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Are you where you wanted to be when you started practicing law? Has your law firm grown according to your plan? Did you start out with a plan? Many attorneys don’t have a plan for their practices – they just jump in and start practicing law, and keep doing it, thinking that if they’re good enough and work hard enough, things will just work out.
Unfortunately, things rarely “just work out.” The result is that you work and work until eventually you’re a slave to your practice. Reaching a place where you’re happy and fulfilled with your practice starts with stepping back and asking yourself some fundamental questions about where your law firm really is, and where you want it to be.
Once you’ve answered these questions, you’ll have the basis for making changes to your practice so you can get to a point where your practice works for you…and not the other way around.
I’ve found that there are three simple components to making lasting changes in the way you operate your practice:
- Have well-defined, specific measurable goals. Most peoples’ “goals” are so vaguely defined that they’re really just dreams
- Have a structure for honest, consistent measurement of your progress toward the goals. You need to know, step-by-step, how you plan to reach your goals.
- Find someone to whom you can be accountable for regularly reporting progress on your goals. This is the most important ingredient to actually changing things. You need someone you can trust and who will hold your feet to the fire and make sure you really do what you say you’re going to do.
Setting and reaching goals to transform your practice is one of the topics we’ll be discussing on our teleconference for non-member attorneys coming up on August 10th. If you’d like to join us, you can send an email to info@aaepa.com, and we’ll be happy to send you the registration information.
Sanford M. Fisch
CEO & C0-Founder
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
6050 Santo Road, Suite 240
San Diego, CA 92124
www.aaepa.com
In order to become – and remain – a top performer in any field, it’s my belief that you need a coach. Even if you’ve been adept at your practice area for decades, you’re not exempt from a basic, universal human truth: it’s impossible for us to see ourselves the way that others see us. Because of this, we often judge ourselves based not only on what we actually do, but also on our intentions and motivations. Not so for the people around us; they respond to us based on what we do.
It’s important to have someone who knows your goals and who will honestly and constructively help you see how you really come across, and what the actual impact of your actions is. How can you make changes and improvements if you don’t really know what you need to do? Even if nothing is particularly wrong, getting a different perspective on things can change your outlook and enrich your professional life.
In addition to giving you an accurate reflection of yourself and helping you figure out what direction you need to take, a coach is someone to whom you can be accountable. Having someone who will keep tabs on how you’re progressing toward your goals, and who will challenge you if you’re falling short on promises you’ve made yourself, is an essential element of actually reaching your destination.
Even Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, has a coach. Consider his Forbes magazine interview on the value of coaching: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVfeezxmYcA.
For those of you who do have a coach – how has he or she helped you improve your practice?
Robert Armstrong
President & Co-Founder
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
6050 Santo Road, Suite 240
San Diego, CA 92124
(858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com
This week my wife’s grandmother passed away and I was reminded how similar weddings and funerals really are. I know this sounds crazy, but these two events have all of the same basic elements.
Weddings and funeral ceremonies are both held in a church, synagogue, or some other type of facility. They both have flowers and decorations, they both typically have music, both have a minister or someone who officiates the service, there’s usually a lot of food at both occasions, and they both have a lot of family travel. In our case, we saw people this week at the funeral that we hadn’t seen since our wedding and we probably won’t see again until another wedding or funeral takes place in our family!
Typically with a wedding you have 6-12 months to prepare. Even though this is a very joyous occasion it can still be very stressful… I know it was for my wife and I! However, with a funeral you usually only have about 6-12 hours to plan. Without proper planning and guidance this can be very difficult on the surviving family when you compound all of the planning that goes into this event especially with the confusion, stress and grief that accompanies the loss of a loved one.
Helping my wife’s family plan this funeral reminded me of all the details that go into planning a funeral. It also reminded me how a well planned funeral ceremony can truly celebrate a life and help them leave a lasting legacy!
