands that often require attorneys with focused regional experience. Whether you're in the Keys, the Panhandle, or Central Florida, understanding the local context can be just as important as understanding the law.
When it’s time to find the right attorney in Florida for your needs, language matters too. In Florida—as in most states—lawyer and attorney are often used interchangeably. But technically, only an attorney is licensed to practice law.
That distinction matters here. Best Lawyers only includes professionals who are fully licensed and actively practicing—legal advocates recognized by their peers for excellence in skill, ethics and service.
Whether you're facing a personal challenge, planning for the future, or trying to protect your business, Best Lawyers connects you with attorneys across Florida who are qualified, trusted and ready to help.
How to Use This Page
Our directory makes it easy to find a Florida attorney who fits your needs. You can search by practice area, city, or name. Whether you’re based in Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Tallahassee, or anywhere in between, the search tools are designed for speed and clarity.
Each attorney profile provides:
- Areas of practice
- Years of experience
- Peer-review distinctions
- Contact information and firm affiliations
This transparency helps you evaluate your options and choose someone with the right background for your specific legal issue. You’re accessing a curated list of professionals with proven reputations in their field.
This is more than a directory—it’s a research tool for making smarter legal decisions. Whether you’re hiring an attorney for the first time or seeking secondary advice on an ongoing matter, the information here helps you avoid guesswork. It’s especially useful for individuals managing high-stakes or emotionally charged issues, like a contested divorce or a business dispute with large financial consequences.
Legal Coverage Throughout Florida
No matter where you live or what kind of legal help you need, chances are we’ve got it covered. Best Lawyers recognizes attorneys in both high-demand and niche areas of practice across all corners of the state. This directory includes lawyers from large metro areas like Miami, Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville, as well as smaller communities like Gainesville, Pensacola and Sarasota, ensuring you can find representation no matter where you're located.
Some of the most commonly searched legal services in Florida include:
- Personal Injury and Medical Malpractice: With Florida’s population growth and busy roadways, personal injury and accident attorneys play a major role in helping people recover and rebuild.
- Family Law and Divorce: Family-related matters—from custody disputes to prenuptial agreements—require attorneys with both skill and sensitivity.
- Real Estate and Land Use: Florida’s hot real estate markets make it essential to have a qualified attorney for closings, zoning, development and litigation.
- Business and Corporate Law: From startups in Miami to legacy businesses in the Panhandle, attorneys guide everything from contracts to mergers.
- Criminal Defense: Experienced defense attorneys help clients navigate Florida’s criminal justice system with insight and integrity.
- Immigration Law: As a diverse and international state, Florida sees high demand for legal representation in immigration and naturalization matters.
- Estate Planning and Elder Law: With many retirees and aging residents, Florida has a strong need for attorneys who specialize in wills, trusts, Medicaid planning and probate.
We also include lawyers practicing in emerging or specialized fields, such as cybersecurity law, cannabis regulation, aviation law and education law. With so many attorneys practicing across Florida, it can be difficult to know who truly stands out. That’s where Best Lawyers adds genuine value by showing you not just every practitioner who’s licensed, but qualified attorneys who have earned the respect of their peers through years of dedicated service and proven results.
A Peer-Review Process You Can Trust
Every attorney listed in our Florida page has earned recognition through Best Lawyers’ rigorous annual peer-review process. This is a comprehensive methodology grounded in the insights of the legal community itself.
Here’s how it works:
- Nomination: Lawyers are nominated by peers or clients who have observed their work firsthand.
- Peer Review: Attorneys in the same practice area assess the nominee’s skill, integrity and results. This is confidential and weighted.
- Eligibility and Verification: Nominees must be in good standing with the bar and actively practicing law. We verify their status through state bar associations and other professional channels.
- Annual Re-evaluation: Because legal landscapes evolve, our recognitions are not static. Each year, the process begins again to ensure continued excellence.
This process helps ensure the integrity of our listings. If you’re selecting an attorney from our directory, you’re choosing someone who didn’t just claim to be the best—they were recognized by other attorneys as among the best in their field.
Start Your Search for an Attorney in Florida by Practice Area or City
Whether you’re dealing with a landlord dispute, a complicated contract, or a life-changing injury, finding the right attorney can make all the difference. Best Lawyers makes that search faster, clearer and more trustworthy.
Explore our Florida pages to find top-rated attorneys by:
- Practice Area: Choose the legal focus that best matches your needs.
- City: Get local insights and representation in your region.
