Abby Landon, Wool Landon Law LLC
“Estate planning and probate lawyers must address
their own succession plans to effectively safeguard yours”
In the trust and estate litigation space, we represent clients whose lack of an ongoing relationship with an estate planning attorney led to costly probate disputes and other fiduciary litigation. Outdated estate plans that are not updated while the client is still able to participate in the planning process can lead to litigation disputes and family conflict. I can’t count how many times I have heard, “I’ll never talk to my sister [brother, father, aunt or uncle] again” or “we had an attorney prepare our will 30 years ago, but they retired and I don’t know where the original is.”
One essential key to good estate planning is participating with your lawyer in an effective plan maintenance program where you revisit your documents and your family situation on a regular basis. Your lawyer and their law firm should be interested in your future — not just today’s fee and today’s circumstances.
A good succession plan for trust and estates firms is just as essential for the clients as it is for the firm. This is just as true for a large firm with an estate planning and probate department as it is for a solo practitioner. A primary purpose I left larger law firms and opened Wool Landon® was to implement a succession plan that would ensure generations of clients would have reliable service and smooth administrations when they needed it now, and in the future. Sole practitioners retire or close their practices and commonly lose track of their clients and their files. This often means that they produce estate planning documents, but their planning doesn’t look very far into the future. Many use prepackaged software to reduce the costs of drafting for special circumstances. Full service firms do not have the same laser focus on trusts and estates and their administration as a boutique firm. The failure of a lawyer’s own succession plan can hurt the consumer in profound ways. Original documents can be lost, and important estate plan updates and continuity can fall to the wayside if an attorney is no longer there to oversee the work and continue those relationships.
At Wool Landon®, we have a client maintenance program and revisit plans with our clients on a scheduled basis to make sure their plan is still working for their circumstances. Our attorneys and hiring decisions are based on the current and the future needs of our firm and its clients so that we will be here now and, in the future, when our clients need us.