By Kristina Schneider, Practice Success Coach It’s a fact in just about every single office, conflict is going to happen. There are times when the workplace is going to be stressful. There are going to be different people with different personalities and with different things going on in both their personal and professional lives. Regardless of what industry you’re in, but especially in an estate, tax or financial planning practice, what is inevitable is that, at some point or another, there will be conflict. Knowing and implementing the steps to properly handle this conflict, while they may seem obvious and…
It’s Time to Stop Using Health, Education, Maintenance and Support Trusts!
By Steven J. Oshins, Esq., AEP (Distinguished) Thanks to the generosity of Leimberg Information Services, we are pleased to provide you this recently published article on LISI. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Nearly Everybody Nearly every estate planning attorney uses “health, education, maintenance and support” (“HEMS”) as a distribution standard in the trusts they draft. This language is probably found in more than 95% of the trusts that are drafted nowadays. Some trusts use it as the sole method of making trust distributions, whereas others have provisions giving an interested trustee the ability to distribute under this standard and also allow an independent trustee…
The Top 20 Seminar Marketing Mistakes (Part 1 of 2)
By Philip J. Kavesh, J.D., LL.M. (Taxation), CFP®, ChFC, California State Bar Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust & Probate Law Over the years, seminar presentations sure have evolved, from overhead transparencies, to slide carousel projectors to laptops and LCD projectors. But despite these technological changes, the fundamental rules of successful seminar marketing have remained the same. I learned these rules only after personally presenting thousands of seminars – – and making lots of mistakes – – so I thought I would assemble what I have found to be the “Top 20 Seminar Mistakes”, so you can avoid having to…
4 Things Google Says Your Estate Planning Content Needs to Do
By Foster Web Marketing What makes your website content “good” for marketing your estate planning firm? Why does some content rank easily at the top of search while other content suffers? While producing excellent content is one of the very best things you can do to drive new clients to your website from organic search, it’s also one of the most difficult things to get right. This leaves a lot of estate planning practices producing blogs, FAQs, and articles for their websites every month without a clear reason or strategy. Unfortunately, directionless content tends to be pretty directionless in attracting…
Tips to Maintaining a Positive Online Reputation
By Kristina Schneider, Practice Success Coach With the growing use of the internet, clients, prospective clients and professional referral sources will look you up online and learn about you before they decide to do business with you. So, you have to maintain a quality online presence, more than merely having a good website. You also must maintain a positive online reputation! First, let’s start with some basic questions: Have you ever Googled yourself or your firm before? Do you know that Yelp, Google, and Facebook create profiles for your business (even if you didn’t initiate one) and customers can leave…
5 Reasons Your Email Marketing Campaigns Aren’t Working
By Foster Web Marketing Email marketing has been around for a while, but don’t underestimate its value. It is still a cost-effective and direct way to nurture your active estate planning clients, promote niche services, and bring in new business for your law firm. However, for all the benefits, a lot of law firms end up frustrated with email marketing. They feel like they put a lot of time and effort into crafting and launching email campaigns, only to be disappointed by the results. If you’ve ever labored over creating a newsletter, campaign, or outreach email that didn’t perform as…
Blow Up Your Annual Client Maintenance Program!
By Philip J. Kavesh, J.D., LL.M. (Taxation), CFP®, ChFC, California State Bar Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust & Probate Law In this article, I addressed the marketplace issues confronting estate planning attorneys, in particular commoditization of our “products” and increasing low price competition. One of the ways that I discussed to combat these issues is to emphasize how your “product” is better than your competitors’. Another way to differentiate yourself is to emphasize your “service after the sale.” When someone purchases a car, he or she wants to know what kind of service or maintenance program is available and what…
Shohei Ohtani and the Choice of Trustee
By Steven J. Oshins, Esq., AEP (Distinguished) Anybody who follows sports knows about Shohei Ohtani’s former best friend and interpreter (Ippei Mizuhara) stealing more than $16 million from Ohtani’s bank account to fund his gambling addiction. Ohtani is the modern-day Babe Ruth on the baseball field, but he clearly has bad taste in friends, at least with respect to Ippei Mizuhara. Choosing Trustees When our clients form trusts, they make decisions about current and successor trustees and who can remove and replace trustees. It is likely that Ohtani selected (or would have selected if he hasn’t yet formed any trusts)…
64 Years of Combined Experience Running a Successful Estate Planning Practice
An Interview of Phil Kavesh’s Two Most Senior Employees Interview by Kristina Schneider, Practice Success Coach I had the most amazing experience to go on a trip with nationally renowned estate planning attorney and Ultimate Estate Planning Attorney, Phil Kavesh’s, Law Firm Office Manager (Arlyn V. or “AV”). We went out to Florida to visit with his Senior Estate Planning Paralegal (Elaine A. or “EYA”). Elaine just celebrated her 34th anniversary working for Phil and Arlyn will be celebrating 30 years this August. During our trip, not only did we get the opportunity to stop by a client’s office and…
The Upcoming 2025 Trust Tsunami and How to Handle it
By Steven J. Oshins, Esq., AEP (Distinguished) The estate and gift tax exemption is scheduled to drop in half at the beginning of 2026. This is going to shift the supply/demand ratio so far in favor of estate planners that wealthy prospective clients who know they need to make their large gifts need to start acting now. If wealthy clients wait until the last minute, they will likely find that no capable estate planners have any capacity to get the gift trust(s) drafted, executed and funded by the end of 2025. Act Now! One strategy is to get the gift…