H.Amos Goodall, Esq., CELA, Fellow, one of the stalwarts of the elder law bar in Pennsylvania, has practiced law in the State College area since 1976. He is certified as an elder law attorney (CELA) by the National Elder Law Foundation (NELF), a Fellow of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys (NAELA), a Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, and President-Elect of the Board of the National Elder Law Foundation. He is also a contributing author to the LexisNexis Tax, Estate & Financial Planning for the Elderly treatise and forms set. Goodall has continually received an A-V rating from Martindale-Hubbel since the early 1990s. Additionally, Goodall is a member of the Special Needs Alliance, a national invitation-only practice group of leading elder law and disability law attorneys who concentrate on disability and public benefits law.

Goodall is a graduate of Franklin Marshall College (BA), Fordham University School of Law (JD), and Stetson University School of Law (LLM with distinction). Before coming to Centre County, Pennsylvania, he was a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Frederic S. Berman, Justice of the Supreme Court of New York; to the Honorable Gerard L. Goettel, Magistrate Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York; and to Michael H. Sheridan, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.

He is married to the former Cazella (Casey) Hinojosa. Casey and he had two children, Christian and Hawley. Hawley and her husband, Jeff, have three children, Fischer, Christian, and Maisie.

Legal Career Started in Litigation
Like many fellow NAELA members, Goodall has not spent the entirety of his long career practicing elder law. Starting out as a litigator, he found that type of practice fundamentally unfulfilling. Criminal defense work in particular did not align with Goodall’s personal and professional goals. As he puts it, “because at that time a majority of the criminal docket in Centre County involved driving under the influence,” his litigation seemed to focus on making the world safe for drunk drivers. His other cases, including murder defense litigation, were equally unfulfilling.

Goodall wanted to do more with his education and experience. He gradually left the litigation practice and migrated to trusts and estate law, including estate planning for elderly and special needs clients. In his view, traditional estate planning involved providing for what happened after a client’s death. In elder law, attorneys helped plan for the client’s future life as well as death. These practice areas satisfied Goodall’s two major career requirements: to be in a position in which his personal values came together with the clients’ goals, and to have the opportunity to benefit the greater good of his community.

Volunteering Is A Way of Life
In addition, Goodall has worked hard in his charitable and pro bono endeavors. Goodall is past president of the Centre County Bar Association, a founding director of Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers of Pennsylvania, past chair of the Pennsylvania Bar Association Lawyers Assistance Committee, a past member of the Judicial Inquiry and Review Board, a past senior hearing committee member of the Pennsylvania Attorney Disciplinary Board, past president of the Centre County Community Foundation, past chair of the Centre County Youth Service Bureau, and past board clerk of the Foxdale Village Retirement Community.

Awards and Recognition
Recently, Goodall received the Theresa Award, which recognizes the outstanding efforts of an individual in advocating for those with special needs, presented by the Theresa Alessandra Russo Foundation. In 2015, he was the recipient of NAELA’s Powley Elder Law Award, which recognizes the member who has demonstrated a commitment to promote a greater understanding among the general public of the rights and needs of the elderly and people with special needs, and how elder law attorneys advocate for their rights. In 2017, the Pennsylvania Association of Elder Law Attorneys named Goodall as the Chapter Member of the Year. As legal advisor to various conservation groups, Goodall has been involved with agricultural easements for roughly 10 percent of the farmland in Centre County and development easements for a similar quantity of significant undeveloped property.

Rules to Live By
Despite his success, Goodall is a humble person. For example, he acknowledges the struggles that have confronted him over the years, including losing his son seven years ago, and maintaining his own recovery from alcohol dependence for more than 30 years to date. He is adamant that one must consciously determine to keep working on one’s personal challenges day by day. Along the way, he has developed a certain ethos by which he conducts his legal practice.

Goodall describes this ethos as his rules to live by. He follows four major rules.

• Rule 1: Seek to understand the reasons for doing something, rather than simply understanding how to do it. In this regard, Goodall observes that he has a need to fully grasp the “whys” of the work in addition to the “hows.”

• Rule 2: Recognize the complete uniqueness of each and every client. Cookie-cutter solutions are almost never the answer.

• Rule 3: Be an excellent listener. Goodall firmly believes that one learns much more by listening than by speaking.

• Rule 4: One should not take oneself too seriously.

Goodall has distilled these rules after more than 40 years in the trenches. All of them combine to inform his overall practice style, which he characterizes as holistic planning. Holistic legal practice takes into account the specific details of each individual’s situation, the client’s goals, and then applying legal skills for the most effective problem-solving.

Currently, Goodall continues to practice elder and estate law, and is actively involved in charitable and pro bono work concerning the elderly and all those with special needs. In addition to his busy professional calendar, he and his wife enjoy spending time with their daughter and her family at the New Jersey shore, and are working on a travel “bucket list.” Their next major trip, in February 2018, will take them to Australia and New Zealand.