Episode 96: What to Expect When Hiring an Estate Planning Attorney
Episode 96
Host: Jill Mastroianni
What to Expect When Hiring an Estate Planning Attorney
Hiring an estate planning attorney shouldn’t require you to figure out your estate plan before you walk through the door.
You don’t need to know whether you need a Will or a trust. You don’t need to have every fiduciary selected or every beneficiary designation figured out. And you definitely don’t need to know what provisions should go into your documents. That’s part of what you’re hiring an attorney to help you determine.
In this episode, Jill takes you behind the scenes of the estate planning process and explains three things you should understand before hiring an estate planning attorney: scope, cost, and process.
She also walks through her own estate planning process, from the first conversation through drafting, document review, signing, implementation, and an optional Family Estate Planning Meeting—so you know what questions to ask when choosing an attorney and what a thoughtful estate planning process can look like.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
The three things to understand before hiring an estate planning attorney: scope, cost, and process.
What “scope of representation” actually means. Before focusing only on the price, understand exactly what the attorney has agreed to do. Does the fee include a Will or trust? Powers of attorney? Revisions? Signing? Trust funding? Beneficiary designation assistance?
What to ask about legal fees. Whether an attorney charges hourly, a flat fee, or some combination, you should understand how you’ll be charged, what is included, and when additional fees might apply.
Why process matters almost as much as the documents. Ask what happens after you hire the attorney. How many meetings will you have? When will you receive drafts? Will the attorney explain them? Can you request changes? What happens after signing?
Why you don’t need to arrive with all the answers. You don’t need to know whether you need a revocable trust or exactly what should happen in every possible scenario. Bring information about your family, assets, concerns, and goals. Your estate planning attorney can help you work through the legal solutions.
What actually goes into drafting an estate plan. Jill explains why she doesn’t start every Will with a blank Word document and how forms developed, used, and revised over approximately 14 years of practice provide a vetted foundation that can then be customized for each client’s circumstances.
Why understanding your documents matters. Receiving a stack of legal documents shouldn’t be the end goal. Jill explains how she reviews documents with clients so they understand what happens at death, who is in charge, what authority they’re giving someone under a power of attorney, and how any trusts will work.
Why signing doesn’t necessarily mean you’re finished. An estate plan may also require changes to asset ownership, beneficiary designations, or trust funding. Beautifully drafted documents may not accomplish what you intended if the implementation is never completed.
How much should your adult children know? Jill introduces her optional Family Estate Planning Meeting for estate planning clients, which can help adult children understand the big picture of their parents’ plan, where to find important information, who is in charge, and which professionals to contact, without requiring parents to disclose financial information they want to keep private.
Remember that you’re evaluating the attorney, too. Do you feel comfortable asking questions? Does the attorney explain things in a way you understand? Do you know what you’re paying for and what happens next? Do you feel heard? Choosing an estate planning attorney is a two-way decision.
Resources & Links
Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/bwP_SrhrLJs
Tennessee estate planning services: https://www.deathreadiness.com/estate-planning-solution
Start the estate planning process: https://www.deathreadiness.com/get-the-estate-planning-solution
Connect with Jill:
Website: DeathReadiness.com
Email: jill@deathreadiness.com
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Hiring an estate planning attorney shouldn’t mean walking into an office already knowing exactly what you need. You won’t know what kind of trust you might need, who should be your executor, or exactly what your documents should say. You’re hiring the attorney to figure that out. Today, I’m taking you behind the scenes of the estate planning process and giving you three things to understand before you hire an estate planning attorney: scope, cost, and process.
Welcome to The Death Readiness Podcast. This is not your dad’s estate planning podcast. I’m Jill Mastroianni — estate planning attorney, death readiness guide, and your translator for wills, trusts, probate, and the conversations most families avoid. If you’ve been wondering things like, “Can a trust protect what I leave to my children?” “What happens if I give someone power of attorney over me?” and “How can I help my parents while respecting their independence?” You’re in the right place.I’ve been practicing law for about 14 years. During that time, I’ve learned an enormous amount about estate planning, probate, trusts and tax law. I’ve worked with some incredibly smart lawyers who were very generous with their time and knowledge. I’ve taken classes. I’ve read statutes and cases. And I’ve sat through a whole lot of continuing legal education programs.
