About Kaylee

I graduated magna cum laude from McKendree University in Lebanon, Illinois, earned my J.D. from Saint Louis University School of Law, and spent the years that followed working across private practice, boutique estate planning, and in-house counsel at one of the nation’s largest financial institutions. That path gave me a depth of experience I couldn’t have planned for—from handling real estate transactions and probate proceedings for families right here in St. Clair County, to advising high-net-worth clients on complex trust structures in Chicago, to navigating regulatory and operational legal matters inside a wealth management division that served clients at the highest levels of the market.

What I took from all of it wasn’t just technical knowledge. It was a clear understanding of who receives sophisticated legal guidance in places like Fairview Heights, O’Fallon, and across the Metro East—and who doesn’t—and how little that divide has to do with how much someone actually needs it.

I’m also the eldest daughter in my family, and for a long stretch of my adult life, I was a caregiver. I was the one tracking down documents, asking hard questions, and learning firsthand what it costs a family when legal planning didn’t happen soon enough. That experience didn’t leave me when I started this firm. It’s present in every client conversation I have.

I’m a first-generation attorney. I came to this career without a blueprint, which means I also came to it without inherited assumptions about who legal services are for. Darnall Law exists because I believe the answer to that question should be everyone—in St. Clair County, Madison County, and throughout Southern Illinois.

Middle-class families, small business owners, first-generation wealth builders, caregivers stretched thin across competing responsibilities—these are the people with the most at stake in getting an estate plan right. They’re also the people most likely to put it off, because the process feels designed for someone else. I built Darnall Law to close that gap.

This firm was also built with specific communities in mind—communities that are personal to me, not just professional priorities or marketing lingo. Women throughout St. Clair County and Madison County who are making financial and family planning decisions, often for everyone around them and too rarely for themselves. LGBTQIA+ individuals, couples, and chosen families across the Metro East whose relationships deserve deliberate, knowledgeable legal protection. BIPOC families in Fairview Heights, O’Fallon, Belleville, and beyond who are building generational wealth and businesses that deserve the same quality of counsel that more privileged families have long had access to. Caregivers, people navigating disability and special needs planning, blended families, and anyone who has ever walked into a professional’s office anywhere in Southern Illinois and felt, quietly, like the room wasn’t built with them in mind. This is a firm where that changes.