St. Louis Magazine has named Polaris Estate Planning and Elder Law the Best Estate Planning Law Firm in its 2026 A-List Readers’ Choice Awards.
We want to be clear about where this came from, because it changes what it means. The A-List isn’t decided by a panel of judges or a committee of industry insiders. It’s decided by readers, St. Louisans who nominate a business, and then fill out a ballot and vote for them.
Which means this recognition came from our clients.
Why that distinction matters
Legal awards are not all the same, and consumers are right to be a little skeptical of them. Some are earned through peer review. Some are earned by paying a listing fee. A reader-voted award measures something different from either: whether people who worked with a firm would send someone else through the same door.
For most kinds of business, that’s a pleasant compliment. For estate planning and elder law, it’s a strange and meaningful recognition to receive because the experience clients are voting on is one almost nobody looks forward to.
The work our clients voted on
People come to us at specific moments. A new baby, and the sudden realization that nothing is in writing. A parent whose memory has started to slip. A terminal diagnosis. A second marriage with children on both sides. A small business with no plan for what happens if its owner doesn’t come back on Monday.
The work itself involves wills, revocable and irrevocable trusts, powers of attorney, healthcare directives, beneficiary designations, Medicaid planning, long-term care strategy, guardianship, and probate. Those are tools in an estate plan that works, not just sits on a shelf or in a drawer..
But that’s not what makes it hard. What makes it hard is the conversation underneath those tools: deciding which of your children should make a medical decision on your behalf, or how to make sure there is something left for your loved ones if you require long term care, or how to divide something unevenly without causing a rift that outlasts you. Many people schedule that appointment and then reschedule it. We’ve stopped being surprised by that. It’s a reasonable thing to flinch from.
So when a client goes through it and then takes the time to vote for the firm that walked them through it, we notice. That’s the part of this award that is most validating for us. Polaris Estate Planning and Elder Law was started to give families two things that rarely come together: a plan that holds up when it’s actually needed, and a firm who still knows their name years down the road.
Thank you
To every client who voted, and to everyone who has sent a friend, a neighbor, a parent, or a colleague our way: Thank You. We know that a referral in this line of work is not a casual thing. You’re vouching for how someone will be treated during a difficult season of their life.
Thank you as well to the financial advisors, accountants, and fellow attorneys across St. Louis and St Charles who noticed that a client’s life had outgrown their plan and said something about it. A great deal of the work we’re proudest of started with a colleague raising an uncomfortable subject when it would have been easier to let it pass.
And thank you to our team, who handle these conversations every day and treat every client with the individual attention and unique solutions they deserve.
Ready to secure your family’s future or have a question about getting started? Call Polaris Estate Planning and Elder Law today.
St. Charles Office: (636) 202-1364
St. Louis County: (314) 470-8317
No Family Left Unprepared