But now that I own my own law practice, I’m learning a whole different category of things, things they definitely did not teach me in law school. These are things like: How do you design a client experience? How do you communicate clearly? How do you make sure people know what happens next? How do you price legal work fairly? And how do you build a process that works well for both the client and the lawyer?
And I’ve become really intentional with that last one. Estate planning is already something a lot of people put off. Sometimes it’s because they don’t want to think about death. But sometimes I think it’s much simpler than that.
They just don’t know what happens when they call an estate planning attorney. Am I supposed to know whether I need a trust? Do I need to have all of my assets listed? Do I need to decide who gets everything before I make the appointment? How much is this going to cost? What if I don’t understand what the lawyer is talking about? What if I sign something and later realize I don’t actually know what it says?
Those are very reasonable questions. So today, I want to demystify the process a little bit. And whether you ever work with me or with another estate planning attorney, I want you to understand three things before you hire someone to create your estate plan:
Scope. Cost. And process. Those are the three words I want you to remember today. Scope. Cost. And process.
Let’s start with scope. A prospective client recently contacted me about estate planning. He initially asked what my hourly rate was. I gave it to him, but I also explained that, whenever possible, I prefer to charge a flat fee for estate planning work. That’s actually something I had wanted to do for a long time. But the law firms where I worked generally operated on an hourly billing model, so it wasn’t really up to me.
Now that I have my own practice, I get to make that choice. And for estate planning, I really like flat fees because I want clients to know what the work is going to cost before we get started. I don’t want someone sending an email and then wondering whether the clock just started running. And I don’t want you sitting through our estate planning meeting thinking, “Okay, we’re at 43 minutes. How much is this conversation costing me?”
But there’s an important part of flat-fee billing that I didn’t fully appreciate until I started running my own practice: A flat fee only works if we know what the work actually is. A few weeks after that initial conversation, this same prospective client contacted me again.
He told me what he was willing to pay me a specific amount to handle his estate planning. And before I had even responded, I received eight separate emails from him. Those emails contained all kinds of things. There were older estate planning documents that had been signed. There were newer estate planning documents another lawyer had drafted but that apparently had never been signed. There were handwritten notes on typed documents. There were conflicting instructions in different places.
And looking at everything sitting in my inbox, I realized there was a really useful lesson here. The problem wasn’t necessarily the number he had proposed but that neither one of us could yet answer a much more basic question:
What exactly are you asking me to do? Am I creating a brand-new estate plan? Am I reviewing the documents another attorney drafted? Am I trying to figure out which of several existing documents are still legally operative? Am I amending an existing plan? Am I starting over?
Those are very different projects. And they can require very different amounts of time. That is what lawyers mean when we talk about the scope of representation. What exactly have you hired the lawyer to do? And that matters enormously when you’re discussing fees. So if an attorney offers you a flat fee, I want you to ask: What does this fee include? Does it include a Will? A trust? Powers of attorney? A healthcare directive? Changes after the first drafts are prepared? Help updating beneficiary designations? Help funding a trust? A signing appointment?
A flat fee is really: This is what I will charge to perform this defined scope of work. That’s good for the lawyer but it’s also very good for the client. You know what you’re buying and the lawyer knows what they’ve agreed to deliver. And ideally, neither one of you is surprised halfway through the process.
One other quick practical point from that story. Before you send a prospective attorney a large volume of sensitive personal documents, ask if it’s okay that you send them. You should not email your financial and legal history to someone simply because you’re considering hiring them. And once you’re working with an attorney, find out how they want you to send confidential documents. Most attorneys have a secure client portal or another secure method for sharing sensitive information, and that’s a much better place for your tax returns, financial statements, and other confidential information than regular email.
Okay. That brings us to our second word: Cost. Estate planning attorneys charge in different ways. Some bill hourly, others charge flat fees and some use a combination depending on the type of work. And I’m not here to tell you that one system is universally better than another. But I do think you should understand how you will be charged before you hire someone.