Your legal matter deserves careful consideration—and the right advocate. With Best Lawyers, you’re not just searching. You’re starting from a foundation of credibility, clarity and peer-backed trust. Browse by practice area or location to get started today and feel confident knowing that every name you see here has been vetted by fellow attorneys who know what it takes to provide outstanding legal service in Florida.
Practice Area Overview
Depending on the jurisdiction, closely held company law may differ significantly from the law of the same jurisdiction that is applicable to corporations and other enterprises that are publicly held. For example, in many jurisdictions owners in closely held companies are subject to heightened fiduciary duties to one another, which may preclude structural actions or transactions that would be permissible in the public company sphere. On the other hand, closely held companies are free from many of the disclosure and other regulations that constrain publicly held enterprises in their activities. This is true even when the closely held company is of equal size as a publicly held participant in the same industry. Practitioners in this area must be experts in recognizing these legal and regulatory differences and also be aware of the alternative governance frameworks available in other jurisdictions.
The key challenge in family business law is to structure an environment in which familial goals and interests and enterprise goals are mutually reinforcing. This requires empathy and creativity on the part of the practitioner, particularly the ability to translate essentially non-legal concepts such as stewardship into legal script, all in a tax-efficient manner.
Select a city from the list below to find the best legal talent for your needs.
Cities
Christopher W. Boyett co-chairs Holland & Knight's National Private Wealth practice. Mr. Boyett advises domestic and international wealthy families throughout Florida on sophisticated estate planning strategies and options and counsels family businesses on succession planning and tax planning. Additionally, he advises both institutional and individual clients on estate and trust administration issues. He is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Miami School of Law, Graduate Program in...
Edward F. Koren is a partner in Holland & Knight's Tampa and Lakeland offices and leads the firm's Private Wealth practice. His practice is focused on wealth planning and protection for entrepreneurs and multi-generational business owners and serves clients across the country. Mr. Koren is past chair of the American Bar Association's Real Property, Probate and Trust Law Section; former American College of Trust and Estate Counsel Regent and past chair of its Estate and Gift Tax Committee;...
William R. Lane Jr. is a partner in Holland & Knight's Tampa office and practices in the areas of trusts and estates, tax exempt organizations and family business succession planning. Mr. Lane is the North/Central Florida regional team leader for the firm’s Private Wealth Services Practice Group. Mr. Lane works primarily in the areas of estate planning, family business succession planning, and resolution of disputes involving trusts, estates, their fiduciaries and beneficiaries. He ...
William B. Sherman is a partner in Holland & Knight's Fort Lauderdale office. Mr. Sherman serves as chair of the firm's Tax Team and concentrates his practice in the area of domestic and international taxation. He has provided sophisticated tax planning for mergers and acquisitions, restructurings, joint ventures and investments for clients in diverse industries, such as hospitality, petrochemicals, aluminum, tobacco, real estate, transportation, telecommunications, retailing, investment ...
Douglas Starcher successfully manages mergers and acquisitions and has been recognized by the M&A Advisor in New York as the Seller’s Attorney on the 2015 Technology Deal of the Year over $250 million and again in 2018 on the Financials Deal of the Year. Mr. Starcher serves as outside general counsel for entrepreneurs and growth companies, and regularly counsels clients as a trusted advisor with regard to organizational structuring, capitalization, contracts, technology licensing, a...
Lauren has spent her career working closely with high-net-worth individuals and business owners to structure their estate plans and business holdings in a tax and administratively efficient manner. She designs and implements sophisticated wealth transfer strategies to maximize the protection of her clients’ wealth for generations. Lauren’s wealth preservation practice includes minimizing federal income, estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer taxes, business succession plan...
Chris utilizes his extensive tax and accounting background to assist high-net-worth individuals and closely held businesses with establishing and implementing sophisticated wealth transfer strategies, charitable planning, and business formation and restructuring. He also has extensive experience in tax controversy, the purchase, sale and operation of private aircraft, and tax planning for real estate transactions. Given the personal nature of his work, Chris takes the time to understand each ...
Our Methodology
Recognition by Best Lawyers is based entirely on peer review. Our methodology is designed to capture, as accurately as possible, the consensus opinion of leading lawyers about the professional abilities of their colleagues within the same geographical area and legal practice area.
The Process
Best Lawyers employs a sophisticated, conscientious, rational, and transparent survey process designed to elicit meaningful and substantive evaluations of the quality of legal services. Our belief has always been that the quality of a peer review survey is directly related to the quality of the voters.