Calloway & Vance advises families, founders, and institutions on the matters that outlast a news cycle — estates, enterprises, land, and the disputes worth having.
The firm accepts a limited number of matters in each discipline, so that every file is read closely and every deadline is met with room to spare. What follows is the whole of the practice — nothing is offered that the partners do not handle themselves.
Wills, trusts, and the orderly transfer of what a lifetime built — drafted to be boring in probate and generous in life. Estate plans are reviewed with clients at regular intervals, and revised when families, assets, or the law change.
Formation, acquisition, and succession for closely held companies, negotiated by the partners who will answer for them. The firm drafts the agreements families and partners actually live under — and reads them as carefully at signing as at dispute.
Coastal property, conservation easements, and family land held across generations — the firm’s oldest practice. Title, boundary, and access questions are settled on the ground and on the record, before they become someone else’s problem.
Measured advocacy in state and federal court, undertaken selectively and prepared as if every matter will be tried. Most disputes are resolved by negotiation or mediation; the firm’s preparation is directed at making that resolution a considered one.
Ongoing counsel to trustees and personal representatives: accountings, distributions, tax-season coordination with the family’s accountants, and the steady paperwork that keeps a trust administered exactly as it was written.
Charitable trusts, donor-advised arrangements, and private foundations for clients whose plans include the institutions they have supported in life — structured plainly, documented carefully, and coordinated with the rest of the estate plan.
There is no intake department and no handing down. The partner whose name is on a matter does the work on it, returns the calls about it, and sits across the table when it is decided.
Margaret Vance has led the firm’s private client practice for three decades and serves as its managing partner. Her work is the drafting and revision of estate plans for Lowcountry families whose assets include operating businesses, coastal land, and more than one generation’s expectations. Within the firm she sets the standard every plan is measured against: a document a family can read aloud at the kitchen table and understand. She reviews each new estate matter personally before it is accepted.
James Calloway is the firm’s second-generation senior partner for business and real estate matters. He advises closely held companies through formation, growth, and the eventual transfer to the next owners — family or otherwise — and handles the firm’s coastal land work, including conservation easements and family property held across generations. His practice is deliberately unhurried: transactions are documented once, correctly, rather than quickly and twice.
Claire Beaumont leads the firm’s litigation and disputes practice. She takes a small number of civil matters at a time — fiduciary, contract, and property disputes chief among them — and prepares each on the assumption it will be tried, which is precisely why many of them are not. Within the firm she is responsible for the written work: briefs and agreements alike pass her desk for clarity before they leave the building. Clients meet her at the first consultation, not after it.
Founded in 1962, Calloway & Vance has kept one office and a short client list for three generations. Matters are accepted selectively, staffed by partners, and billed without theatre.
The result is unfashionable and deliberate: when a client calls, the person who answers knows the file.
The office occupies a single floor on Meeting Street. The library — still the working centre of the firm — is where plans are drafted, transactions are read aloud before signing, and disputes are talked through before anything is filed.
Every engagement begins with a consultation — confidential, without obligation, and with the partner who would handle the matter. Bring questions, not documents.
Before anything is read in detail, the firm checks for conflicts of interest. If a conflict exists, you are told promptly and, where possible, pointed elsewhere.
Accepted matters receive a short written plan: what will be done, in what order, by whom, and what it is expected to cost. No work begins without it.
Clients hear from the firm at each meaningful step — and on a regular cadence in between — in plain language, from the partner responsible.
Fees are discussed at the consultation and confirmed in the written plan before work begins. The firm does not advertise outcomes, because outcomes are not the firm’s to promise — preparation is.
Consultations are confidential and without obligation. Write briefly; do not send documents or anything you would not put in an unsealed envelope.
1200 Meeting Street, Suite 800
Charleston, South Carolina
(843) 555-0147
Hours by appointment, Monday to Friday