If the attorney bills hourly, ask what that means. What billing increment does the firm use? Is it ¼ hour or 1/10 of an hour? Will a paralegal or another attorney also be working on the matter? If so, what are their rates? Can the attorney give you an estimate of what they think the entire matter will cost?
If the attorney charges a flat fee, ask what we just talked about: What exactly is included? Are revisions included? Is the signing included? Does the attorney help you with implementation of the estate plan after the documents are signed, like trust funding and updating beneficiary designations? Are there circumstances under which additional fees might apply? And please don’t feel awkward asking those questions. You’re hiring a professional so you should understand what you’re buying.
Which brings us to the third piece: Process. And I think this may be the one people are least likely to ask about. A lot of people focus on the documents. Do I get a Will? Do I get a trust? How many documents are included?
But the process matters almost as much as the documents themselves. So ask the attorney: What happens after I hire you? How many meetings will we have? What do you need from me? When will I see drafts? Will someone explain the documents to me? Can I request changes? How does signing work? What happens after signing? Who helps me with beneficiary designations or account ownership changes? And, again, there is no single correct system. But you should know what the system is.
And if you live in Tennessee and you’ve been thinking, “Okay, I really do need to get my estate plan done,” I’d be happy to help. My estate planning process is designed to make this as straightforward and understandable as possible. We’ll talk about your life, figure out what you actually need, and I’ll make sure you understand the documents we create—not just where to sign them. You can also learn more at deathreadiness.com/solutions. That’s deathreadiness.com/solutions.
Okay, I’ll give you my system as an example, not because every estate planning attorney should do things exactly the way I do, but because I think hearing one process makes it easier to recognize the questions you might want to ask about someone else’s.
When someone reaches out to me about estate planning, we start with a 30-minute introduction meeting over Zoom. And there is no estate planning homework before that meeting.
I do not expect you to show up with a spreadsheet listing every single asset you own, to know whether you need a Will or a trust, or who you’re naming as executor. We’re just going to talk. Maybe you tell me why you reached out. Did you have a baby? Did you get divorced? Are your parents getting older and making you realize that maybe you need to get your own estate plan in place?
We’ll chat generally about what you own, for example, do you own a house in another state? We’ll talk about your family. For example, do you have a child who needs additional protection? What are you worried about? What are you hoping to accomplish? I’ll ask questions and you’ll ask questions. And then we’ll decide whether working together makes sense.
If I think I can help, I’ll recommend a scope of work and give you a flat-fee quote. So before you hire me, you know what I’m recommending, what I’ll be doing, and what it’s going to cost. Scope. Cost. And process. All three start coming together.
If you decide you want to move forward, I send you an email with everything you need for the next step. And I do that very intentionally because I don’t want you leaving our first meeting thinking: “Okay. I hired an estate planning attorney. Now what?”
The email includes an overview of my estate planning process and a questionnaire. But, and I actually say this in the email, this is not homework. I know how estate planning questionnaires can feel. You open one and suddenly someone wants to know what you own, who should be in charge if you die, who you trust to make medical decisions, how your house is titled, who gets your money, who gets your stuff, what happens if one of your children dies before you… And you think: “I have no idea. That’s why I hired an estate planning attorney.”
Exactly. You do not need to create your own estate plan before you meet with your estate planning attorney. The questionnaire is there because some people like seeing the questions ahead of time. Maybe you want to start thinking about them, talk to your spouse, figure out whether your bank account is jointly owned or whether you have a beneficiary listed on that old life insurance policy. Great. But you don’t need to have all the answers.
So what is helpful? Have a basic sense of your life. Who is in your family? What do you own? How do you think those assets are titled? Do you already have estate planning documents? Are there particular people you trust to handle financial matters or medical decisions? Are there concerns you want your attorney to know about? Maybe one child is terrible with money, another child has special needs, or you’re remarried and want to provide for your spouse while also protecting an inheritance for your children. Maybe you own a business. Or, maybe your only concern is that you don’t want your family dealing with a mess someday.
Bring the facts. But you don’t need to bring the legal answers. That’s the lawyer’s job. Once someone hires me, we move into what I call the Tell Me About Your Life meeting. It’s a 60-minute estate planning meeting, and that’s really what I want you to do. Tell me about your life, your family, what you own and how you own it, what you’re worried about and what you’d like to happen.
