Lecturer Bios
Alan Fell, Esq.
Alan Fell is a Partner at Rick Steiner Fell & Benowitz LLP.
Alan Fell’s 40 years of legal experience in the areas of real estate, trusts and estates, and health
law have earned him a large and loyal client base composed of small and mid-size businesses.
He successfully combines business and personal relationships with his clients that often
transcend the typical lawyer-client relationships one finds in many large firms.
A former member of the Surrogate's Court Advisory Committee of the Office of Court
Administration, Mr. Fell is highly regarded for his thorough knowledge and expertise on all
aspects of trusts and estates. As part of his practice, Mr. Fell provides sophisticated estate planning services, involving everything from administration to litigation, from drafting wills to drafting trust agreements.
Mr. Fell's expertise extends to charitable remainder and charitable lead
trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts and qualified personal residence trusts.
Mr. Fell offers lectures on trusts and estates for trade associations and charities. He has held
numerous court appointments.
In his corporate practice, Mr. Fell is involved in the formation of corporations, partnerships,
limited liability entities and the drafting of shareholder agreements, partnership agreements,
operating agreements and employment agreements. In the area of real estate, he has focused his
practice on all essential aspects of both commercial and residential real property.
Mr. Fell represents a wide range of medical group practices and handles all aspects of law in the
creation of such practices, including compliance issues and negotiating contracts with hospitals.
Mr. Fell earned his J.D. from Temple School of Law in 1974
Matthew Van Meter
Matthew works with people whose voices have been ignored or silenced. As a reporter, he covers criminal justice stories, focusing on the experiences of people whose lives have been upended by law enforcement and corrections. And as co-facilitator and Assistant Director of Shakespeare in Prison, he supports the work of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people as they use the exploration of Shakespeare's plays to empower themselves and each other.
Growing up Quaker in various rural communities in the Northeast, Matthew acquired an early interest in peace and social justice. Before transitioning to work as a journalist and prison theatre facilitator, he followed in his parents' footsteps by working at high schools—he taught in Delaware, Michigan, and Moscow, Russia. He graduated from Middlebury College and Columbia University School of the Arts.
Matthew studied Russian in college and lived in Russia for three years. He was a columnist for Russia Profile, an English-language news site that was shuttered by the Putin administration. There, he covered topics ranging from wealth inequality in Ukraine's rust belt to the use of abortion as Russia's primary means of contraception.
Since returning to the United States, he has thrown himself into covering the criminal justice system. His reporting has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Republic, Longreads, The Awl, and the Quaker magazine Friends Journal.
Now based in the city of Detroit, Matthew is slowly learning to play euchre, say "pop" and "inkpen," and otherwise acquire Michigan bona fides. And when he is not reporting or working at prison, he teaches at University Liggett School and College for Creative Studies. He is still a practicing Quaker.
