An advisor to entrepreneurs, family and other closely held businesses, and their families, Gail Bley counsels her clients on tax and financial issues related to acquisitions, investments, mergers, strategic alliances and joint ventures. Her forte is problem solving: recommending and structuring solutions for complex transactions to accomplish client specific goals, including minimizing or deferring taxation.

Gail has extensive experience in representing real estate and investment partnerships, limited liability companies and other entities from their inception through the sale, exchange or other disposition of their holdings, focusing not only on minimizing or deferring the tax liabilities, but also on those intangible issues affecting business owners and their family dynamics.

In addition to business-related transactions, Gail works closely with families on a myriad of multi-generation matters related to wealth transfer and succession planning. The structures and solutions she recommends are designed to ensure continuity and unity within a family’s personal and business activities. Gail has more than 30 years of experience handling the full range of tax, wealth transfer and succession planning matters, including charitable trusts, private foundations, life insurance planning and generation-skipping and other multi-generational wealth transfer techniques.

Upon graduation from law school, Gail was a law clerk to the Hon. Prentice H. Marshall of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

She has been named an Illinois Leading Lawyer in the areas of Closely & Privately Held Business, Business Tax Law and Individual Tax law by the Leading Lawyers Network. She also has been recognized by Crain's Chicago Business as a “Notable Women in Law” for 2020. 

Gail is a former member of the firm’s Management Committee and is also a Certified Financial Planner®.