Small by design.
Exacting by temperament.

Merritt & Bell began in 2015 with a decision that most of the Richmond bar considered eccentric: the fees would be printed on the website. Eleanor Merritt had spent two decades watching families delay their planning — not because the documents were complicated, but because nobody would tell them the price. So she published a schedule, the way the old banks once published their notices: plainly, completely, in ink. Joanna Bell joined the following year from a bank trust department, bringing twelve years of administering estates to a practice that until then had only planned them.

The model has not changed since. Two attorneys, one paralegal, no associates learning on your file, and no engagement accepted that either partner would not handle personally. The firm stays small because the work rewards it: an estate plan is a long conversation about family, money, and mortality, and conversations like that are not delegated. What growth the firm has permitted itself is measured in the client ledger — a thousand Virginia estates settled, three generations deep in some families.

The third name you will learn is Dana Whitfield, our paralegal of nine years: the person who actually answers the phone, keeps the signing calendar, and remembers which clients take their coffee black.

“Most estate plans fail at the funding stage. Ours don’t — because we do the retitling with you.”

— Eleanor Merritt, on why the firm’s trust fee includes the deed