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Posted by jo on November 1, 2007, 12:30 am
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> jo wrote:
>> So knowing a professional is a radio personality is another
>> red flag to me. I could be completely wrong, and he may be
>> doing this out of the goodness of his soul, but somehow I
>> think it's in the same class as his financial planing dinner
>> meetings, which is where I met him.
> I've seen lawyers charge $25,000 to $30,000 for what your
> guy apparently wants to charge you $3700. It seems to me
> that if he were simply greedy he'd likely try to charge you
> more.
>> Do good lawers need to do these things to get clients?
> The law is a business, and a very competitive one at that.
> Lawyers have to market their services. In your guy's case,
> I suspect he learned a little and thought he knew all about
> it - lots of lawyers think estate planning is easy.
> Unfortunately that's not the case, and he doesn't have a
> full understanding of what he's talking about. In my seldom
> humble opinion.
Stuart,
Ok. I'll concede the marketing technique legitimacy. I will
only get a better read on his technical expertise thru some
judiciously asked questions. I think I have a good feeling
for what reasonable answers would be. #1 negative if he is
does not feel he needs to ask me further questions about my
and my sister's needs and current and future lifestyles and
ability/desire to deal with complex legal structures and
potentially face Irs scrutiny.
Will keep you posted on results. I might add (and it may be
picky) that in the first draft of the will he was preparing,
there was a terrible run on sentence, which was not due to
excess legal verbiage, with which I am very familiar. It
was simply lack of a period and the start of a new sentence.
His secretary was doing the manual labor from his collected
information, but I know boiler plate templates are used for
these things, and in the particular paragraph, *I* could
have written it correctly. In fact, I was the one who
spotted it immediately. Of course, he agreed to correct it,
but initially there was definitely a position of "oh, it's
not that important; run-on sentences and poor
grammar/punctuation are common in legal documents". Duh?
I've always understood it to be criticial to have these
documents, more than any others, be as letter perfect as
possible, and that in worst case scenarios, misplaced commas
and such can create nasty situations. If I'm correct in
feeling that this should not have been downplayed as no big
deal, it's not a good indication of the level of quality I
can expect from his firm. Am I being overly judgemental?
jo
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