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Higier Allen & Lautin: The Dallas Estate Planning Attorney Practice Inside a Business Law Firm

Higier Allen & Lautin is a Dallas estate planning attorney practice housed inside a full-service business law firm — led on the estate side by a board-certified specialist who has practiced continuously since 1977 and pairs estate planning with hands-on healthcare business transaction work.

Higier Allen & Lautin — Dallas Estate Planning Attorney At a Glance

Sources: higierallen.com (firm website), Martindale-Hubbell, State Bar of Texas attorney directory (via Justia). Compiled August 2026.

Origin: A Nearly 50-Year Practice Spanning Two Specialties

Ronald A. Foxman has practiced law continuously since receiving his license in 1977 — a tenure approaching five decades. He earned his B.B.A. with distinction from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and his J.D. from SMU’s Dedman School of Law, and is board certified in Estate Planning and Probate Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, a credential independently confirmed against the State Bar of Texas’s own attorney directory.

What distinguishes Foxman’s practice from a purely transactional estate planning attorney is a genuine second specialty: he is, in his own words, “actively involved in business transactions regarding the creation, purchase, and sale of health care and other business entities.” His speaking record bears this out — CLE presentations to groups ranging from the Dallas County Dermatology Society and pediatric and dermatology residents at UT Southwestern Medical School on the business side of starting a private medical practice, alongside more conventional estate planning presentations to corporate audiences like J.P. Morgan, IBM, and Texas Instruments on legal issues facing older relatives.

Where the Firm Concentrates

Higier Allen & Lautin is a medium-sized, full-service business law firm — its practice spans banking and credit transactions, bankruptcy, business litigation, corporate and business transactions, employment, franchising, landlord-tenant, mergers and acquisitions, and real estate, alongside estate planning and probate. Within that broader firm, the estate planning and probate group — anchored by Foxman — handles the standard planning document set (wills, codicils, trusts, durable and medical powers of attorney, medical directives) plus pre- and post-marital agreements and family partnerships and other entities created for asset management and wealth planning, along with probate and end-of-life implementation. Readers comparing options can see how this profile fits alongside other Estate Planning & Probate attorneys covered on Awesome Attorneys.

Notable Work

As a transactional estate planning practice, this group does not generate reportable verdicts. The clearest evidence of Foxman’s standing is the sustained, multi-decade speaking record described above, spanning both his estate planning specialty and his healthcare business transaction niche — a breadth of invited CLE and corporate presentation work that spans from 1994 through at least 2008 in the public record, suggesting a genuinely long-running practice rather than a recent pivot.

Client Voice

Higier Allen & Lautin, as a business-transaction-focused firm, does not maintain a prominent public consumer-review page specific to its estate planning group comparable to some retail-facing estate planning solos profiled in this category. Awesome Attorneys found no substantial public review record specific to Foxman’s estate planning practice to draw from for this profile and is noting that gap directly.

Beyond the Courtroom

Foxman’s community and professional engagement runs primarily through his speaking and teaching work rather than documented board seats: guest lecturing on capital-raising in SMU’s Cox School of Business Entrepreneurial Law MBA course (2005, 2006), and repeated presentations to medical residents entering private practice at UT Southwestern. That pattern — teaching both his own specialty and an adjacent business niche to non-lawyer professional audiences — reflects a practice built on cross-disciplinary relationships with physicians and business clients specifically.

Recognition

The strongest credential is Foxman’s TBLS board certification in Estate Planning and Probate Law, independently confirmed against the State Bar of Texas’s own directory — tested and peer-evaluated. The firm’s AV Preeminent rating from Martindale-Hubbell (2026) is also peer-reviewed, reflecting the firm’s overall reputation rather than the estate planning group specifically. Ten firm attorneys’ Super Lawyers or Rising Stars selections are peer-nomination-based. By contrast, general legal directory listings (U.S. News, Justia) are useful for visibility but not equivalent in rigor to the board certification itself.

Texas Legal Backdrop

Readers considering Texas estate planning or probate should understand a few structural rules, presented as general information and not legal advice. Texas generally requires a will to be admitted to probate within four years of the testator’s death, with limited exceptions (Tex. Estates Code § 256.003). Texas allows independent administration — a streamlined probate process with minimal court supervision — when the will authorizes it or all heirs agree (Tex. Estates Code § 401.003). Powers of attorney are governed by the statutory durable power of attorney framework (Tex. Estates Code ch. 751–752), and medical powers of attorney and directives are governed by a related but distinct set of healthcare decision-making statutes (Tex. Health & Safety Code ch. 166) — relevant to Foxman’s specific practice mix of estate planning and healthcare business law. Marital property agreements in Texas are governed by the Texas Family Code’s separate marital property provisions (Tex. Fam. Code ch. 4), and family partnerships used for asset management and wealth planning are structured under the Texas Business Organizations Code, with tax treatment governed separately at the federal level.

Awesome Attorneys Assessment

Higier Allen & Lautin’s differentiator, on the estate planning side, is Foxman’s unusually specific dual specialty: board-certified estate planning paired with genuine, sustained healthcare business transaction experience. For a physician or healthcare business owner who needs both a personal estate plan and guidance on the business side of practice ownership, purchase, or sale, having one attorney who speaks both languages is a real efficiency. The firm’s broader business-law bench also means clients facing estate matters that intersect with corporate, real estate, or bankruptcy issues have in-house colleagues to draw on.

The honest trade-off is that this is fundamentally a business law firm with an estate planning group, not an estate-planning-exclusive boutique — prospective clients whose needs are purely personal estate planning, without a business or healthcare dimension, may find a dedicated estate planning specialist a more natural fit. The absence of a public consumer review record for the estate planning practice specifically also means prospective individual clients have less independent signal on day-to-day client experience than they would with a retail-facing solo practice; clients should ask directly for references.

Methodology & Sourcing

This profile was researched and written independently by Awesome Attorneys’ editorial team in August 2026. Primary sources: the firm’s own published website (higierallen.com), including Ronald Foxman’s individual attorney biography, and the State Bar of Texas’s public attorney directory (via Justia), which independently confirmed Foxman’s bar card number, licensure history, and TBLS certification. Secondary sources: Martindale-Hubbell and Super Lawyers. The firm did not commission, pay for, or pre-approve this article. All credentials and claims are attributed to their sources; past results do not guarantee or predict future outcomes. This article is general information, not legal advice.

Publisher Disclosure & Independence Notice

Facts, figures, and claims in this profile were independently researched from public sources as described in the Methodology & Sourcing section above and are current only as of the research date; they are subject to change without notice, and readers should confirm any detail directly with the firm before relying on it. This notice supplements, and does not replace, the Attorney Advertising Notice at the top of this profile.