Strategic analyst focused on helping families and business owners think clearly, plan creatively, and make confident decisions in complex estate, succession, and advisory matters.
Working Style Profile
Communication Color:
Primary: Blue
Secondary: More Blue
Myers-Briggs:
ENTP (The Visionary)
Working Genius
Wonder and Invention
Risk Tolerance
“Context is everything”
Client Fit
Colin tends to work best with clients who value thoughtful planning, intellectual depth, and creative strategy. He is especially well suited for families, founders, and business owners facing complex decisions who want more than a standard form solution. Clients who appreciate careful listening, clear explanation, and a broader strategic perspective tend to enjoy working with him most.
colin stephenson
Chancellor of Kleiometrics
Executive Advisor for Estate, Succession,
and Strategic Planning
colin@northstarlaw.com vCard
Intro
How He Works
Colin is known for bringing unusual depth, range, and imagination to complicated problems. He combines rigorous research, big-picture thinking, and sharp discernment to help clients work through estate planning, business succession, and high-stakes decisions that involve many moving pieces. His approach is both analytical and creative. He digs deep, sees patterns others miss, and distills complexity into practical understandings clients can actually use.
Just as important, Colin is a gifted teacher. Clients appreciate that he does not hide behind jargon or abstractions. He helps clients understand not simply their options, but why those options matter and how each path fits their values, goals, family dynamics, and long-term vision.
Compass Point
Strategic Cartographer- helping clients map complicated terrain, connect ideas that others miss, and move forward with clarity and purpose.
Strengths on the Team
Within the team, Colin contributes academic rigor, thorough research, creative problem-solving, and conceptual clarity needed for especially complex matters. He is particularly strong at synthesizing large amounts of information, identifying underlying principles, and designing thoughtful strategies where legal, personal, and business considerations overlap. His interdisciplinary background makes him especially valuable when a matter calls for both precision and vision.
Professional
Colin’s work focuses on complex estate planning, business succession planning, and strategic analysis for clients who need thoughtful solutions tailored to real life. He is especially effective in matters that require deep research, careful analysis, and the ability to weigh many moving parts at once. His work often involves helping clients think through long-term goals, family considerations, governance issues, asset protection concerns, and the practical realities of implementing a sound plan.
Before joining the firm’s leadership team, Colin built an academic career in history and political thought, with a particular focus on the development of constitutional and political ideas from the classical world through early America. His research specialized in how philosophical ideas became legal and constitutional structures, especially in the American founding era. That background continues to shape his approach today, giving him a strong foundation for legal research, constitutional analysis, and principled reasoning through difficult questions.
Colin earned his B.A. in History and Music, summa cum laude, from Augsburg University. He earned his M.A. in History from The Ohio State University and completed his doctoral coursework and candidacy there, with research focused on early American political and constitutional thought. He received numerous academic honors and fellowships during his graduate work, including Ohio State’s Graduate Associate Teaching Award, and was widely recognized for excellence in teaching and communication. During that time, he also contributed research in support of a Supreme Court amicus brief in District of Columbia v. Heller while working under Professor Saul Cornell.
Outside the office, Colin is a devoted father and lifelong musician, bringing the same creativity, presence, and energy to his family and artistic endeavors that he pours into complex planning work.