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Ben Neiburger, JD, CPA: The Life and Times of the Adventuresome Attorney

By Bob Klanac

A story of education, travel, and the importance of spelling.

Finding what you’re good at can take years. So can finding what you love. For Chicago-based Elder Law attorney Ben Neiburger, his “aha moment” came 10 years ago.

Plugging away at different areas of law, he was making a living, but not in a particularly inspired way. But this changed when he found both his passion and interest intersecting with Elder Law. “I didn’t have to change for this practice,” he says. “It perfectly fits my personality.”

And what a personality.

Neiburger is a charmer, quick with a quip, and frank about his thoughts. He’s his own man, but it was a journey to figure that out for himself.

Ben’s Journey to Elder Law

Ben graduated from college and then passed the CPA exam, but decided that, as he puts it, “CPAs are boring.” So he did what many young people tend to do; he headed off to law school where he chaired “The Bar Review” (reviewing bars, of course) and took business classes.

Although it might have seemed a scattershot plan to an outsider, Neiburger actually did have some method to his educational madness. He wanted to “have all the tools in my toolbox to run a big multinational corporation,” he laughs.

Neiburger emerged from law school casting about for a job when one of his professors suggested that he look into the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) and the legal area of employee benefits. “I said, ‘wow, I can’t even spell that,’” Ben chuckles. “But this professor insisted I put it on my résumé because not a lot of people were practicing that.”

Four hundred résumés later, Neiburger got two responses and a job drafting retirement plans with a pension administrator.

Around that time, Neiburger started doing public speaking and education on employee benefits to attorneys and accountants, at which he soon realized he was good and that he actually enjoyed doing. “Based on the public speaking, I became a leader in the employee benefit community,” he explains. He became a senior associate for Baker & McKenzie, LLP, working on what he calls “super, super complex stuff” administrating stock options for foreign employees of U.S.-owned multinationals. “We had to find impossible answers to impossible questions under very tight deadlines,” he said.

Neiburger says he knew it was time to move on while creating a summary of all the checks an executive was going to be receiving as the result of a company takeover. “After seeing that many dollars paid out for an executive’s severance, I didn’t have the warm and fuzzies about doing this type of work anymore,” he deadpans.

Time for a Change

While Neiburger knew it was time for change, he didn’t know which direction to take. He only knew the ones that he was going to avoid. “I decided I wasn’t going to go to a large law firm and I wasn’t going to go into government,” he says sardonically, “because they don’t seem to like characters like me.” So he turned to private practice, teaming up with a friend doing real estate, bankruptcies, and such, but once again, Neiburger decided he wasn’t getting the “warm and fuzzies” from that kind of work.

One day, while sitting at his desk, inspiration struck by way of a fax. “I got an advertisement from somebody selling ‘Elder Law Marketing Systems,’” he explains. “So I said, ‘Hey, I can spell that!’”

Having expertise in the complex world of ERISA law, Neiburger decided that Elder Law would be well within his skill set and, “Once I started serving clients, I fell in love with the practice,” he said quietly. “I’ve been doing Elder Law ever since.”

Why Elder Law?

Press Neiburger as to why he’s so passionate about Elder Law and his normally fast pace of conversation slows down a beat. It’s not deliberate; it’s instinctive. He’s talking about something he believes in and that he’s good at. “This practice is how I am,” he says matter-of-factly. “Having empathy, being able to see what the crux of the client’s problem is, possessing the courage to tell clients exactly what’s going to happen and which bush the Boogie Man is going to be hiding behind, and assuring them that it’s all going to be okay.”

There are myriad issues involved in Elder Law, from wills to assets to nursing home care, that seem straightforward on the surface but are fraught with the fragility of family dynamics and emotions. “This area of law is so personal, so traumatic,” he goes on, “and you’re there at a time in people’s lives when they really need someone to hold their hand when it gets bad.”

Neiburger explains that his straightforward approach and personality is the key to why he gets so many referrals and has built his business from a telephone listing and a laptop to a staff of eight and $1 million in annual revenue.

