Brian E. Onorato
Brian E. Onorato is a Shareholder and his practice areas include estate planning and administration, business matters and federal and state taxation. Brian became a lawyer to help people out and he loves his practice since it fundamentally involves helping clients with basic and sophisticated estate planning, business issues, (including business continuity plans, transactions and business entity design and implementation) and taxation issues and planning. Brian appreciates KLO’s small firm dynamics and client service philosophy. Both aspects allow him to employ a sense of humor and to spend the necessary time with clients that is required to provide legal counsel in simple understandable English as he and his clients collaboratively work through the complex legal and personal issues presented by each situation. Brian believes that a client’s trust is earned and not given and citing code sections or using impressive sounding legalese is simply not conversational language that helps a one to one client dialog.
Born and raised in the city of San Francisco, in 1980 Brian moved to Seattle to pursue his legal career. He is a graduate of San Francisco State University (B.S. in Political Science cum laude), and University of Puget Sound School of Law (J.D., magna cum laude) (now Seattle University School of Law). After receiving his Juris Doctorate degree in 1983, Brian served as the law clerk for the Honorable Robert F. Brachtenbach of the Washington State Supreme Court and thereafter joined the Seattle tax department of the public accounting firm of Deloitte and Touche. In his tenure at Deloitte and Touche, along with developing a deeper understanding of business accounting, he was promoted to tax manager, responsible for client matters involving all areas of federal and state taxation (income, corporate, partnership, gift and estate, charitable, compensation/retirement, and excise tax matters). In 1991 joined a Seattle law firm to continue his practice as an attorney in the tax, estate planning and business areas and moved to Denver thereafter. He joined the firm in August of 1995 and was invited to become a Shareholder in 1997. Brian is licensed in both Colorado and Washington and is a member of the Denver and Colorado Bar Associations and the Washington Bar Association. Brian’s spare time is spent playing golf and softball, supporting his children’s sports and other interests, and enjoying all of what Colorado has to offer. For those who wonder, yes he misses the water and San Francisco and Seattle are great cities but Denver is the best and is his home!