Lawyers With Purpose

Potential Components of a Profitable Estate Plan Maintenance Program

The TLC™ Estate Plan Maintenance & Fee Guarantee Program offers all of the services listed below. Remember: This information is intended to provide you with an idea of what a maintenance program can offer. Your program must reflect your clients’ needs and your firm’s capabilities.

The TLC™ Estate Plan Maintenance & Fee Guarantee Program EPLC includes:

• A quarterly newsletter
• The hosting of an annual social event
• Free review of documents with agents and/or family members at disability and/or death
• Invitations to public events sponsored by EPLC
• Phone calls by clients or their advisors to office staff at no charge
• An annual client meeting for groups of clients aimed at keeping client documents current within the changing legal environment
• A complimentary meeting for family members to explain the client’s estate plan upon his or her death or disability
• “Word processing” amendments to estate planning documents requested by the client
• Specialized and Advanced planning workshops offered throughout the year
• Assistance with funding new assets
• An annual trust review
• A guaranteed, discounted fee to administer the client’s estate plan after death. For clients who remain in the program, we will guarantee the family (in writing) a fee of 1% rather than the customary 5-7%

As you can see, this is an extensive program. You might also have discerned that the components of the plan involve services that do not cost you a great deal of money or “attorney time.” For example, let’s say a client wants to make a simple change to a will or trust, like swapping out a daughter for a son. You already have the client’s documents in your system, so making a change like that is easy. Or consider the annual client group meeting, where all of the clients’ changes can be made at once. Your staff can handle the vast majority of such changes, as well as client calls, a newsletter, and the program’s various social events.

Your maintenance program provides enrollees with easy access to your firm and a sense of belonging to the “firm family.” It will also provide them with the peace of mind that comes from knowing the plan will work, and that the firm will be there to counsel family members in the event of the client’s incapacity and/or death. All of this sets your firm apart from competitors that do not offer a maintenance program. In addition, your program creates loyalty, a bond with your clients. We’ll talk about the benefits of  that next time.

Important Considerations in Creating an Effective and Profitable Client Maintenance Program

When it comes to maintenance programs, one size does not fit all. You should tailor your program to the needs of your client base and your firm’s capabilities. Also, as we mentioned last time, you have to limit the scope of your program. It’s supposed to be a source of steady revenue, not a loss leader. Accomplishing this requires offering services in your program that you are already providing free-of-charge, or services whose fees are insignificant. As one attorney with a successful maintenance program put it, “The administrative costs of billing for photocopies exceeds the income generated by it.”

You can also offer different types of maintenance programs. At EPLC, we have our main program, the TLC™ Estate Plan Maintenance & Fee Guarantee Program. We also offer a program for Medicaid clients, which basically provides enrollees with the annual certification they need. It is important to note, however, that our goal is to have clients who need nursing home care keep their TLC Program and add the Medicaid program to it as part of a package. We don’t want clients dropping the TLC Program when, say, one spouse enters a nursing home while the other continues to reside in the couple’s primary residence. Finally, we have a relatively inexpensive Will-based program for clients whose plans do not include trusts.

In our next email, we’ll detail the elements of our TLC™ Estate Plan Maintenance & Fee Guarantee Program.

Why Would Clients Pay for a Maintenance Program? Peace of Mind

Some attorneys dismiss maintenance programs out of hand because they don’t see why clients would participate in them. Don’t think like that. Maintenance programs are very appealing to clients, for two powerful reasons.

First, a maintenance program helps ensure that a client’s plan is always up-to-date and capable of accomplishing its goals when the client needs it. By explaining this benefit to your clients, many of them will quickly see the program’s value and the importance of enrolling in it.

Second, one of the main complaints people have about working with attorneys is the notion that attorneys bill for just about anything, whether it’s an email, a photocopy, or a one-minute phone call. Your clients will appreciate the fact that you will not “nickel and dime” them, and that there will be no unpleasant “surprise” invoices in their mail boxes.

By addressing these two issues, a maintenance program provides clients with peace of mind—the same long-term benefit that motivated many of them to want an estate plan in the first place.

So, what services should be included in your plan? You need to offer enough to make the program attractive to clients, but you must also be cognizant of not selling yourself short and offering too many services. We’ll discuss the particulars of an effective maintenance program next time.

How to Generate a Consistent Revenue Stream with an Estate Plan Maintenance Program

Generating a consistent, reliable revenue stream is a challenge for many law firms. An annual maintenance program can provide a solution to this problem, and, in effect, function as a line of credit for your firm.

In the coming weeks, we’ll discuss the elements of a successful program, the benefits of such a program to your clients and to your firm, how your plan can generate additional income beyond what you charge for the program itself, and more.

At EPLC, we currently have approximately 600 clients enrolled in our various maintenance programs (we’ll talk about how our programs differ from one another in a future email). We charge $650 a year for what we call the TLC™ Estate Plan Maintenance & Fee Guarantee Program. If you do the math, you’ll quickly see that this income, which is both continuous and predictable, serves as a line of credit we can draw upon to cover any number of expenses over the course of a year.

At this point you may be saying, “Well bully for you EPLC, but frankly I don’t know why any client would even want a maintenance program, let alone pay for it.” We’ll talk about that next time.

Building Profitable Referral Relationships: The Importance of Consistent Touches

People have different needs regarding the amount of attention they want to receive in a relationship. For some of your referral sources, getting together once a year might be fine. Other sources might want to meet every six months, or even once a month. If the referral source is providing you with plenty of profitable leads, track the frequency of your touches to ensure you’re meeting his or her needs.

You also want to track the goals of each touch. Is the meeting strategic and focused on future opportunities? Is it a joint workshop or presentation? Is it a review meeting designed to make sure the expectations of both parties are being met?

Tracking touches allows you to ensure your relationship is moving forward and that it’s on solid ground. Remember: You’re not the only attorney in town. The last thing you want is a competitor swooping in and “stealing” your referral source simply because you haven’t done enough to keep the relationship going. Finally, don’t underestimate the power of a hand-written thank you note. It may seem old-fashioned, but it works.

Building Profitable Referral Relationships: The Importance of Tracking Results

As your referral relationships evolve, you want to track a wide range of information. For instance, make sure you know how many referrals you’re getting from each source, together with the average fee and retention rate per referral received.

If one referral source is providing prospects that generally turn into long-term, high-fee clients, you obviously want to do everything in your power to keep that referral source happy (we’ll talk about how to do that later). Conversely, you might want to reconsider your relationship with a referral source whose clients only want, say, a basic will or a power of attorney, or whose decisions are based on your price rather than your value.

You also want to make sure you’re measuring expectations. If you hosted a joint event with your referral source, were both your and the allied professional’s expectations met? Do you even know what the expectations and goals are? If you do, are they being met consistently?

If your referral source expects you to provide referrals to him or her, be sure to track that. A word of caution: tit for tat relationships can become problematic. If it’s all about “who’s getting the better deal” the relationship might not be a healthy one.

This is not the relationship you want nor the type of relationship we have been describing.

Finally, whenever you discuss results with your referral source, be sure to talk about future opportunities to strengthen and grow the relationship.

Next time we’ll talk about another piece of information you should be tracking—touches.

Building Profitable Referral Relationships: Qualifying Your Referral Sources

Last time, we detailed the types of questions you need to ask to both demonstrate your value to the allied professional and to quickly determine if working with the professional will be of value to you. Now let’s discuss the latter topic a bit further. What are some of the red flags you should look for? That is, how can you determine whether the referral source in question is a “fit” or a “mis-fit?”

First and foremost, you need to know whether the professional is willing to meet again and follow specific actions you find helpful in generating a profitable relationship, such as attending one of your workshops. Similarly, you must know that the professional will tell his or her clients to contact your firm or attend a workshop. If they won’t follow your process, or don’t follow through with their commitments, the best course of action is to walk away. Or better yet, run away. How can you have a profitable relationship with a professional who is not interested in your needs or learning the basics of the services you have to offer?

As you meet with your target professional, you’ll also want to ask yourself the following question: Does this individual have the “heart of a teacher” or the “heart of a salesman?” You want to forge referral relationships with the former. Also, does the professional have poor communication skills, that is, does everything seem to be about him or her? This is another red flag.

The fact is, you only have so much time. Don’t make the mistake of believing that you can turn a prospective referral source around to your way of thinking. Maybe, with a great deal of time and effort, you can. However, your time is better spent on professionals with whom you have synergy and who can identify your value quickly!

One more thing: If all goes well during your meeting, be sure to specify exactly what the next steps in your relationship will be. “Great meeting you, I’ll be in touch” is not an effective way to end the meeting. Success depends on creating a plan for how to work together that produces results, not having a nice first meeting.

Using Team Meetings to Stay on Track and Achieve Your Goals

At Lawyers with Purpose, we strongly advocate for weekly team meetings.  Why?  Because they’re the perfect time to review key performance indicators (KPIs) and client satisfaction, as well as to make sure projects and goals are on track, and nothing is falling through the cracks.  Even if you are a solo attorney and are operating without a team, you should still set aside time to review your KPIs on a consistent basis.

An effective team meeting should review actual performance against pre-set goals.  By doing so, the chances of achieving any goal will be significantly higher, simply due to your commitment to managing your process and measuring results. 

Effective team meetings require adherence to a few simple rules:

1. Schedule your meeting on a consistent, recurring basis, and make it a priority.

2. Everyone attending the team meeting must be prepared, present, and paying attention.

3. Set a clear and precise agenda, and have a leader that manages time and moves through the agenda efficiently.

4. Set a time (suggested 1 hour), and don’t allow the meetings to go long.

5. No hijacking allowed! Anything requiring substantial conversation needs a separate meeting.

6. Measure your actual performance against pre-established goals and report the results.

 

Now that you know the rules, let’s review the elements of an effective agenda:

1. Start with wins, either personal or professional, or a thank you from the past week.

What better way to start a meeting than by being positive?  Positive thinking starts your meeting off on the right foot: Attendees look forward to having something to share, and the sharing brings attendees together, making everyone feel a part of a winning team.  Beyond team building, however, sharing wins has another critical function: they keep your team encouraged when a goal isn’t achieved.  While it’s good to aim high, missing goals without also reflecting on how far you’ve come along the way can be discouraging. 

2. Review Your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

LWP helps its member attorneys develop KPIs and metrics that define strategic success and act as a yardstick for areas that need improvement.

As part of your KPI review, be sure to analyze the number of new leads your firm is generating, know the source that is generating them, and your hire rate.  Are you getting the number of leads and referrals you need to reach your revenue goal?  Be sure to review your marketing processes, step by step, so you’re aware of any shortfalls in time to correct them.

3. Review Cash Flow, Client Matters, and Client Satisfaction

LWP advocates for utilizing a value-based billing process that will allow you to predict your cash flow weeks in advance and manage your appointments, making sure your firm has enough cash flow on the calendar. 

Reviewing client matters means you won’t get caught unprepared for a client meeting!  Canceling or rescheduling could have devastating effects on your client satisfaction as well as your cash flow. Review clients matters to ensure documents have been drafted, reviewed, approved, and are ready for the client.

Since client satisfaction is key to generating new business, be sure to review the comments from closing surveys that have been received, and allow the entire team to celebrate in the positive results or share in the discussion of what you can do better.  Similarly, work to resolve any open client issues or concerns that do not have a clear next action defined, as well as knowing who is responsible and by when. You should know the number of new matters you opened and the status of each client matter, especially if there is an issue

4. Review your Marketing Efforts and Results

It is important that you review results and share what marketing is doing so everyone can be on the same page.  Because a large promotional event or campaign could alter the time commitments of other team members, everyone in the firm should be aware of the wholesale, community, and retail marketing strategies that are being implemented.

5. Review Your Goals and Open Projects

At LWP, we advocate determining the main 4 or 5 goals that will have the greatest impact on your firm, increasing your practice proficiency.  Weekly team meetings are the perfect time to keep track of those goals and the specific project work that needs to be done each week to move that project closer to completion.

Effective teams have a shared vision, and they commit to their goals.  Renewing those commitments every week can help your team stay on track to achieving high quality firm-wide results.

Cruising Into Retirement

No, attorneys, this article is not referencing your retirement. I recently read a story, albeit from 2015, about a woman named Mama Lee Wachtstetter who lived on a cruise ship.[1] I am not exaggerating. She sold her five-bedroom house,[2] she did not rent an apartment; she truly lived full time on a cruise ship. That being said, it cost her approximately $164,000 per year for her single-occupancy room.[3] That sounds expensive, but even an “all-inclusive” assisted living facility would not have provided the same quality of goods and services. Mama Lee enjoyed daily lunch and dinner with beverages, tips, daily ballroom dancing, cocktail parties, movies, lectures, other shows and entertainment and most uniquely: the opportunity to travel and meet people from all over the world.[4]

Mama Lee lived on the cruise ship for nine years, as of 2018.[5] She said the one thing she missed was her family, but she stayed in touch with them via laptop and telephone, and she was able to see them about five times per year when she docked in Miami.[6] She had always enjoyed cruising with her husband, and they did 89 cruises before he passed away in 1997.[7] She has since done almost 100 more, including 15 world cruises![8] She said it got to the point where she did not even get off the ship at certain ports because she had already seen them so many times, and it was nice to enjoy the peace and quiet on the ship.[9]

If you care to hear more about Mama Lee and all of her adventures, she wrote a book called “I May Be Homeless But You Should See My Yacht.” I have not read it myself, but it is on my list. I cannot wait to recommend it to my cruise-loving clients.

After reading Mama Lee’s story, I was interested to see if this was truly a viable alternative to assisted living. I stumbled upon a Morningstar Financial article which listed 75 must-know statistics regarding senior care. The numbers were mostly from 2015-2017, and most were national numbers, but I think it was a fair reflection nonetheless. Here are some numbers and figures I found notable (and worth passing on to some of your hesitant-to-engage clients):

• The percentage of people turning age sixty-five (65) who will need some type of long-term care services during their lifetime is 52%.[10] Of that 52%, the average number of years a woman will need long-term care is 2.5 years, while the average time a man will need long-term care is 1.5 years.[11]

 

• The national median cost for a semi-private nursing home room, is $85,775 in 2017 (raise that to $97,455 for a private room).[12] That means, the average married couple will spend somewhere around $343,099 if they have to private pay for skilled nursing care, should they need it.

 

• On the more extreme end, the lowest average annual nursing-home cost for a private room is in Monroe, Louisiana ($51,100) while the highest cost is for a private room in Manhattan, New York ($215,770) (both figures as of 2017).[13]

 

• If you are concerned about the trend toward long-term care expenditures: They totaled $30 billion in the U.S. in 2000, compared with $225 billion in the U.S. in 2015 (750% increase in 15 years).[14]

 

• For those clients who say “my kids will take care of me”: The estimated dollar value of long-term care provided by unpaid caregivers as of 2013 was $470 billion dollars.[15] The average percentage of caregivers for people age 50 or older who said they were experiencing high levels of financial strain was 36%.[16]

 

• There are fewer than fifteen (15) insurers offering standalone long-term care policies as of 2014,[17] so if your client did not jump on that bandwagon early, it’s getting more difficult to find a cheap policy. However, 99% of the new long-term care policies cover both nursing home and in-home care.[18] Sadly, the percentage of applicants aged 70-79 denied long-term care insurance due to health issues is 44.8%.[19]

The next time you have a client who says, “I am never going into a nursing home,” feel free to share some of these numbers and see if they still want to take the chance, or, you can recommend they live on a cruise ship of their choosing!

 

Brittney M. Shearin, Esq.

 

[1] Liberman, Si, Woman Pays $164k Per Year to Live on Luxury Cruise Ship, Jan. 2015 USA Today, https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/cruises/2015/01/19/woman-pays-164k-per-year-to-live-on-luxury-cruise-ship/22030011/

[2] Id.

[3] Id.

[4] Id.

[5] Kickham, Debbi, How to Retire on a Luxury Cruise Ship, April 2018 Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/debbikickham/2018/04/23/how-to-retire-on-a-luxury-cruise-ship/#32ef333d13f5

[6] Liberman, supra.

[7] Id.

[8] Id.

[9] Id.

[10] Benz, Christine, 75 Must-Know Statistics About Long-Term Care: 2018 Edition, August 2018 Morningstar Financial, https://www.morningstar.com/articles/879494/75-mustknow-statistics-about-longterm-care-2018-ed.html

[11] Id.

[12] Id.

[13] Id.

[14] Id.

[15] Id.

[16] Id.

[17] Id.

[18] Id.

[19] Id.