I know this is something that none of us want to think about, but it’s going to happen to all of us. With this in mind, we need to be prepared to make it a little easier on our families, and in the case of estate planning attorneys, our clients as well. As I learned this week, this can truly be one of the greatest gifts you can leave your family!
Bryan W. Adams is President & CEO of Premier Planning, LLC and Founder of Legacy Safeguard. Bryan is considered one of the nations’ leading experts on final expense planning, and he frequently speaks throughout the country about the importance of assisting clients to gain peace of mind through advanced funeral funding.
Bryan’s passion for helping families prepare for their final expenses came from being raised in the funeral business. His family still owns and operates several funeral homes, and he is constantly amazed at how unprepared families are when a death occurs. Bryan has worked tirelessly to help Americans plan for the inevitable and lessen the burden on their loved ones.
Academy Guest Blogger
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
6050 Santo Road, Suite 240
San Diego, CA 92124
www.aaepa.com
As my friend Michael Gerber says, “Without people, you don’t own a practice – you own a job.” Yet, managing the people in your firm can be one of the most stressful aspects of your practice. Most lawyers, when they have a position to fill within their firm, advertise the vacant position and then conduct interviews, hoping to find the perfect employee. They look for someone with relevant experience, and often hire the candidate they’re most drawn to… the one who’s most like them.
Once the new employee is on board, typically he or she is handed a list of responsibilities and left to sink or swim. Sometimes this works out, and sometimes hiring the wrong person turns out to be a time-consuming and costly mistake. Not the best recipe for creating a team of happy, committed, loyal employees.
Now consider a strikingly different scenario. Before the time ever comes to hire a new employee, you’ve designed and implemented systems for every activity that takes place within your firm. There’s a system in place for exactly how the hiring process itself is conducted, there’s a system for monitoring new-hires to make sure that they’re truly the right fit for the job. There are systems for how clients are greeted and for how documents are produced and finalized. From day one, every employee is aware of how his or her job is to be done – there’s no uncertainty.
With these systems in place, your main focus as you interview candidates is not their experience, but the personality and talents of each candidate and how he or she will fit with your firm’s systems. For example, your focus when hiring a receptionist is on finding someone who’s a warm and outgoing people-person, and not necessarily finding someone who’s got a resume a mile long.
Finding people with the right personalities and talents for their particular roles within your firm is essential to having employees who are happy and productive in their jobs. They know what’s expected of them and are well-suited to doing it. When every employee knows that their job is integral to your practice, you build a team that’s invested in your firm’s success.
Putting the right people with the right skills in the right position is such an important part of building a successful practice. We talk about it in The E-Myth Attorney and it’s also on the agenda for a teleseminar we have coming up on August 10th. If you’d like to join us for the teleseminar, you can send an email to info@aaepa.com and we’ll send you the registration information.
Robert Armstrong
President & Co-Founder
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
6050 Santo Road, Suite 240
San Diego, CA 92124
(858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com
When New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner died this month, he left an estate with an estimated value of $1.15 billion, primarily the Yankees major league baseball team. The fact that he died in 2010, during the one-year repeal of the federal estate tax and the Generation Skipping Transfer (GST) tax, was especially good timing for those he left behind. In baseball, timing is important to hitting the ball. Estate planning attorneys know that Steinbrenner’s timing was a homerun—and may have saved his heirs more than $500 million in estate taxes.
But this year, along with the repeal in the estate tax came a change in the rules for calculating the income tax basis for heirs. In previous years, heirs who inherited property got a step-up in the property’s income tax basis to the property’s fair market value. Upon eventual sale of the property, the heirs would only pay capital gains tax on the difference between the future sales price for the property and the property’s value at the time they inherited it.
For people dying this year, they leave their property to their heirs with an adjusted carryover basis instead of the stepped-up basis. When the heirs sell the inherited property, they will pay capital gains tax on the difference between the future sales price for the property and the adjusted basis of the property in the hands of the decedent. This can make for quite a difference in the income tax owed by Steinbrenner’s heirs down the road.
