Aurora grad enjoys helping her clients manage their estate planning
As a small town attorney working in Ord, Aurora native Jessica (Vincik) Piskorski says what she enjoys most about her career is helping clients manage their estates and assets.
“Helping people is what I like the most,” Piskorski said. “I like helping someone with something they can’t do on their own or there’s just knowledge that they don’t have, I can connect to it or help them carry out an idea.”
Her passion for helping people goes back to her growing up years in Aurora where she dreamed of becoming a federal law enforcement agent. She said that also helped steer her toward studying law.
“Some of my interest in that is because one of my older brothers did become one and he had said, ‘You should either become an accountant or become a lawyer,’” Piskorski explained. “So I was like, ‘Okay, I’ll go to law school,’ and just had planned on that my junior year.”
After graduating from Aurora High School in 2002, Piskorski studied criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. But when she took an internship with the U.S. Marshals Service, she realized that the life of a federal agent was not for her.
“I really decided I don’t want to carry a gun as part of my job,” she stated. “I still decided to go to law school and as part of that internship with the U.S. Marshals, I worked in the federal courthouse in downtown Omaha.”
Piskorski’s work with marshals involved following them and a federal criminal defendant they were escorting into the courtroom and then exiting through in the back hallways. While pursuing her law studies, she developed a strong interest in researching civil law.
“I think the thing that I really enjoyed the most was the research,” Piskorski said. “There’s a case (for example) where someone you know gets sued for something or has something brought against them. There’s other examples, there’s case law, there’s just always more to it and that part of it was more interesting to me and that helped me get through law school because law school is a lot of reading, research and writing.”
After graduating from the University of Nebraska College of Law in 2009, Piskorski worked in a collection agency in Grand Island for seven years before she and her husband, Dan decided to move to Ord.
There she began working at the law firm of Robert Stowell and Barry Geweke, where she became a partner in 2018, resulting in the firm being renamed Stowell, Geweke & Piskorski, PC, LLO.
“I became an owner of the firm after two years, because I knew Ord is the place that we would remain long term with our family and between us, we cover multiple generations, so our law firm will have continuity for years to come,” she stated.
As partners, Geweke, Stowell and Piskorski divide the cases among themselves.
“My partner, Barry does more of the courtroom,” Piskorski stated. “He’ll do divorces, like where people are in a lawsuit and he’ll represent someone and be in the courtroom more. Then my other partner (Robert Stowell) and I do more estate planning, like forming LLC corporations and real estate matters.”
Piskorski said one of the challenges of working in a small community like Ord, is continually finding herself encountering things she doesn’t know.
“I feel like any small town lawyer would have the same thing,” she commented. “I can create your LLC, because it’s a small business and it’s similar to something I’ve done, but then there’s always a little nuance, a little question that comes up that I either need to research and look into it or I’ve done something similar, but not this particular thing.”
One example Piskorski gave was when she was assisting a farming family in establishing an LLC.
“We had helped them form an LLC and worked on gifting to their kids to make it a multigenerational business,” Piskorski explained. “They called and said, ‘Hey, our neighbor wants to... build a hog confinement facility and we don’t want that near our land.’ They have their reasons and it’s neither good nor bad, it’s just here’s what the client needs.”
Piskorski said she had to go back to what she learned in law school and reflect on her studies in ag law to assist her clients with their case.
“It was totally new for me,” she commented. “I got really into their zoning regulations. I had to attend their county zoning hearings and then their county commissioner hearing to argue against the neighbor getting a special use permit to build a big hog facility next to them, because they were within the zoning within a mile.”
But no matter what challenge is presented to her, Piskorsi said she is eager to be there for her clients every step of the way.
“What drives me to work every day is just being able to help people that become my clients and that I connect with,” Piskorski stated. “I want to help them solve whatever legal issue they bring to me, whether that be estate planning, working on an estate administration or a real estate transaction. It is usually the most important thing going on for my clients at the time and I appreciate being the person that can help bring about a resolution.”
Another accomplishment Piskorski is proud of is co-authoring chapters in the Nebraska State Bar Association’s (NSBA) Probate Manual in 2018.
“The NSBA publishes that manual and they update it every so often,” she explained. “They asked our firm to update the chapters that my law partner had previously written on informal probate and formal probate, and then my law partner, Bob Stowell, and I presented on our chapters at a legal education conference that year.”
Outside of her work at the law film, Piskorski is a highly-involved member of the Valley County Health System Board of Trustees, the Valley County Community Foundation Fund Advisory Committee, the St. Mary’s School Board and the Prairie Plains Resource Institute Board of Directors.
Piskorski is also a member of the FBLA Advisory Council, inspired by her time in FBLA while in school at Aurora.
“It’s kind of funny to me that it came full circle like that, from those experiences growing up there to where I am now,” she said. “I did not think when I was in FBLA as a high school student that I would actually be a business owner,” Piskorski commented. “That’s really funny to me, I never actually saw that happening or dreamt that I was like, ‘Oh, I’m going own my own law firm.’ It’s funny to me that it kind of came full circle like that.”
Piskorski lives in Ord with her husband Dan and the couple’s their three children. The oldest, James is in eighth grade, Rori is in sixth grade and Alice is in fifth grade.
“I just enjoy living in a small town where you can have an impact,” she stated. “Being involved in local nonprofits, it’s important to me to give back. Obviously I’m not in Aurora anymore, but I feel like I learned that there and have taken it to where I am.”
“I had a great experience growing up in Aurora and I felt a lot of support growing up there,” Piskorski said. “I felt like being involved even throughout high school. I just felt like I was set up for success coming from Aurora.”
Piskorski is the daughter of Kenny and Carol Vincik, who now live in St. Paul.