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Nielsen Law: A Board-Certified Practice Built Around Special Needs Planning

Most estate planning firms list special needs trusts as one service among many. Liz Nielsen built her practice around it specifically, alongside standard estate planning and administration — a narrower focus than the typical general-practice estate firm, chosen deliberately rather than as an afterthought to a broader wills-and-trusts business.

Origin and Background

Liz Nielsen has been licensed to practice law in Texas since 2009 and founded Nielsen Law PLLC after working as an associate attorney at another established Austin estate planning firm, where she gained experience in advanced estate and business planning, asset protection, trust administration, special needs planning, and charitable and income tax planning. She is board certified in Estate Planning and Probate Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization — a credential the firm’s own materials note fewer than 1% of Texas attorneys hold — and practices exclusively in estate planning, special needs planning, and estate administration. Avvo’s licensing record shows no misconduct findings.

Practice Concentration

The firm’s practice is deliberately narrow: wills, revocable living trusts, generational and legacy planning, special needs trusts, charitable trusts, living wills, financial and medical powers of attorney, and estate administration, including both court-supervised probate and private trust administration after a client’s death. It does not handle litigation, personal injury, or family law. For firms with a broader multi-practice structure, see our Estate Planning & Probate directory.

Notable Work / Track Record

As is typical for estate planning practices, Nielsen Law does not publish verdict or settlement figures — the work is documentary and administrative rather than litigated, and outcomes are individualized to each family’s estate. Awesome Attorneys is disclosing that gap rather than presenting substitute marketing language. What is independently verifiable is tenure and specialization: 16 years of Texas legal practice, continuous board certification in the specific niche of estate planning and probate, and a firm built specifically around special needs trust planning, which requires distinct expertise (coordinating with means-tested government benefit programs like SSI and Medicaid) that a general estate planning practice may not maintain as its primary focus.

Client Voice

Nielsen Law holds a strong review record on Yelp (13 reviews) with client language that recurs across multiple independent reviewers: several specifically cite being walked “step by step through the entire process” and praise Nielsen’s ability to “help your family with any special needs trusts or planning.” One independent review-aggregator summary, synthesizing patterns across the firm’s public review base, noted that some clients mentioned initial meetings could be somewhat time-sensitive or require multiple follow-ups before confirming arrangements — a minor, genuine scheduling friction point Awesome Attorneys is disclosing directly rather than omitting. Two fellow estate planning attorneys have also posted public professional endorsements of Nielsen on Avvo, distinct from client reviews, describing her as “a rare find in the estate planning world” with particular strength in “complex trust questions.”

Beyond the Courtroom

Nielsen has spoken publicly at events including the Women’s Power Summit and WEL Summit on leadership and legacy planning topics, and is active in Austin legal and philanthropic community events, including the Austin Bar Foundation and The Arc of the Capital Area. Her team includes two paralegals with substantial estate-planning-specific backgrounds — one with more than 25 years of prior estate planning paralegal experience in Arizona before relocating to Austin.

Recognition for This Austin Estate Planning Attorney

Peer-reviewed and third-party credentials: board certification in Estate Planning and Probate Law from the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, and public peer endorsements from fellow estate planning attorneys via Avvo’s attorney endorsement system, which is distinct from and independent of client reviews. Awesome Attorneys notes that this firm’s public review volume (13 Yelp reviews) is smaller than some larger multi-attorney firms covered elsewhere in this directory, which is worth factoring into how much weight a prospective client places on the review pattern versus the underlying credential.

Texas Legal Backdrop

Special needs trusts — a specific focus of this practice — are structured under federal and Texas law to hold assets for a beneficiary with a disability without disqualifying them from means-tested government benefits like Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Medicaid, which generally cap countable assets at very low thresholds. Getting this structure wrong can cost a family a disabled beneficiary’s benefits eligibility, which is why this is a genuinely specialized sub-practice rather than a simple trust drafting exercise. Separately, Texas Estates Code § 401.001 et seq. governs the appointment and duties of independent executors, the most common form of estate administration in Texas, chosen specifically because it requires less ongoing court supervision than a dependent administration. None of this is legal advice; a specific special needs or estate plan should be built with a licensed attorney based on the actual family and beneficiary circumstances.

Awesome Attorneys Assessment

Nielsen Law’s clearest differentiator is depth in a genuinely specialized niche — special needs trust planning — combined with continuous TBLS board certification and a consistent, specific pattern of client praise rather than generic five-star language. The honest trade-off is scale: this is a small, focused practice, not a multi-attorney firm, and the review pattern noted above (occasional scheduling friction around initial meetings) is worth asking about directly if timing matters for a client’s situation. For a family navigating special needs planning specifically — a genuinely technical area where general-practice estate attorneys sometimes lack current expertise — that focus is a real asset. For a family with a large, complex, or business-integrated estate requiring a bigger team, a larger multi-attorney firm may be a better fit.

Methodology and Sourcing

This profile was researched from Nielsen Law PLLC’s official website (estateplanatx.com), Liz Nielsen’s Avvo attorney and endorsement pages, the firm’s Yelp review page, third-party review-aggregator summaries, Liz Nielsen’s LinkedIn profile, and the Texas Board of Legal Specialization’s public certification standards. Review-pattern language attributed to “aggregator summaries” reflects third-party synthesis of the firm’s public review base rather than a single quoted client.

Publisher Disclosure and Independence Notice

Awesome Attorneys is an independent legal directory and editorial publication. This profile was not paid for, commissioned, or reviewed by Nielsen Law PLLC or Liz Nielsen prior to publication. Awesome Attorneys may in the future offer sponsored placement products to attorneys and firms, including this one, but sponsorship has no bearing on the editorial content, inclusion, or findings of this profile.