Mr. Clymer’s practice focuses on estate planning; estate and trust administration; representation of charitable organizations, including foundations; and counseling owners and managers of private businesses. He has appeared in the Massachusetts probate courts, the Appeals Court, and the Supreme Judicial Court in a number of trust and will construction cases and cy pres matters, including conversion of the Boston Foundation, one of the country’s oldest community foundations, from a trust to a charitable corporation.
Mr. Clymer is a regular lecturer at continuing legal education programs and a contributor to legal publications including Estate Planning, Trusts and Estates, and the Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education publications, Massachusetts Non‑Profit Organizations (Frederick J. Marks, ed.) and the Massachusetts Probate Manual (Warner and Reynolds, eds.). He is a co-author of Massachusetts Estate Planning, Will Drafting and Estate Administration (Lexis Publishing 1989–1998, with annual supplements), a two-volume desk reference for Massachusetts estate planners.
Mr. Clymer is a member of the Massachusetts Attorney General's Advisory Committee on Public Charities. He is a Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel; a member of its Charitable Planning and Organizations and its Practice Committees and has served as State Chair for Massachusetts. For the fourteenth year, Mr. Clymer was selected by his peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America 2010 and recognized in the area of Trusts and Estates (Copyright 2009 by Woodward/White, Inc. of Aiken, S.C.). Inclusion in Best Lawyers is based on a peer-review survey. He has also been recognized as a “New England Super Lawyer” in Estate Planning and Probate based on a peer-review survey by Boston Magazine (2004–2011).
Mr. Clymer is a director of Boston Private Bank & Trust Company, vice chair of its Trust and Investment Committee, and a member of its Audit Committee. His community and charitable board activities include membership on the investment committee of the Hyams Foundation, Inc., a Boston private foundation; chair of the board of Anatolia College, an American school and college in Thessaloniki, Greece; trustee of Sofia American Schools, Inc., an English language high school in Sofia, Bulgaria; and service on the Town of Concord’s Historic Districts Commission.
Mr. Clymer is a member of the Boston, Massachusettsm and American bar associations. He was the chair of the Committee on Non‑Profit Corporations of the Business Law Section of the American Bar Association when it drafted the Model Revised Non‑Profit Corporation Act in the mid-1980s and has served as chair of the Committee on Lifetime and Testamentary Charitable Gift Planning of the Real Property, Probate and Trust Law Section of the ABA. He is currently the president of the Boston Bar Foundation and a member of the Council of the Boston Bar Association, parent of the Foundation.