Donovan Legal PLLC is a boutique tax practice focused on real estate. The firm advises real estate developers, investors, funds, operating businesses, and the high-net-worth families behind them on the federal, state, and international tax issues that drive the economics of their structures — and represents those same clients when those structures, returns, or positions come under examination. The firm is based in Delray Beach, Florida, and serves clients nationwide.

WHO THE FIRM SERVES

The firm’s clients fall into a few overlapping groups:

• Real estate developers, investors, and operators — from individual investors holding a few rental properties to sponsors of multifamily acquisitions, opportunity zone investments, and private equity real estate funds.
• High-net-worth individuals and families — particularly those with multi-state operations, real estate holdings, or cross-border activity. The firm has a particular concentration of clients establishing Florida residency from the Northeast.
• Closely-held operating businesses — including hospitality, construction, contracting, and professional service businesses with ongoing tax planning, compliance, and controversy needs.
• Foreign individuals, families, corporations, and funds — investing in U.S. real estate or U.S. business interests, with associated FIRPTA, treaty, and structuring needs.
• U.S. clients with foreign holdings — requiring international tax planning, anti-deferral regime analysis, and international information return compliance.
• Other counsel — family law, M&A, commercial litigation, and estate planning attorneys engaging the firm as tax co-counsel or forensic tax consultant on their matters.

HOW THE FIRM WORKS

Donovan Legal PLLC is structured as a focused boutique. Mr. Donovan reads the underlying documents, performs the analysis, signs the opinions, returns, and pleadings, and remains available to defend the work product if a position is later examined. Clients work directly with the lawyer responsible for their matter, not through a chain of associates and intermediaries.

The firm’s combination of tax planning, tax compliance, and tax controversy under one practitioner is the firm’s defining structural feature. A tax position designed in planning has to be reflected on the return; a position reflected on the return is what gets examined if challenged. Most clients run these three functions through three different advisors — with handoffs that introduce gaps in the record. Where it serves the engagement, the firm coordinates planning, return work, and examination defense within a single practice.

PRACTICE PERIMETER

The firm focuses on what it does well and works with the client’s other professional advisors for matters outside its scope. The firm does not provide:

• Estate planning, gift tax planning, or the design of estate-planning vehicles such as dynasty trusts, GRATs, or IDGTs. The firm refers this work to dedicated estate planning counsel and coordinates on the tax and real estate aspects of estates and trusts those advisors design.
• M&A counsel for closely-held business sales and acquisitions. The firm advises on tax aspects of transactions handled by other counsel.
• Bankruptcy or distressed-debt restructuring as a primary practice line.
• Opportunity zone fund formation or REIT formation. The firm advises sponsors and investors on the tax aspects of these structures formed by other counsel with dedicated funds practices.

The firm is comfortable working as one of several professional advisors on any given matter. CPAs, family-office advisors, wealth managers, and other counsel often retain a long-term role with the client; the firm’s role is generally scoped to the tax, real estate, or controversy work the client needs and does not seek to displace those existing relationships.

THE FIRM’S DIFFERENTIATORS

• Lawyer and CPA. Mr. Donovan is admitted to practice law in Florida and Massachusetts and is a Certified Public Accountant in Massachusetts. The combination is uncommon and is what enables planning, compliance, and controversy to be handled by the same practitioner.
• Big Four origin. Mr. Donovan’s tax practice originated at PwC, advising Wall Street venture capital firms and real estate investment funds on structured transactions, sponsor and limited-partner planning, and fund-level entity selection, including tax due diligence on three real estate investment trust initial public offerings.
• Operator’s perspective. Mr. Donovan has personally developed luxury townhouses in Boston and single-family homes on Martha’s Vineyard, holds a professional certificate in construction management, and is a licensed Massachusetts real estate broker. Cost segregation, building component classification, and operational economics get a different read from a practitioner who has actually built and operated real estate.
• Dual-state, dual-citizen, dual-language reach. Florida and Massachusetts bar admissions, dual U.S. and Irish citizenship, and a working knowledge of Spanish align with the firm’s nationwide tax practice and its concentration in Northeast-to-Florida residency planning, EU inbound investment, and Latin American and Caribbean cross-border work.
• Direct accountability. Mr. Donovan handles the substantive work himself rather than delegating to associates. Clients work with the lawyer who will defend the position if examined.

LOCATION

Donovan Legal PLLC is based in Delray Beach, Florida. The firm’s tax practice serves clients nationwide; its real estate practice covers Florida and, for federal tax matters and matters where Mr. Donovan is admitted, additional jurisdictions. Mr. Donovan is admitted to practice in Florida, Massachusetts, the United States Supreme Court, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.