“Clients come in and I sometimes have to say, ‘Look, this is going to suck. There is no answer I’m going to give you that you’re going to like and you’re going to have to pay me a lot of money to hear it,’” he says flatly. “I’m not going to pull any punches and I’m going to tell them what they need to know to make decisions. And clients appreciate that,” says Neiburger.

Neiburger shakes his head as he tells of some attorneys who try and push clients into services that seem like the right thing to do on the surface, but in reality don’t fit every situation. “I had one client who qualified for VA benefits, but the process was so convoluted and would have eaten up much of his money,” he explains. “I told him it wasn’t worth it for what it would cost him and for what he would get in return.”

“I look at the most practical thing to do for my clients,” he shrugs. “Sometimes that client doesn’t convert, but you can bet they tell people about it.”

His compassionate demeanor and wry humor are key to his success, but Neiburger also gives full credit to the vodka, tequila, and chocolate he stocks in his consult rooms. “I’ve also got the box of tissues right next to the chocolate,” he says, “and then we get at it.”

Outside the Office

Neiburger’s passion for work that inspires him also extends to his decidedly unique out-of-office adventures. Last summer he was scuba diving off of Lancaster Sound on the north end of Baffin Island in the Arctic Circle and roomed with a National Geographic underwater photographer who pressed Neiburger into service for shoots on and under small icebergs (also known as “bergie bits”). Neiburger has done dives in cages where his companions were great white sharks, which he describes as “very fun.” “I’ve done over 100 dives all over the world, in Central America, New Zealand, Egypt,” he explains, as though trying to remember a grocery list.

He goes on to detail other “wackadoodle adventures,” including mountain climbing, in-line skate marathons, rock climbing, and crewing on yacht races before pausing to add, “They sound good to me, but they don’t sound good to anyone else.”

He’s recently taken up tap dancing, another pursuit that he enjoys, although in his estimation, “I really suck, but I don’t care,” and a beach volleyball tournament near Lake Michigan with all 20-somethings. “I discovered that I shouldn’t play beach volleyball with 20-somethings.”

That last comment is an underlying recurring theme to Neiburger’s adventures. It’s not about being good at them; it’s about experiencing them, about expanding his horizons, about nurturing a curiosity of the world.

As he reels off the particulars of these off-beat adventures, it’s almost hard to believe that Neiburger is married with two children, who he plans to indoctrinate to adventure travel when they’re old enough to appreciate it. Alas, his wife, Barbara Dolan, doesn’t share his sense of adventure. Upon learning that Ben was planning an Arctic trip, she said, “Honey, any ice in my vacation better be in a cocktail.”

“She goes to yoga retreats,” he says. “I tell her there’s no better way to ruin a yoga retreat than by inviting me.”

Neiburger may enjoy his adventures, but that’s partly because he’s at a prime point of his career where he has time to indulge them. Much of that is due to the reputation he’s developed over the past 11 years. With a robust web presence and strong marketing, he rarely goes looking for clients. They come looking for him and he has the luxury of saying no to those whose cases may not be a good fit.

He explains that many of his clients hear about him from friends, check out his website and then pick up the phone. “It has to be a first-hand personal referral for most of our clients,” he explains. “They call and say, ‘I talked to three or four people and they all gave me your name.’”

“It happens a lot.”

Ben Neiburger knows he could make a lot more money. Indeed he has made a lot more money at various points in his career, but, “Every day I go home knowing that I’ve done my best to honor my moral compass. The beauty of having a small practice is that you can do what you think is right, so you can live with that,” he explains. “There are a lot of attorneys who don’t or can’t.”

But how about that dream of his youth, the one about running a corporation? At this, Neiburger laughs loudly and deeply. “I would probably be fired for insubordination by any corporation that would hire me,” he chuckles.

Not that he would have it any other way.

Bob Klanac has profiled hundreds of musicians, and the occasional attorney, over his long career as a writer. Find out more about Bob at http://bit.ly/bobklanac.