SMITH GREEN & HOLMES - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Partner
- Associate in 2016 Upon Returning Home to the Berkshires
Allyson joined the firm as an associate in 2016 upon returning home to the Berkshires after beginning her law practice in Boston. Her areas of concentration include estate planning, estate administration, and residential real estate. She enjoys the challenge of assessing issues related to a particular matter and advising her clients on the most effective means to accomplish their desired outcome.
Allyson has prior experience representing the City of Boston on various municipal matters ranging from drafting and reviewing contracts, City ordinances, state legislation, license and intergovernmental agreements, and various litigation matters.
Allyson attended Suffolk University Law School and earned her bachelor's degree in History and Political Science from Williams College.
Community Activities
Allyson has immersed herself in the community by serving as a member of the Board of Directors of Community Health Programs since 2016, presently serving as the Clerk of the Board. She has served on the Pittsfield Zoning Board of Appeals since 2020 and was a co-founder of the New Lawyers Section of the Berkshire Bar Association. She annually serves on the Berkshire County Access to Justice Campaign Committee to raise funds and support the work of Community Legal Aid.
Her past service includes serving on the North Adams Planning Board from 2016-2018 and on Steering Committee for the Berkshire Leadership Program from 2018-2021. Allyson was also a member of the 2020 class of Berkshire County 40 Under Forty award recipients for her involvement and leadership in the community and her professional achievements.
After over 45 years of practice, representing and counseling businesses ranging from entrepreneurial start-up companies to more established clients in the manufacturing, museum, service, tourism, and nonprofit sectors, Mark has pretty much retired and became Of Counsel to the firm in 2022. He has worked with and represented banks and venture capital providers and companies being financed. He assisted clients with their strategic planning, as well as change management and urgent problem-solving for organizations in crisis.
In counseling his clients, Mark seeks to gather and analyze all of the relevant information and develop a clear understanding of what the client wishes to accomplish. The client is presented with a series of options and the pros and cons of each - and a recommendation supported by rationale. Mark helps his clients select the option best for them and then implements it as efficiently and economically as possible. Often this will include negotiations with other parties, and these are done in the context of achieving the goal while preserving or improving the relationship if possible.
As Mark careens toward complete retirement, he is trying to limit his practice to:
Nonprofit law, including assistance in organization, strategic planning, financing, governance, mergers and acquisitions, and dissolution; and
Museum law, most notably the complex issues relating to deaccessioning and the use of proceeds, including representation of the Berkshire Museum in connection with its deaccessioning and sale in 2017-2018 and the Everson Museum in connection with its 2020 deaccessioning and sale of a Pollock to create a fund for the acquisition of works by under-represented artists and a fund to support direct care of the collection.
Mark divides his time between the firm, his work as co-founder and President of Second Street Second Chances, Inc., a start-up nonprofit to provide wraparound services from a central site to support the re-entry of formerly incarcerated individuals into their Berkshire County communities, travel, his efforts to lose his pandemic weight gain, and his dogs Lucy and Ziva. And his grandchildren, of course.
Community Activities
Over the course of his career, Mark has served on numerous nonprofit boards. In 1988, he co-founded Louison House, Inc. (formerly Family Life Support Center, Inc.), an innovative program to provide temporary shelter and services to homeless and at-risk individuals and families and served as its first President. He has served as a member and Chairman of the Mount Greylock Regional School Committee and as a member and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, Inc. He served as Moderator for the Town of Williamstown, Massachusetts, where he lives, from 2010 to 2013. He served on New England Museum Association's Board of Directors from 2011 to 2018 and as its Treasurer from 2015 to 2018.
He is a frequent presenter and panelist at national and regional museum conferences. In 2021, he helped organize the watershed symposium Deaccessioning After 2020, hosted by Syracuse University Graduate Program in Museum Studies and the College of Law.
Mark presently serves on the Board of Directors of Community Legal Aid, Inc., providing legal services to the low-income population in central and western Massachusetts, and President of the Board of Second Street Second Chances, Inc. He also serves as a volunteer Hearing Officer for the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers.
Mark's long history of community service earned him the Massachusetts Bar Association's Community Service Award in 1992.
A partner in the firm, Pam has been admitted to practice law in Massachusetts since 2005 and concentrates her practice in the areas of sophisticated trust and estate planning, estate administration, and residential real estate transactions. As part of her probate and estate planning practice, she provides advice and guidance on matters including the use of trusts for estate and gift taxes and advance long term care planning. Pam believes strongly in providing compassionate, thorough advice to clients coping with the long-term illness of a loved one, or loss of a family member. Pam also enjoys working with first-time home buyers and people looking to buy their dream home in the Berkshires.
Pamela served as Managing Editor of the Law Review at Western New England College School of Law and earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in World Politics from The Catholic University of America.
In 2013, 2014, and 2015, Pamela was named to Boston Magazine's "Massachusetts Super Lawyers Rising Stars" list, an honor limited to no more than 2.5% of the attorneys practicing in the state.
On December 17, 2020, our cherished partner and friend Virginia Stanton Smith succumbed to lung cancer, surrounded by her loving family. She was an extraordinary lawyer, not just for her expertise, but for her sincere concern and compassion for her clients. She was a philanthropist who dedicated her time and her resources to improving the conditions of the less fortunate among us.
We have decided to leave Ginger's professional bio as a bit of a memorial to her, but it is deficient in describing the quality of person she was and the depth of her contributions to her community. Her obituary is better and can be found here.
As we mourn her loss, we celebrate her life and commit ourselves to perpetuating her legacy - both professional and personal.
Virginia concentrates in the areas of estate planning, estate administration, and real estate. She represents clients in complex trust and tax planning as well as simple estate plans, retirement planning, charitable gift planning, Medicaid, and elder law. With more than 30 years of experience, Virginia represents individuals and couples in planning their estates, and families and institutions as personal representatives and trustees in administering estates. She willingly makes the occasional house call for clients with mobility issues.
Virginia's personal warmth is an asset in the estate administration area in particular. The weeks and months after the death of a loved one can be traumatic at many levels, and the job of the personal representative and trustee is often uncharted territory for our clients. With our wonderful staff and decades of experience, we do our best to ease the process and make it understandable.
Buyers and Sellers of residential properties, Bed and Breakfast establishments, and commercial buildings have likewise relied on Virginia's expertise in handling their purchases, sales, and leases in a timely and efficient manner.