Our Team

Wayne M. Zell, Esq. Is the President and founding shareholder of Zell Law. He has spent his legal, public accounting and business advisory career counseling clients in a broad range of industries, including technology companies of all types and investor groups. His clients also include for-profit and non-profit executives, service providers and high-net worth individuals.

Wayne has extensive experience in representing clients in complex estate planning and business planning matters. On estate planning matters, Wayne routinely advises clients in structuring and preparing intricate revocable and irrevocable trusts, family limited partnerships and limited liability companies, life insurance vehicles, charitable giving arrangements (including charitable lead and remainder trusts), private and public foundations and grantmaking programs, asset protection planning, joint ventures with tax-exempt organizations, and compensation and equity incentive plans for executives.

On business planning matters, Wayne represents the owners of closely-held businesses on general business, tax and succession planning, mergers and acquisitions, private equity fund formation and operation, equity and debt investments and executive compensation matters. He also represents key employees of publicly traded and privately held entitites in planning for the receipt and disposition of stock options and restricted stock.

Prior to forming Zell Law, Wayne practiced as an attorney and as a CPA with a variety of law firms and public accounting firms. He also served as General Counsel and CFO of YellowBrix, Inc., an internet content provider and enterprise software developer. Previously, he was a partner with Mintz Levin; Powell Goldstein; Freedman, Levy, Kroll & Simonds; and O'Connor & Hannan. He also was a Senior Manager in the Washington National Tax Service Office of Price Waterhouse, specializing in tax-exempt organizations and flow-through entities, including partnerships, limited liability companies and trusts, and has practiced as a CPA since 1980.

Wayne is admitted to practice as an attorney in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. In 2006, Wayne was named one of the Washington, DC area's "Legal Elite" by SmartCEO Magazine.  He is a frequent lecturer on estate and business planning topics and host a popular educational radio talk show - Blueprint for Wealth on AM 570, WTNT, every Sunday at 10:00AM.  From 1991 to 2005, he served as an Officer and a Member of the Board of Directors of the Children's Charities Foundation, Inc. in Washington D.C., which hosts the annual BB&T Classic Basketball Tournament. He is a member of the Exempt Organizations Committee of the Tax Section of the American Bar Association, as well as the ABA's Real Property and Probate and Business Law Sections.