Howard Helsinger

Howard M. Helsinger, who is Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law school, is a partner in the Chicago law firm of Sugar & Felsenthal, and was previously a partner with the recently deceased firm of Altheimer & Gray. He concentrates his practice in estate planning, estate administration, probate, charitable planning, and trust and estate related litigation. He is a former Chair of the Chicago Bar Association Probate Practice Executive Committee; a member of the CBA Probate Rules and Forms Committee; and was a member of the committee that drafted the Illinois Uniform Transfers to Minors Act. He is a Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, and a member of the Chicago Estate Planning Council. He serves as a planned giving advisor for the National Humanities Center, and the Newberry Library. He has also taught at the Northwestern University School of Law, and in the graduate tax program at IIT-Chicago Kent College of Law.

He has a B.A. in English from Haverford College, a Ph.D. in English Literature from Princeton University, and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School (1978). Before law school he taught English Literature at Boston University, and after law school he clerked for two years in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.