Up Close and Personal

Z. Gillerra helps families navigate the legal waters of planning for the future, protecting loved ones, managing affairs after a death, and making important legal decisions when someone needs assistance or protection. She provides legal counsel in estate administration, guardianships, conservatorships, estate planning, and all matters probate and elder law. She is committed to navigating clients through these often-complicated legal processes with clarity and compassion. Counselor Gillerra works closely with clients to address their unique needs, whether it’s managing a loved one’s estate, resolving disputes, or creating comprehensive estate plans to protect future generations.

Known for her accessibility, responsiveness, and attention to detail, Z. ensures that every case is handled efficiently and effectively, providing peace of mind to clients during challenging times. Having worked remotely for most of her adult life, she is passionate about and skilled at making legal services accessible through remote consultations and digital solutions. She strives to making processes as seamless as possible for clients, regardless of location, time constraints. or logistical issues. Operating virtually also means fewer overhead costs get passed on to her clients, and a greater number of individuals and families in the community can have access to legal representation.

Work

Counselor Gillerra has taught communication courses at the University of Kansas, University of Missouri at Kansas City, Washburn University, and business law at Becker Professional Education to certified public accounting students in preparation for licensing examinations. As a life-long learner, continuing to expand her knowledge of probate law is as much an ongoing part of her law practice as is ensuring exceptional client service. Z. has published peer-reviewed academic articles and book chapters in the communication and the arts fields. She is currently doing legal research on wealth transfer and the black family in preparation for this work’s publication.

Z.’s law practice spans the drafting of legal documents to representing her clients in court. She regularly serves as Guardian ad Litem on Guardianship and Conservatorship cases for adults and minors. She is a member of the American Bar Association, the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association, and the Missouri Bar Association (MOBAR). Z. is honored to contribute to the legal profession by working alongside her colleagues on four MOBAR committees.

Education

Z. earned her undergraduate degree in Business Administration at the University of Kansas (KU) where she excelled in marketing and represented the Business School in an annual marketing competition. After a year-long break, she returned to KU to earn her law degree. As part of a course on intellectual property, she was taught how to code websites in HTML. This knowledge, understanding, and skill has served her well in many of her endeavors since graduation and laid a foundation for her to function well in our 21^st century digital world, including the design and development of this website. As the final requirement for her PhD in Communication Studies, she defended her dissertation with honors on the day of President Obama’s first inauguration, January 20, 2009.

Z. is an alumna of the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association’s Ross T. Roberts Trial Academy and is currently conducting legal research on wealth transfer and the black family.

Community

Serving the communities that Z. is part of has been a major part of her life. She has engaged in numerous volunteer activities such as Audio Reader (recording readings of newspapers and periodicals to the blind before the advent of screen readers) serving holiday meals at homeless shelters, teaching the less fortunate to read, to name a few. Her most recent activities include the development of legal workshops to teach low-income individuals the importance of healthcare planning and assisting them, either Low Bono or Pro Bono, in preparing documents for the unexpected.

Gillerra Law, LLC

Founding Gillerra Law, LLC, brings together Z.’s knowledge of the law, education and teaching, life experiences, and passion for helping people find solutions to their legal problems. Her philosophy is that there is no human endeavor that does not intersect business, communication, and law. Think about it! Even marriage is a legal contract wherein individuals negotiate the terms of conducting the business of life as a unit. And if that unite dissolves, the assets of the marriage contract are distributed according to law, absent planned legal arrangements.

In response to life’s changes and challenges, Gillerra Law, LLC, is here to navigate you through the often-complicated legal waters of probate law and elder law matters with clarity and compassion.

Outside the Law

Named after her paternal grandmother by her paternal grandfather who, together, immigrated from Honduras to New Orleans, Louisiana, nine out of 10 people mispronounce her name. Some years ago, someone asked if they could just call her Z. Others in her immediate group joined in and it became a thing. Interestingly, Z. soon learned that people also struggle with referring to persons by an initial. With seemingly no way to win, she landed on being comfortable with Z. (even though, in writings, most people forget the period behind the letter). Thankfully, in our modern era of pronoun preferences unconnected to gender assignment, folk have begun to relax and honor usage of the initial of her first name. Z. enjoys growing a lot of her own food, as well as preserving her harvests; writing and giving readings of her poetry; creating mosaics; playing Scrabble; reading; and watching foreign films and Westerns.

Soon after law school, she entered graduate school at KU in pursuit of her PhD in communication studies. During this time, she was awarded, among other academic awards, a year-long, Fulbright Scholarship to Morocco to conduct research on the Moudawana — Morocco’s, at that time, newly formed family law concerning the regulation of marriage, polygamy, divorce, inheritance, and child custody. This Fulbright experience has been one of her most life changing.