Ms. Dean's professional experience encompasses a broad range of legal matters. Her primary emphases are estate planning, elder law, and probate. Her estate planning practice involves helping clients orchestrate their estates by drafting a vast array of trusts, wills and powers of attorney. Ms. Dean also provides compassionate legal advice while assisting families through the probate process. Ms. Dean's legal expertise in civil appeals includes both advising at the trial court level and handling all aspects of the appeal. She has handled appeals dealing with complex insurance matters, business matters, personal injury and family law appeals. She has successfully argued in federal and state courts, including the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, on behalf of a major insurance company, corporations, and individuals. She works with trial attorneys and clients to preserve error on the trial court level, preparing legal motions, handling mandamus actions, preparing and arguing the jury charge and handling all post-judgment motions. At the appellate level, Ms. Dean leads the appeal of a judgment, including preparing briefs, petitions for review and briefs on the merits to the Texas Supreme Court, and presenting oral argument before diverse panels of judges. Throughout her career, Ms. Dean has handled other civil matters as well, such as complex commercial litigation, corporate buy-outs, employment and business contracts, consumer issues, family law litigation, adoptions, real estate transactions and personal injury litigation. She successfully negotiated and closed a multi-million dollar buy-out of a snowboard clothing company to a major sporting goods conglomerate. Prior to specializing in appellate law, Ms. Dean engaged in a successful trial practice and as a result, understands the needs of trial attorneys and what it takes to make them successful at the trial level and on appeal. Integrity and operating under a high standard of ethics are of utmost importance to us at The Dean Law Firm. We abide by the Texas Lawyer's Creed.

Since 1976, licensed Texas attorney John W. Mikus has been working on behalf of his clients in probate, real estate, and family law transactions and litigation, both simple and complex, serving Harris County and surrounding counties within about a 100-mile radius of Houston. During the initial telephone consult, Mr. Mikus is willing to listen to the potential client, ask questions about the facts, and describe possible solutions and costs and fee arrangements needed to represent his potential client's interest before confirming the scope and fees of his employment by either email or after meeting with the potential client at his office or a place more convenient to the potential client to sign a mutually acceptable written fee agreement providing for the negotiated initial retainer to be paid in advance by the potential client in order for Mr. Mikus to be responsible to start providing the agreed legal services.

Micheal Busby is a member of the State Bar of Texas, the Houston Bar Association, the Houston Association of Debtor’s Attorneys and is admitted to practice in the Federal Courts in the Southern District of Texas. He enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and served as a Field Artillery Cannoner from 1989 to 1993. Mike also served in the National Guard from 1993 to 1997 in the states of Arkansas, Oklahoma and North Carolina. Mr. Busby received his Bachelor of Science degree with honors from the University of Central Oklahoma in 1996. He graduated from South Texas College of Law in Houston, Texas in 2002. Mr. Busby is a member of the Phi Delta Phi International Law fraternity and authored an international law legal article in a law journal published by South Texas College of Law. Mr. Busby has been faithfully married for 20 years and is the proud father of two daughters, Viktoria and Hannah Busby and father of Willam Maximus “Billy Max” Busby.

Lisa M VanAuken is a Houston Family Law Attorney. While she grew up in Northern New York, she has lived in Houston, Texas area since 1995 and has made the Houston area her home. Lisa VanAuken graduated Magna Cum Laude from SUNY Plattsburgh in 1995 with a B.A. in Political Science. Lisa went on to graduate from the University of Houston Law Center, where she was a member of Phi Delta Phi, a national legal honor society. While in law school Lisa M VanAuken gained her first exposure to the family law court system when she did her legal internship with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office Family Criminal Law Division, where she advocated on behalf of victims of domestic violence to obtain protective orders. Since being licensed in November 1998 Lisa has practiced exclusively in the area of family law. Over the last 19 years she has gained valuable experience handling uncontested divorces, contested divorces, high asset property divisions, paternity suits, step-parent adoptions, infant adoptions, interstate adoptions, contested child custody suits, child custody modifications, child support cases, child support modification cases, protective orders, and Attorney General Office cases. While she practices primarily in Harris County, she has also represented clients in Fort Bend, Brazoria, and Galveston Counties.

Roger Merrill is a practicing attorney in the state of Texas. He graduated from the University of Houston with his J.D. in 1991. He currently works at his privately owned firm of The Law Offices of Merrill and Associates specializing in Personal Injury.