Today we’d like to introduce you to Dallin Groneman.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I practice estate planning exclusively, meaning I do not take any other types of cases. I grew up in Layton, Utah, and graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Weber State University before attending Creighton University School of Law in Omaha, Nebraska, where I earned a degree of Juris Doctor. While in law school, I truthfully had my heart set on becoming a criminal prosecutor, which is an attorney who represents a city or county in criminal cases (think Jack McCoy in Law and Order). I was fortunate in law school to have clerked for a judge in Colorado Springs, Colorado, for a summer, and then clerk for the Douglas County Attorney’s Office in Omaha during my last year. Being from Utah and upon graduating from law school in 2017, I moved back to my hometown to take the Utah Bar Exam, where I have stayed with my family since.
I ultimately worked as a prosecuting attorney for both the Salt Lake City Prosecutor’s Office and the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office for several years. During my tenure as a prosecutor, I happened to fall into estate planning almost accidentally. I had some experience with estate planning while I worked for a family law firm for a short time right out of law school and enjoyed it, along with estate planning courses I took while in law school. But what really got me to focus on estate planning was my own family. A family member passed away without an estate plan in 2020 and I ended up helping probate the family member’s estate. With that experience, word got out of my probate experience and pretty soon people asked me to help with their estate plans. Over the next few years, I continued helping create estate plans for friends and family, learning more and more as I went of the nuances, complexities, and different types of estate plans that exist.
During this time, I also became a member and later the team lead of the White Collar Crime Unit at the District Attorney’s Office. This unit focused on financial crimes that often revolved around elderly people being taken advantage of, whether by their own family, scam artists, co-workers, friends, or even complete strangers. These financial crimes, called in the Utah Code “Financial Exploitation of a Vulnerable Adult”, brought with them related cases of elder abuse. Ultimately, I was assigned as the sole attorney in the office who screened these financial exploitation and elder abuse cases. To screen a case means review evidence, work with detectives and law enforcement, representatives from Adult Protective Services, and so forth, to determine whether we could file a case, guide agencies on what evidence we may need and how to obtain it, and working with victims to know how to best seek justice for them. Through this position on the White Collar Team, I became keenly aware of the dangers that elder adults face when it comes to their estate, and how easy a person can take advantage if the elder adult does not have an estate plan.
In 2024, my estate planning work grew quickly, ultimately leading me to leave the District Attorney’s Office and open my own office. Although I did not originally plan to practice estate planning when I went to law school and later as a new attorney, in retrospect I always had an affinity for it. In law school, we were required to take an estate planning course. I absolutely loved that course and found estate planning fascinating. It was also one of my highest grades. Through my experience prosecuting financial and elder abuse crimes, I learned how to create estate plans that focused not only on distributing assets after a person passes on, but also how to protect themselves and their assets in life.
I am also very much an extrovert and love talking to people. I enjoy meeting with clients and discussing what matters most to them, getting to know them, learning about their most cherished wishes and deeper concerns for their family, and helping them have peace of mind, knowing their legacy will be protected and carried on. I love helping people with their own plans and take pleasure in knowing they can rest easy.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I think it’s fair to say that no attorney has had a smooth road, whether they own their own firm or are working for an office. From law school to our first jobs to continuing on, we often must deal with what could be a client’s most difficult challenge in life and find ways to help them through it. For me, along of the typical attorney struggles, the most difficult part is running my own office. I am learning how to run a business, manage finances, and rely more on myself than a paycheck, none of which was something that was taught in law school. I want to focus on my clients’ needs but also have to ensure my business is operating as it should, know how to market (which I’m always learning more and more), all while still focusing on the practice of law. I enjoy these challenges and so far have learned quite a bit from them, and don’t regret it at all.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
At the moment, I am a solo practitioner, meaning I work alone. That said, I am blessed to have other estate planning attorneys who I can rely on if there is an issue I haven’t faced, and also help other attorneys who reach out to me for help as well.
I focus solely on estate planning. This sole focus allows me to really dive into the complexities of estate planning to know exactly what my clients need and how to best help them create a plan that addresses those needs. Estate planning is a broad term that simply covers any tool you personally need to ensure your well-being and assets are protected. This can include anything from a trust (whether revocable or irrevocable), a last will and testament, power of attorney, medical directives, to business structuring and planning strategies for those who own their own business or an interest in a business.
I believe my experience prosecuting financial exploitation and elder abuse cases gave me a unique perspective that most estate planning attorneys don’t often have. Not only do I know the laws relating to estate planning and how to craft a plan that suits my client’s needs, I also can anticipate red flags that may exist in their family dynamics, business structures, friend groups, and so on. I then can create some safety nets when necessary. I also have extensive trial experience, both jury trials and bench trials, that gives me a helpful perspective of how juries and judges may respond if something were taken to court. That experience also strengthened my ability to anticipate several different scenarios in estate plans and address each on in turn.
What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
Perhaps the most important lesson I have learned so far while running my own firm is how to best listen to my clients’ needs and help them with their plan. Rather than create a simple run-of-the-mill estate plan, I enjoy talking with my clients, learning not just about their assets but their goals and concerns, then taking what I learn about my clients and crafting something truly crafted to address their specific circumstances and needs.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.gronemanlaw.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gronemanlaw
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gronemanlawfirm/
