Nicholas van Brunt

Practice Areas

Nicholas Van Brunt is a partner in the Business Trial Practice Group and is the Team Leader of the firm's Private Wealth Services Team.

Nicholas focuses his practice on resolving disputes over trusts, estates, conservatorships, and other fiduciary matters. A respected member of the Los Angeles legal community, Nicholas is known as a pragmatic and effective trusts and estates litigator who seeks to achieve favorable results for his clients through skillful negotiation, strategic counsel and deft trial work. Whether in the courtroom or at mediation, it is his ability both to advocate passionately and effectively for his clients and to counsel clients compassionately but credibly that has helped him consistently achieve favorable outcomes in various contexts.

Nicholas has developed an impressive roster of clients who value his discretion, experience and accessible approach. His clients include individuals, non-profit organizations and corporate entities, whom he represents in matters large and small. His typical client matters include will and trust contests, breach of fiduciary duty cases, trustee accounting matters, conservatorship proceedings, and cases involving the intersection between probate law and other legal issues.

Nicholas also has substantial general business litigation experience, including disputes arising in labor and employment, intellectual property, securities, real estate, professional responsibility matters, judgment collection, bankruptcy matters, and general breach of contract and tort actions.

Nicholas is actively engaged in the Los Angeles County Bar Association (LACBA), as a member of the Executive Committee of the LACBA Trust & Estates Section and served for two years as the Chair of the Court Appointed Counsel Liaison Committee, which is responsible for producing several training programs each year throughout Los Angeles County for court-appointed attorneys in conservatorship and guardianship matters.

Nicholas is a member of the Executive Committee of the Trusts and Estates Section of the California Lawyers Association (CLA), which is the bar association for all California attorneys, and which has the mission of furthering the knowledge of practitioners in the areas of trusts and estate laws through educational opportunities, monitoring and actively participating in the formation of laws and regulations that impact trusts and estates laws, and representing section members in the governance of the CLA.

Nicholas is also very involved in pro bono matters on behalf of both individuals and non-profit organizations. He has led the firm’s effort to represent unaccompanied minors in Special Immigrant Juvenile Status cases in partnership with Bet Tzedek Legal Services, serves on the firm’s Pro Bono Committee, and regularly acts as a Probate Settlement Officer with the Los Angeles County Superior Court’s Pro Bono Probate Settlement Program, offered through the San Fernando Valley Bar Association.