About James Z. Collins

I specialize in helping families and businesses navigate their most difficult legal issues. As an experienced family law, business and tax attorney, I have a deep-rooted passion for protecting my clients' relationships, finances, and businesses. 

While my legal experience has spanned a wide range of practice areas, I have developed two areas of particular expertise – divorce and business transactions.

Divorce. As an experienced divorce lawyer I have handled all stages of divorce issues from planning and preventing divorce through effective drafting and negotiation of prenuptial agreements to advocating for the rights of my clients in court-based divorce proceedings. 

The primary focus of my divorce practice has been on assisting Chinese-speaking clients. This often requires particular sensitivity to Chinese client's cultural issues and has given me expertise in addressing a unique array of jurisdictional issues. 

Furthermore, since the vast majority of divorces involve complex financial issues, I am able to bring my depth of experience as a business and transactional attorney to the table to assist my clients with the financial issues of their divorces.

Business Transactions. In the course of my career I have worked on wide variety of business transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, rescue financings, personal and corporate bankruptcies, investment fund formations and restructurings, and renewable energy project financing projects.  Many of these projects have had deal sizes in the billions of dollars. 

Within my experience as a transactional attorney, I have developed a particular expertise in assisting healthcare practices with their niche transactions. My representative experience in the healthcare industry includes serving as tax counsel to a major PE fund in the acquisition of a telehealth and behavioral therapy service organization; assisting several PE funds in their acquisitions of regional dental support organizations, and serving as tax counsel for the rescue financing of a nationwide radiology practice. In addition, I serve as the day to day transactional attorney for several medical and dental practices. In fact, a few of my clients have called me "a doctor's kind of lawyer."

Finally, a significant portion of my experience on these projects has been as tax counsel. Therefore, I have the experience and expertise to structure and plan your transactions for the greatest amount of tax certainty and efficiency.

James received a juris doctorate degree from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he graduated as a member of the Order of the Coif, was the recipient of the Edwin S. Cohen Tax Prize, and was a final and award winner in multiple moot courts. He also served as an Articles Editor for the internationally esteemed Virginia Tax Review.

James is dedicated to giving back to the Boston community, including by providing pro bono services to forcibly displaced children and has assisted numerous local nonprofit organizations in obtaining tax-exempt status. 

Massachussets