The Business of Estate Planning is in the midst of a revolution- or is it? BRANDON RAINS discusses advising clients responsibly, profitability, and the “firm of the future.”

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BRANDON RAINS from the Denver-based Rains Law Firm and I discuss estate planning in an era of artificial intelligence, scalability, the democratization of advice being delivered by non-lawyers and the fun and games that exist when people die and plans go into action.

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Outline for the BUSINESS OF ESTATE PLANNING

• What is involved with the process of educating/advising a person or family ?


• Good judgement, discretion, and experience is something worth paying for


• What does drafting and implementing involve?


• The benefits of “Professional Liability” and experience


• The intersection with technology / AI / drafting tools


• The dangers of DIY


• How to be a good client and get to adult conversations sooner


• Puttng thought into staffing important roles (and backups)


• Ongoing maintenance / administration

Transcript

Frazer Rice (00:02 .954)
I’m Frazer Rice. Today we have Brandon Rains. He is a practitioner in Colorado and owns his law firm in Denver. We’re going to talk a little bit about the business of estate planning and what it’s like to have an ongoing profitable enterprise when trying to help people arrange their affairs and do the right thing as far as advising. Brandon, welcome aboard.

Brandon Rains (00:22 .222)

Thanks, Frazer. Pleasure to be here.

Frazer Rice (00:23 .926)

So we’ve had a nice back and forth on the topic and maybe tell us a little bit about your practice generally and what you do, who your ideal client is, and then we can go into why we think it’s important to get paid for this type of advice.

Brandon Rains (00:42 .254)

I my own firm about nine years ago, the Raines Law Firm, very originally and imaginatively named. I was leaving my previous firm, was interviewing with a bunch of other attorneys trying to find a good landing spot, and it just kind of hit home to me through those conversations and kind of debriefing with my mentor that they’re lots of times the state planning attorneys interact with their clients in the same way, generally speaking across the board.

In some of those aspects, just not necessarily how I’m wired as a person, not that it’s necessarily better or worse or anything like that. I just felt that there might be more space and to kind of throw my elbows around within my own firm to kind of figure out what that could look like for me and serve clients in the best way possible. so started from scratch and still here and alive and kicking.

Frazer Rice (01:38 .028)

So one of the things that I think is interesting is, I talk to people all the time and they indicate that they don’t understand the process of drafting and implementing and what does a lawyer actually do in putting together in a state plan? Take us through little bit about the process of advising and educating a client to help them understand what they’re identifying as far as an issue is concerned and then solving it.

Brandon Rains (02:04 .942)

Well, I mean, think some of it is some of that answer is kind of what you would expect, right, which is asking good questions and listening. Beyond that, I think a lot of attorneys are going to be really different. I know that some attorneys that I’ve talked to, they have very strong feelings about our role to make recommendations, sometimes even tell the client what’s best for them or not. I think there are some situations where that makes sense.

Again, it’s even though that’s not how I go about it, I think that they have, there’s some good sense there too. Some, think there’s a lot of decisions that can be personal that the client is best positioned to make those decisions of. so for me personally, kind of shy away from making recommendations for the most part, helping them have the information and advice and counsel that they’re looking for, for them to decide what’s best for them and their family. That’s kind of the tack that I take.

For other attorneys, I know that they have stronger feelings. It’s like, we are not going to do this. This is not a good option. This is, you know, the best ones might say that and then explain why. But generally speaking, walking the clients through the decision-making process, I think offering that advice, being able to explain things in layman’s terms is so incredibly vital and important.

Throwing… Legal jargon in our world doesn’t really offer too much help to people. They’re just going to end up just dazed and confused and going along with whatever you say because they don’t understand any better.

I think deep down at the end of the day, that’s not really anything that what anybody wants. then, you know, understanding the questions that we’re asking, the decisions that we’re guiding our clients through is vital. as I understand, we’re gonna be talking even more about later on the benefits of working with an attorney as opposed to other options out there.

But I think it’s kind of touching on that. And then on the back office side, you know, there’s over the last 10, 15 years, the growth of centralized drafting software programs has proliferated.

Brandon Rains (04:31 .982)

Whereas before each firm would have their own templates and Word documents, copy, replace, copy, paste, and replace, and stuff like that. I know that there still some firms that still prefer to do it that way. But third party companies providing the forms that company, that attorneys or their staff use.has kind of proliferated.

I personally am in that camp just being able to learn from hundreds or thousands of other attorneys and their experiences and the process of keeping those documents up to date with legal changes. It’s a lot easier with something like that. But sometimes that sense of ownership of those documents is lessened when someone else has prepared them and updating them and maintaining them.

Sometimes it’s easy to take it for granted. But the process of drafting, the basic principles of drafting of legal advice are the same, really is we need to match the language that we prepare for our clients to their goals and their vision, their hopes, their dreams, their concerns. We really kind of capture all of that in the legal documents and do it in a way that’s understandable and ultimately is going to be effective after our clients have passed away.

Then of course, walking clients through them and explaining it in the hopes that maybe a week or two after they’ve signed their documents, they might remember a thing or two of what they’ve been fighting.

Frazer Rice (06:14 .719) on the business of estate planning

Always a challenge. One of the things I tell people is that you’re hiring an attorney to help you out on these situations because you’re going through it something that’s very complicated and opaque with huge ramifications for your life and after your life.

With this being usually the first and only time that they’re dealing with that, it’s helpful to have a very well-equipped sherpa to help you along that journey. But then you’re also paying for the good judgment, the discretion and the experience that working with hundreds of other situations brings to bear to the instant case. describe that experience for me.

You came from another firm, you decided to go this route and maybe a case study or something like that where a client really was able to find benefit from your having dealt with something similarly that occurred in your past experience.

Brandon Rains (07:17 .196)

Yeah, I mean it’s you know there’s so many examples, but so it’s interesting how often clients come in. Like even just this morning, had a client, a couple come in, we had an initial meeting and kind of partway through that conversation, I was like, hey, do you h