And then we talk through your options. You don’t have to tell me, “I need a revocable trust with these exact provisions.” In fact, I would usually rather you not start there. Tell me the problem you’re trying to solve. Then we’ll figure out the right way to solve it. After that meeting, I go away for a week or two and do the lawyer stuff. I draft your documents.
And I want to explain a little bit about what that actually looks like, because I think there can be a misconception that lawyers sit down with a blank Word document and start typing your Will from scratch. I don’t. And you probably wouldn’t want me to.
I start with vetted forms. And when I say “forms,” I don’t mean forms that I purchased from a company or that come out of an estate planning software program. Now, there’s absolutely nothing inherently wrong with using legal drafting software. A lot of excellent estate planning attorneys do. It’s just not how I draft.
My forms are ones that I’ve developed, used, and revised over the course of about 14 years of practicing law. They’ve evolved as I’ve encountered different client situations, learned what language works well, found places where something could be clearer, and seen how estate plans actually operate after someone dies.
So when I say I start with a form, I’m really talking about the accumulated work of 14 years of drafting and revising these documents. For example, if I’m drafting a Will, I have about 14 different base forms I might start with. The one I use depends on your circumstances. Are you married or single? Do you have children? Do you have a taxable estate? Are your beneficiaries receiving assets outright, or are we creating trusts for them?
Starting with the right form gives me a solid foundation. The provisions that should be there are already there. The language has been vetted. I’m not reinventing the wheel every time I draft a Will and hoping I remember every provision that belongs in it.
That’s an important part of how I can create a high-quality estate plan efficiently. But the base Will is only the beginning. I also have a library of about 30 additional Will provisions for situations that don’t come up often enough to belong in every Will, but come up often enough that I’ve developed and vetted language for them.
A good example is a right of first refusal. Maybe you have three children, but one of them has a particular attachment to the family home. You want all three children to inherit equally, but you also want that child to have the first opportunity to buy the house, maybe for a specific price, or maybe at a price determined under a formula we establish in the Will.
I’m not starting from scratch to create that provision either. I pull the language I’ve already developed and vetted, and then I customize it for your family, your property, and what you want to accomplish. And that’s really how the drafting process works. The forms are the foundation, not the finished estate plan. I can’t just copy and paste my way to your estate plan, because your family, your assets, your concerns, and your goals are specific to you. But starting with a strong foundation allows me to spend my time customizing the provisions that actually need to be customized instead of recreating standard language every single time.
When your drafts are ready, I send them to you along with a plain-English summary explaining what they actually say. Then we meet again over Zoom for a document review. And this is a part of the process I care about a lot. I don’t want you signing documents simply because I told you they’re ready to sign. I want you to understand them.
So I share my screen. We go through the important provisions. What happens when you die? Who’s in charge? What authority have you given someone under a power of attorney? What happens if one of your beneficiaries dies before you? How does the trust work?
You can ask questions. And if I explain something and you say: “Actually, that’s not what I want.” Fantastic. We change it. That is exactly why we are reviewing the documents before you sign them. Once the documents say what you want them to say, then we arrange the signing.
The signing is the part of my process that happens in person. And, because I live in Michigan and my clients are in Tennessee, I arrange that signing with an attorney where my clients live. And after signing, we’re still not necessarily finished.
One of the biggest estate planning mistakes I see is assuming that signing the documents means the estate plan is complete. We often also need to change how assets are titled, update beneficiary designations, and maybe fund a trust.
And if nobody tells you that, you can have beautifully drafted documents that don’t work the way you thought they would. So after signing, I send clients electronic copies of everything and instructions for whatever implementation steps remain. And for some clients, there may be one more step after that. This is something new that I'm offering, the Family Estate Planning Meeting. And I’m offering this meeting because there's another question I've been thinking about as I've designed my estate planning process: How much should your family know about your estate plan before they actually need it?
