New Trusts and Estates Chair Angelo Grasso Wants To Help Attorneys Get to Know Each Other
3.13.2025
Angelo Grasso, the new chair of the New York State Bar Association’s Trusts and Estates Section, is ready to help attorneys connect with their fellow legal professionals and advance the field of law.
Grasso is a partner at Greenfield Stein and Senior in New York City. His practice focuses on trusts, estates, fiduciary litigation, guardianship work, and wills. He regularly makes appearances in the Surrogate’s courts.
“It’s a lot of work with people and families, which I quite like,” he said. “I like working with people, finding their problems and trying to help them solve them in a productive manner.”
He joined Greenfield Stein and Senior in 2008 and became a partner in 2016. One of his former colleagues, Gary Freidman – himself a past chair of the Trusts and Estates Section – encouraged him to get involved in the New York State Bar Association.
“I like to say, ‘the more you give, the more you get,’” said Grasso. “You put in the time, you put in the work on projects. You meet fascinating people all over the state. [I have] friends now from Albany and Buffalo. I’ve learned a ton. I’ve gotten the chance to work on some really fascinating things. And one of the joys of being the chair this year is that I get to work with a lot of people who are really devoted to the field and the profession and are really interested in educating others and making it better.”
One of Grasso’s goals for the coming year is to help attorneys with the emerging field of electronic wills and other changes in technology. Wills have been traditionally executed in person and with a physical piece of paper, but during the pandemic, some wills were allowed to be signed electronically and executed over video calls.
“It did not lead to a preponderance of fraudulently executed wills,” said Grasso. “And there has been legislation that’s been dancing around the country towards having wills executed electronically… This is happening in a few states.”
Grasso added that the Trusts and Estates Section is working to pass legislation to permanently allow electronic wills in New York State. “One of the benefits that people see is that it opens up access to doing wills to a population that, generally speaking, doesn’t execute a will,” he said. “A large percentage of Americans and New Yorkers don’t have a will.”
Grasso also wants to engage the next generation of lawyers. At the Trusts and Estates Law Section’s Spring meeting in Charleston, he plans to dedicate part of the first day’s cocktail party to newly admitted attorneys as well as the Surrogates and section officers, so they can all get to know each other.
“We’re over 4,000 attorneys, and that could be overwhelming when you think of it,” Grasso said. “But when you get the chance to meet other attorneys in a more intimate setting, when you get a chance to actually talk one-on-one to the judges at these conferences and realize that the judges are humans… it could be revelatory in a way.”
