By Philip J. Kavesh, J.D., LL.M. (Taxation), CFP®, ChFC, California State Bar Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust & Probate Law As we head into the final weeks of the year, you may experience some pushback from clients and prospective clients you are meeting with. In particular, they may say that the holiday time is too busy and they’d like to revisit things sometime next year. The problem with this is that once they leave your office, it’ll be much harder to circle back with them, get them in, and get them re-motivated to do the planning and do business…
Nevada Restricted LLC/LP – How to Get Larger Valuation Discount
By Steven J. Oshins, Esq., AEP (Distinguished) A large part of estate planning involves using techniques to compress value to transfer assets of larger value to the next generation with minimal taxes. To do this, estate planners often use family limited liability companies and family limited partnerships to facilitate gifting and installment sales of minority interests or non-voting interests to family members or irrevocable trusts for the benefit of family members. Under Code Section 2704(b) and Treasury Regulations §25.2704-2(a), if an interest in an entity is transferred to or for the benefit of a member of the transferor’s family, any…
One of the Most Important Documents that Most Estate Planners Don’t Have
By Kristina Schneider, Practice Success Coach If you’re an estate planning attorney with your own law practice, there’s a good chance that you don’t have one of the most important manuals in your practice: an Employee Handbook. In fact, this may also be the case for other estate planning professionals as well, such as CPAs, financial advisors, or life insurance agents. The fact is, if you have your own business and you have employees working for you, an employee handbook is a must-have necessity as part of your business for all of the reasons laid out below. What Kinds of…
How Estate Planning Firms Use Pay-Per-Click Advertising Responsibly
By Foster Web Marketing Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) isn’t as easy or cheap as some marketing companies would have you believe. It’s a highly competitive marketing channel, especially for lawyers. That constant competition drives up the cost of popular keywords, even when those keywords aren’t necessarily effective at attracting the clients and cases you want. It also takes high-level research, technical know-how, and constant adjustment to get a good return on your PPC investment. So, if you approach it with the expectation that it’s going to be this simple, single-channel solution to all your marketing woes, you’re going to be disappointed. …
Top 10 Year-End Practice-Building & Marketing Ideas of 2024
By Kristina Schneider, Practice Success Coach As we head into the final quarter of 2024, you may be wondering where all the time went and what can you do in these final two months to really help your practice end the year with a BANG! I’ve put together what I consider to be the Top 10 Year-End Practice-Building and Marketing Ideas for 2024 so that you can end this year on a productive, positive note and head into 2025 with some momentum! IDEA #1: Clean up your database. Now is a great time to take a look at your database…
FOMO: How the Fear of Missing Out Will Cause Bad Estate Planning Decisions Before the 12/31/2025 Sunset
By Steven J. Oshins, Esq., AEP (Distinguished) When the clock strikes midnight the evening of December 31, 2025, the federal estate and gift exemption will drop in half and many wealthy people will kick themselves for failing to make their gifts and use their gift tax exemption in time. That is, assuming the incoming President and Congress don’t extend the current laws before they expire. What is FOMO? “FOMO” is the fear of missing out. Many wealthy people fear missing out on their large gifting prior to the end of end of 2025. If the federal estate and gift tax…
2024 National Estate Planning Awareness Week
The third week of October is National Estate Planning Awareness Week. This year, it’s October 21-27. Bringing awareness and educating the public about estate planning is crucial to not only keeping families out of Probate Court, but also for helping manage, preserve and distribute their hard-earned assets to their loved ones, as they wish. To help spread the word about estate planning and National Estate Planning Awareness Week, feel free to download and use the image below in your public marketing (website, blogs, newsletters, social media, etc.).
You Need a Strong Review Strategy to Attract More Estate Planning Clients
By Foster Web Marketing A lot of the estate planning lawyers I talk to see reviews as a kind of nice “extra.” They don’t ask for them. They don’t look for them, and they don’t necessarily know what kind of impact their reviews are having on their incoming visitors and leads. In a profession that depends on your good name and reputation, doesn’t that seem like a huge oversight? Someone checking out your estate planning firm for the first time wants to know what kinds of experiences other people have had. They want to know if you can actually help…
The Top 6 Reasons You Should Be Giving Seminars
By Philip J. Kavesh, J.D., LL.M. (Taxation), CFP®, ChFC, California State Bar Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust & Probate Law For estate planning attorneys, all of the technical and legal education in the world is great, but if you are not able to bring in prospective clients to plan for, there is no way for you to be able to successfully run your own estate planning practice. If you regularly receive referrals from other sources, such as financial advisors, CPAs, life insurance agents or other attorneys, that’s great. However, what happens if those referrals stop? How consistent and predictable…
How Estate Planners Can Make The Most of Their Contact List
By Foster Web Marketing Finding perfect new clients for your estate planning firm is difficult. You have to do all the work to figure out where they are, make meaningful connections, build trust, and convince them that you are the right fit for their needs. My team and I help estate planning attorneys do this every day, and I’ll be the first to admit it. It’s necessary, and it gets results—but this stuff is tough! However, you probably already have something that could be an incredible shortcut toward getting great clients. You probably already have something that takes so many…