And there's no one right answer to that. Some parents are very private about their finances. They don't want their adult children knowing exactly how much money they have. That's completely fine. But there's a big difference between your children knowing exactly how much money you have and your children knowing that there is a plan, how that plan generally works, who is in charge, where the important information is, and who they're supposed to call when something happens.
So for clients whose estate plans I've created, I'm now offering an optional meeting where we can bring the parents and their adult children together and walk through the big picture. We can talk about what the estate planning documents do, how assets are titled, how they're designed to pass at death, who will step in under the powers of attorney, the Will, or the trust, and what those jobs actually involve.
And we can make sure the children know who the important professional contacts are—the attorney, financial advisor, accountant, insurance professional, or anyone else they may someday need to call. Most importantly, the adult children get to ask questions while their parents are still sitting there to answer them and while I'm there to explain how the estate plan works.
But, and this part is really important, the parents are still my clients. Before we ever have the family meeting, I meet privately with my clients and we decide exactly what they are and are not comfortable sharing. Maybe you're perfectly comfortable telling your children, “I have investment accounts at Morgan Stanley,” but you don't want to tell them how much money is in those accounts. That's fine.
Maybe you want them to have copies of certain documents or maybe you don’t. You decide. The goal isn't to give your adult children unrestricted access to your financial life. But when you’re gone, I don't want the first question to be: “Wait. Mom and Dad had an estate plan?” I'd rather they know there is a plan, understand the big picture, know where to find what they need, and know where to start. And again, that's not something every family needs or wants. But for some families, I think that conversation can be just as valuable as the documents themselves.
And whether you ever work with me or not, that’s what I want you to think about when you’re looking for an estate planning attorney. Do I understand what I’m hiring this person to do? Do I understand how much it will cost and how I’m going to be charged? And do I understand what the process looks like from the first meeting until my estate plan is actually finished?
Scope. Cost. And process. Those are your three questions. And here’s the other thing I want you to remember: You’re evaluating the attorney, too. Sometimes lawyers talk about client selection, deciding whether a prospective client is a good fit for the firm. And that makes sense. But the decision goes both ways. You get to decide whether the attorney is a good fit for you.
Do you feel comfortable asking questions? Does the attorney explain things in a way you understand? Do you understand the fee? Do you know what’s happening next? Do you feel rushed? Do you feel heard? And if you’ve already started working with an attorney and something isn’t working, ask questions. You can ask for clarification, ask questions about the bill, and ask questions about the documents that were drafted. And if the relationship truly isn’t working, you’re not required to stay with a lawyer simply because you started with them.
Now, I’ve had my own law practice for less than a year. So I am absolutely still learning how to run a business. I’m paying attention to what works, listening when clients tell me something is confusing, and changing systems when I think they can be better. And I’ll probably continue doing that for as long as I practice law.
But I think one thing will remain the same. I don’t want clients walking away with a stack of impressive-looking legal documents and no idea what they mean. I want you to understand what you did, why you did it, and what still needs to happen to make sure it works.
So if you’re thinking about finally getting your estate plan done, please don’t worry about showing up to your first meeting with every decision already made. Instead, show up with your life, your assets, your questions, your worries and your goals. Your attorney can help with the legal part.
And before you hire them, remember: Scope. Cost. And process. What are you hiring them to do? What will it cost? And what happens from here? If you understand those three things, you’re already starting the estate planning process from a much better place.
And if you’re in Tennessee and your estate plan has been sitting on your mental to-do list for a little too long, I can help you get it done. We’ll talk about your family, what you own, what you’re worried about, and what you want to happen. Then I’ll help you build a plan that makes sense for you and make sure you actually understand how it works. If you’re ready to get started, you can learn more at deathreadiness.com/solutions. That’s deathreadiness.com/solutions.
Thanks for listening today.
This is Death Readiness, real, messy and yours to own. I’m Jill Mastroianni and I’m here to help you sort through it, especially when you don’t know where to start.
Hi, I’m April, Jill’s daughter. Thanks for listening to The Death Readiness Podcast. While my mom is an attorney, she’s not your attorney. The Death Readiness Podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. It does not provide legal advice. For legal guidance tailored to your unique situation, consult with a licensed attorney in your state. To learn more about the services my mom offers, visit DeathReadiness.com.