Let’s assume that Steinbrenner’s only asset is the Yankees and it’s worth $1.15 billion. Every indication right now is that the franchise will stay in the family, but if the Steinbrenner heirs decided to sell, they’d be income taxed on the difference between the value of the team at the date of sale and the adjusted basis of $11.3 million (the $10 million Steinbrenner paid when he purchased the team in 1973 plus $1.3 million in additional basis which his executor can allocate to assets Steinbrenner owned at his death in 2010). Thus, if the heirs sold the team they would owe capital gains tax on $1,138,700,000.
If Steinbrenner had died next year, his estate would have owed estate taxes at 55%, or $632.5 million. Instead his heirs might owe $227 million in capital gains taxes (at a 20% rate).
Steinbrenner hit a home run in 2010 by avoiding the potentially huge amount of estate tax or GST tax that might have been levied on his estate, but it wasn’t a grand slam… his heirs lost the step-up in basis that they would have gotten in any other year.
Stephen C. Hartnett, J.D., LL.M.
Associate Director of Education
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorney, Inc.
6050 Santo Road, Suite 240
San Diego, CA 92124
www.aaepa.com
Our profession seems to be reaching a crisis point. More and more attorneys have become slaves to their practices. They’re constantly putting out fires, and the way they use their time is dictated by the circumstances that surround them. They’re on a treadmill, working endless hours while they sacrifice time with their families, time for their interests outside the law, and often their own health. A lot of lawyers are wondering why they practice law, and many are choosing to leave the profession altogether.
If you recognize yourself in this description, the question you need to ask yourself is whether you’re actively managing your time, or whether time is managing you. To get a definitive answer to this question, you can log your time for a week. The best way to get a clear picture of where your time is going is to grab a stopwatch and write down when you start and when you stop each individual task that you become engaged in every day. If you’re really concerned about work-life balance, you’ll want to keep this time log all day long, and not just while you’re at work. You’ll also want to be as detailed as possible.
Once you’ve logged your time for a week, you can go back through your log and categorize each task. You’ll likely have spent time in client meetings, taking care of administrative tasks around the office, making phone calls, playing with your kids… you get the idea. Once you have all of your tasks categorized, you can figure out what percentage of your time was spent in each category.
Think about your strengths and figure out what tasks make up the best use of your time. Does your log reflect that you’re spending most of your time doing these things? If not, what can you do to move toward spending your time on these most important tasks? One quick tip: Decide on a daily basis what your most important tasks are. When you get to the office, do these things before you do anything else? You’ll be amazed at how much your efficiency and productivity will increase.
Taking control of your time is one of the things we focus on in The E-Myth Attorney and it’s something we’ll be talking about on our August 10th teleseminar. If you’re interested in joining us on this call, you can send an email to info@aaepa.com and we’ll get you the registration information.
Sanford M. Fisch
CEO & Co-Founder
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
6050 Santo Road, Suite 240
San Diego, CA 92124
(858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com
Do your earnings justify the hours you work? Especially in this economy, the answer I hear from the vast majority of attorneys is a resounding “No!” Particularly if you’re a law firm owner — there’s just too much to do on a daily basis, and inconsistency in revenues is the order of the day.
We learned about the law while we were in law school, but consider everything else that’s required just to keep a law firm afloat. In addition to doing the legal work, there’s a mountain of phone calls and e-mails to return, new technology to figure out, questions from employees to answer, human resources issues to deal with, plus the task of staying on top of developments in the law. I don’t know about you, but they didn’t teach me all this stuff in law school.
Then there’s the fact that, for many practitioners, revenues are becoming more and more inconsistent. Thanks to online sites and fill-in-the-blank forms, legal services are becoming commoditized like never before. This is leading clients away from seeking sound legal advice and toward do-it-yourself solutions.
