Joel Smith

Joel was born and raised in Los Angeles California. Yep, he’s a transplant. After graduating with honors from the California State University – Los Angeles, he came up here for law school in 2012. By the end of his first semester Joel knew two things: 1) this was where he belonged – he was going to make the Pacific Northwest his home; and 2) he would dedicate his life to preventing the tragedies he’d witnessed within his own family.

You see, Joel had witnessed the complete disintegration of his family after the death of his grandmother due to the bickering and infighting between those she left behind. Just a few years later, he watched helplessly as his mother mourned the death of his brother, enduring a long and tedious probate process while struggling with the courts, state agencies, and creditors.

In law school, Joel apprenticed with a local estate planner. It didn’t take long for him to realize that both of these tragedies were completely preventable. In both cases, there had been documents – grandma had a will and his brother had appointed his mother power of attorney. In neither case, however, was the voice of the deceased a part of those documents. Joel had found his purpose: to ensure that the client’s voice lives on through a carefully considered and thoughtfully designed estate plan.

Joel graduated from the University of Oregon School of Law in 2015 with certificates in estate planning and tax law, committed to changing that dynamic for his clients. He is a member of the Oregon State Bar Association, the Lane County Bar Association, and WealthCounsel – a national organization dedicated to providing advanced estate planning techniques. His firm, Cascadia Estate Planning, provides personalized estate planning as well as assistance with estate administration and probate cases.