Managing Partner Joseph Milizio leads VMM’s Business and Transactional Law, Exit Planning for Business Owners, and LGBTQ Representation Practices.
Mr. Milizio represents start-up and established businesses, providing day-to-day general counsel and advice. He has significant experience in various areas of transactional law with an emphasis on business transactions, including acquisitions, sales, entity and owner representation, franchising, leasing, and transactional real estate matters. He represents a wide range of businesses, including retailers, manufacturers, real estate entities, healthcare providers, and other professional industries and organizations.
His diverse corporate and real estate finance experience includes the representation of both borrowers and lenders. He regularly advises clients on corporate governance, dispute resolution, and estate planning matters. As head of the Exit Planning for Business Owners Practice, he works with proprietors and other representatives as a consultant and legal advisor in planning for and implementing exit and succession strategies.
Mr. Milizio founded the firm’s groundbreaking LGBTQ Representation Practice over 15 years ago, one of the first in the nation. The practice provides legal counsel, representation, and education to the LGBTQ community in a variety of matters, including workplace discrimination, estate planning, health care proxies and living wills, prenuptial agreements, real estate, domestic partnership agreements, property co-owner agreements, spousal rights and obligations, divorce and child custody, adoptions, name changes, and gender marker changes.
He is a trusted advisor to both his personal and business clients and often serves as executor, trustee, and legal guardian.
Mr. Milizio is regularly featured in the press, including NBC, CBS, News 12, 1010 WINS, WCBS 880, Star 99.9, Newsday, LI Herald, and Long Island Business News.
He is the founding vice president of the Long Island Chapter of the International Exit Planning Institute; the cochair of the Nassau County Bar Association LGBTQ Committee; member of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) New York Steering Committee; and the former chairperson of the of the Long Island Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
He is an MS Society Leadership Award recipient, the Long Island Crisis Center Pride for Youth initiative “2017 Person of the Year,” and the LI Herald “2019 Top Lawyer of Long Island” in two categories, Civil Rights and Pro Bono.
Mr. Milizio received his Juris Doctorate from Brooklyn Law School and is a magna cum laude graduate of St. John’s University. He is admitted to practice law in the State of New York and is a member of the New York State Bar Association and the Nassau County Bar Association, where he serves on the Lawyer Referral, Corporation Law, and Real Estate Committees.