The response that most lawyers have to this situation is to work longer, harder hours just to try to keep up. The result is diminishing returns when it comes to earnings, leading some of us to wonder if it’s all worth it.
Ready for a surprise? We’ve found that clients don’t care all that much about technical proficiency — they assume that if you’ve got a law degree, you know what you’re doing. What draws clients to a lawyer — and what keeps them loyal — is that they’ve found a trusted advisor who doesn’t just have legal expertise, but who cultivates relationships and consistently delivers on promises.
One of the things you need to do to reach a point where you’re no longer spinning your wheels, is to adopt a relationship-building system for your practice. This means not only remaining in contact with your clients, but making sure that every contact that a client or prospective client has with your firm, exceeds their expectations. From the first phone contact with your receptionist, to what they see when they first set foot in your lobby, to whether or not their phone calls are returned promptly — everything about your firm should be crafted to exceed your clients’ expectations.
For example:
- Every employee needs to understand exactly how each client is greeted, how the phone is answered, how documents are drafted and sent to the client for review, and what happens at document signings. Clear, consistent expectations for these things will lead to consistently excellent client experiences.
- You need a plan for communicating with each client six to twelve times each year. This can be in the form of a blog, newsletters, seminars, or client appreciation events, to name a few.
- You need a system for keeping track of every contact that a client has with anyone in your firm — from the receptionist, to a paralegal, to an attorney.
This may sound like just more extra work, but if you have a system in place for building relationships, and the system is understood and implemented by everyone in your firm, then the guesswork disappears. Like clockwork, every contact a client or prospective client has with your firm will be one that’s geared toward building a long-term, trusted relationship. This, in turn, will lead to less work for you, as well as greater income for your firm.
This is a topic we’ve talked a lot about in “The E-Myth Attorney” and we have also planned on discussing it on a teleseminar coming up on August 10th, let us know if you want registration information for the call (e-mail info@aaepa.com) and we’ll be happy to get the information to you.
Robert Armstrong
President & Co-Founder
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
6050 Santo Road, Suite 240
San Diego, CA 92124
(858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com
Last week, Judge Joseph Tauro of the Massachusetts federal district court ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional on Tenth Amendment and Equal Protection grounds.
DOMA is the 1996 federal law that defines marriage as the legal union exclusively between one man and one woman. It also prohibits the federal government and its agencies from extending the benefits of marriage, which are available to married heterosexual couples, to married same-sex couples. Examples of the benefits for which married same-sex couples are ineligible under DOMA include social security survivor benefits and IRS joint tax filing status.
Judge Tauro struck down the portion of DOMA that deals with the denial of benefits to same-sex couples, agreeing with the Plaintiffs that:
- “The federal government, by enacting and enforcing DOMA, plainly encroaches upon the firmly entrenched province of the state, and in doing so, offends the Tenth Amendment.”
- The Act violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The judge found no rational basis for the federal government’s denial of federal benefits to married homosexual couples while granting the same benefits to similarly situated married heterosexual couples.
Possible Implications
As it stands, the ruling is limited to Massachusetts. However, the Department of Justice is likely to appeal the ruling to the First Circuit Court of Appeals. So far, six states (CA (as to marriages from June 16, 2008 – November 5, 2008), CT, IA, MA, NH, and VT) and the District of Columbia recognize same-sex marriage. As the case works its way up the ladder of appeals, the implications may broaden.
This case is worth watching because of the potential implications it has for our same-sex clients with regard to a broad range of federal programs and issues.
- Social Security. Currently, surviving same-sex spouses are not eligible for social security survivor benefits.
- Federal Income Tax. Currently, same-sex married couples are not eligible to use the married filing jointly status on their federal income tax returns.
- Federal Gift Tax. Currently, same-sex married couples are not eligible for the unlimited gift tax marital deduction allowed to other married couples.
- Federal Estate Tax. Currently, same-sex married couples are not eligible for the unlimited estate tax marital deduction allowed to other married couples.
But, there could be some disadvantages for married same-sex couples, as well. The federal ban on recognition of same-sex marriage embodied in DOMA has provided some planning advantages for married same-sex couples which would disappear. For example, Grantor Retained Income Trusts (GRITs) may not be done if the donor and beneficiaries are “related.” Same-sex married couples are not “related” for federal estate and gift tax purposes and currently can do GRITs for each other. If the marriages of same-sex couples are recognized under federal law, GRITs would no longer be available to these couples.
Stay tuned as we see whether the Department of Justice appeals this case.
Stephen C. Hartnett, J.D., LL.M.
Associate Director of Education
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
6050 Santo Road, Suite 240
San Diego, CA 92124
(858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com
Most of us judge ourselves on our motivations rather than our actions. However, employees only get to judge us by our actions. Getting in touch with what we’re doing rather than what we intended is a huge step in the right direction when it comes to managing employees!
There are two common flashpoints that adversely impact employee performance.
1. The employee is unclear about the manager’s expectations.
Goals should cascade down from the owner to his employees so that everyone understands how they contribute to the objectives of the team. To check the alignment in your office it is helpful to ask “What are the top three priorities in your role? “Why is this so important?” The way these questions are answered will give a lot of good clues for developing the manager/employee relationship.
2. Managers fail to adapt their styles to the employees’ preferred styles.
Every employee/manager relationship is unique and requires a different management approach. For example, the approach taken by a highly decisive boss working with a highly decisive employee should be significantly different from the approach taken by this same boss when working with a less decisive employee.
Managers and employees who understand each other’s preferred styles will better understand how to communicate and work together effectively. We have identified seven factors that strongly predict the compatibility between a manager and employees. These are: self-assurance, self reliance, conformity, optimism, decisiveness, objectivity, and approach to learning.
Relying on the assessment of a manager and employees allows objective information to be used to work more effectively toward a common goal.
Linda Winlock is the owner and President of Personnel Profiling Inc. Established in 1987, Personnel Profiling provides organization development, employment assessments and human resource services to companies throughout the nation. Linda has over 20 years of experience working with all types of industries and company sizes. In addition, she is an Area Director for Profiles International. Profiles International provides employment assessments and services to over 40,000 clients in 122 countries. Linda’s formal education includes a Master’s Degree in Education with a concentration in counseling psychology. She is available for phone consultation at (502)895-9297 or by email at lwinlock@personnelprofiling.com and www.personnelprofiling.com.
Academy Guest Blogger
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
6050 Santo Road, Suite 240
San Diego, CA 92124
(858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com
Creating a business is not necessarily all about columns of numbers and cash flow. An entrepreneur, and let’s face it, that’s what attorneys with their own practice are, creates a place where employees spend a large percentage of their life and a place where clients can change the course of their lives.
Looking at your law practice as a place where you can have a positive impact on others – can give your life meaning. It can fulfill the dreams you have for yourself and your own family. Empowering talented people you hire to join you in your pursuit to make a difference is one level of success you can measure. By delegating the tasks that don’t require legal advice, you are creating time to make a difference in more clients’ lives and gives you the freedom to run a business.
Keeping a time log for a short while of all of the “tasks,” busy work and actual legal work that you do is a great place to start when it comes to identifying exactly what you can delegate.
Those attorneys who are unwilling to delegate are often full of excuses as to why their situation is unique instead of putting a plan in place to change their circumstances. Some of the most common excuses not to delegate include:
- I don’t have the staff in place to delegate to
- The staff I have isn’t of the caliber that could handle the responsibility
- My staff is skilled and talented enough but I don’t have time to train them
- I don’t think anyone can do a particular task as well as I can do it
Which one of these is likely the biggest reason? What responsibilities are you hanging onto that would free up your time to do something more meaningful for your practice and your clients?
Jennifer Price
Director, Member Services
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
6050 Santo Road, Suite 240
San Diego, CA 92124
(858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com
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