Mr. Bolan has the distinction of being voted one of Massachusetts' Top 100 Lawyers in ballots conducted by Boston Magazine, and a Massachusetts "Super Lawyer" for five consecutive years 2004 - 2008.

A graduate of Belmont Hill School (1966), Trinity College (1970), and Boston College Law School (1973), Mr. Bolan was admitted to the bar in Missouri (1973-inactive) and Massachusetts (1975).  He started practice in Kansas City in 1973 as a legal services lawyer.  From 1978 to 1983, he was an Assistant Bar Counsel with the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers.  From 1983 to 1991, he was with Chaplin & Milstein as an associate and then as a partner.  He started the firm of Bolan & Graeber, PC in 1991, which then became Bolan, Frank, and Graeber, PC in 1992.  He joined the present firm in January 1999 where he is the head of the Litigation Department.

Mr. Bolan has frequently served as an editor, lecturer and author and participated in seminars and programs for Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education, Inc., the Massachusetts Bar Association and the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers in disciplinary, professional liability and litigation matters.

He is the author and editor of The New Rules of Professional Conduct: The Impact on Ethical Practice in Massachusetts (MCLE 1998), co-editor with Justice Kenneth Lawrence and co-author of Ethical Lawyering in Massachusetts (MCLE 1992, 1995, 2000, 2007) and a contributing author to the Massachusetts Attorney Conduct Manual (Butterworths).

He has been the Chair (since the inception in 1993) of the biannual seminar sponsored jointly by MCLE and the Board of Bar Overseers entitled "How to Make Money and Stay Out of Trouble". He was the Chair of the MCLE seminar entitled "Practicing Before the Board of Bar Overseers" (1994).  He is the author of an article published in the December 1994 issue of the Massachusetts Bar Journal entitled "Representing a Respondent Before the Board of Bar Overseers".  He is also the author of an article in the May/June 1994  issue of the Boston Bar Journal entitled, "Practice Before the Board of Registration in Medicine".

He was an author and panel member of the MCLE seminar entitled "Handling the Non-Medical Professional Malpractice Case" (1989) and panel member of the seminar entitled "Dealing with the S.O.B. Litigator..." (1990). He has been a panel chair and member of a number of seminars conducted by MCLE and the Massachusetts Bar Association, including a panel member of the 1995 through 1998 (and Chair of the 1996 and 1997) MBA Annual Meeting Programs on Legal Malpracice.  He is a Fellow of the Massachusetts Bar Foundation, former chair of the Attorneys and Accountants Liability sub-committee of the Business Litigation Committee;  former member of the Boston Bar Association's Professionalism and Bench and Bar Committees and former member of the Massachusetts Bar Association's Ethics Committee (1992 - 1996).

He is a founding member (1990) of the National Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers (APRL), was elected as a Director for a three-year term (1996 - 1998), Treasurer (1996 - 1999), Secretary (1999 - 2000), President-Elect (2000 - 2001) and President (2001 - 2002).  He has been a panel member and chair of numerous seminars presented at APRL meetings, including the following:

• Misdelivered Documents: Fair Game for Adverse Counsel? By James P. Ulwick and James S. Bolan
• To Preclude or Not to Preclude: Should a Lawyer Have Two Bites at the Apple Before Being Thrown Out of the Garden? Or, what is the appropriate use of fact or issue preclusion in disciplinary proceedings? By Sarah McShea and James S. Bolan
• The Rise of "Private Citizen" Discipline and the Demise of DR 1-102(A)(6): A Mystery in Two Parts. James S. Bolan and Robert H. Davis, Jr. Panelists.
• Safeguarding Client Funds for Non-Clients: Who Must the Lawyer Protect?  David P. Atkins, Moderator. Panelists: James S. Bolan, Steve Lee, and Elizabeth A. Kohnen.
• Opinions of Counsel: The Ways and Means  James S. Bolan and David Ross Rosenfeld
• Conflicts of Interest and Fiduciary Duty.  (Shanghai Conference)  James S. Bolan, Richard Jacobson and Professor Lu Zhi'an
• Duties to the Courts, Other Persons, and the Legal Profession.  (Shanghai Conference)  Mark I. Harrison, James S. Bolan and Zhu Hongchao
• Fee and Profit Sharing with Non-Lawyers: The Evolving Definition of the Independence of Counsel. James S. Bolan, Chair, William Wernz and R. Gerald Markle
• Cross-Boundary Advertising:  Impossibility of Performance?  Peter R. Jarvis and James S. Bolan
• The Hazards of Multi-Jurisdictional Practice: Avoiding Disciplinary Sanctions, Fee Forfeitures, and Legal Malpractice Claims.  (National Risk Management Conference)  William T. Barker, James S. Bolan, Anthony E. Davis, and James J. Grogan
• Managing the Lone Wolf and Other Partner Problems.  James S. Bolan and Robert A. Creamer;  Conflicts and Other Issues for Lawyers with Ancillary Businesses; James S. Bolan and Charles Kettlewell.
• Conflicts and Other Issues for Lawyers with Ancillary Insurance and Securities Businesses: Bad Idea, Wave of the Multi-Disciplinary Future, or Both?  James S. Bolan and Charles Kettlewell
• When Is a License Not a License? Applying MJP Principles to Federal Practice, James S. Bolan, William Barker and Suzanne Westerheim and Technological Advances in Legal Ethics Research with Diane Karpman.
• Technological Advances in  Ethics Research.  Diane L.  Karpman and James. S. Bolan
• Truth and Consequences:  Negotiation Ethics.  James S. Bolan, Moderator; Richard Perlmutter, George R. Clark
• Ethics of Judicial Elections in the Context of Regulation, Free Speech, Impartiality and Independence:  Point and Counterpoint:  James S. Bolan; Moderator, Jeremy R. Feinberg, Laura L. Smith, Brian S. Faughman, and Honorable Cristina Pereyra-Shuminer.

He was a panel member at the February 2000 ALI/ABA Program in "Legal Problems in Museum Administration-Attorney Client Privilege for In-House Counsel" and a panel member at the February 2000 MBA Seminar - "Mass. R. Pro. C. Rule 4.2 and Labor Lawyers." He was a panelist in May 2000 (on issues of conflicts of interest and duties to third persons) at a Conference on Judicial and Legal Ethics in the Peoples Republic of China at Fudan University Law School, Shanghai, China under the auspices of the United States Department of State and the Peoples Republic of China.

He has conducted seminars on ex parte communications for the MBA in June 2000, June 2002 and MCLE in August 2002.  He was co-chair of an MBA Seminar in May 2003 on the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, chair of Seminars on Staying Professional in the Practice in June 2003, 2004 and 2007 and participated in the inaugural and subsequent  Annual Seminars for "In-House Counsel" in 2003, 2004 and 2006 conferences before the Massachusetts Bar Association on the subjects  of attorney-client privilege,  confidentiality rules and ex parte communications (2003 and 2004) and the erosion of the attorney-client privilege (2006).   He has also participated in several panels for the MBA on the new IOLTA rules in Massachusetts in December 2003.

He provided ethics commentary for MCLE's inaugural Health Law Manual (2004) and authored an article in November 2004 in the Boston Bar Journal on extrication from an attorney-client relationship.

In addition to chairing the first MCLE panel on the Ethics of Negotiation held in May 2005, he was  a speaker on ethics issues at the Real Estate Bar Association for Massachusetts Spring Seminar in May 2005, he spoke on the Ethics of Negotiation with Prof. Richard Perlmutter in an MCLE/Westlaw Webcast in November 2005, and chaired an APRL panel in February 2006 entitled Truth or Consequences:  Negotiation Ethics. 

He presented two seminars at the MBA Annual meeting in March 2006 on ethics and malpractice.  He chaired the first MCLE ethics panel on Avoiding Attorney Liability in Business Practice in August 2006.  He recently participated in a panel presentation on Advertising and Solicitation at a meeting before the Legal Marketing Association of New England.  He conducted a seminar for the Boston Bar Association in March 2008 on the intersections of the bar discipline process and professional liability actions and spoke at the MCLE Professional Liability Seminar ( on the intersections of the bar discipline process and professional liability actions) and, as well, at the Real Estate Bar Association Spring Conference in May 2008 ( on multiple client representations).     

He is a member of the Supreme Judicial Court's Advisory Committee on Clerks of Courts (1997 - the present) and a member of the Massachusetts Bar Association's Ad Hoc Committee on Proposed Revisions to the Massachusetts Rules of Professional Conduct.  He is a former Instructor of Law at Boston University Law School and New England School of Law.

Mr. Bolan is "AV" rated in Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory.