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.”
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.
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 have any questions for me in any way?
It was kind of towards the beginning of the meeting a little bit. They were like, we don’t even know, we don’t know. We don’t even have the knowledge base to be able to ask you any questions in the first place.
It’s like, okay, that’s fair. And so sometimes that’s just subject matter knowledge that is really helpful. I think a lot of times when couples and families benefit from our, to use your terms, your good judgment, discretion, and experience, we see that a lot when clients are making decisions.
So it’s what makes sense, know, it’s, it’s, especially when children are struggling, right? I had some clients that I was meeting with earlier this week. We were helping them make decisions one of their one of their children is Just an amazing go-getter and the other one is struggling and so we had a real conversation about whether or not they should give money to their son or actually skip their son and go with give it to their grandson or granddaughter or whoever it was right, but just skipping that generation and walking them through that decision making process.
Because some people, for example, think they don’t realize all the options regarding distributions to their loved ones. think it’s just everything. The only option they have is outright distributions, which is giving it to them all at once. Well, I don’t trust my child to give them everything all at once for drug addictions, manipulation, their spendthrift, whatever. So I just need to disinherit them. Sometimes clients have legitimately, literally come in with that mentality.
When we talk to them and help them understand that there are more options than that to spread those distributions out over time and protect from those potential bad situations. That burden is just completely lifted off of their shoulders. It’s like, okay, I can give them money, but I can give it to them in a way that is best setting them up for success with some protections, with some guideposts, guidelines with some restraints because we think that’s really what their life and situation calls for.
I’m gonna kind of draw an analogy here and I like yours with a sherpa, right? Where, you know, you can go on a, you can climb Mount Everest on your own or you can climb Mount Everest, you know, with a sherpa or you can climb it with a group.
Right? You can kind of imagine the different levels of success there. The analogy that I tend to draw, unfortunately, Harkins is back to school time, but that was kind of the thing that came to me. Working with an attorney is like working, is taking a test with the teacher sitting right there beside you explaining the principles, reviewing the question, helping you understand the answers, and helping to quote unquote make sure that you get 100 % on that test, right?
That’s what like working with an attorney can be like. Whereas doing it on your own is, you know, and I know that we’ve talked about to kind of talking about this with do it yourself options for estate planning.
It’s like just taking the test on your own. Maybe open book, right, because Google kind of serves that purpose. But there’s no outside eyes. There’s no like true explanations. And if you’ve done any search on Google, you know it’s not that hard to find contradictory information.
I’ve had clients come in with wrong understanding based off of Google. Now the tough part about is taking a test on your own. I don’t know about you, Frazier, but I always got 100 % on my tests until I got my grade back.
And that’s the tough part. What’s especially hard with estate planning is you don’t get the grade back on your tests until after you’ve passed. There’s no extra credit. The grade is final. And you have to live with that. so there’s… Yeah,
Frazer Rice (11:44.049)
Yeah or others have to live with it even worse.
Brandon Rains (12:09.618)
You’re right, better said, right? Others have to live with that. And so it’s, you know, there’s something to be said about that. And there’s also a rise in, with companies that are DIY, they’re kind of talking to the financial advisors.
There’s a big trend there of financial advisors walking their clients through the business of the estate planning process. setting aside any contentions or conversations about unauthorized practice of law and stuff like that.
To go back to the teacher analogy, that’s like asking someone two or three years in school ahead of you for help, maybe like a tutoring type of a situation, but they’re ultimately still a student. They might have more experience than you, they might know more than you, but they don’t necessarily have the education. the hundreds of clients of qualifications, they don’t quite have that teacher certification, right, that has gone to school specifically for that, have been vetted and licensed by the state.
There’s still a difference there. And I think there’s some real unforeseen or easily missed pitfalls with a, I’m gonna rely on a mentor type of a mentality rather than turning to a teacher. Now, of course, a mentor or a tutor or a fellow student may or may not have to pay for that, right?
Obviously they’re gonna be paid less, because they don’t have the education, they don’t have the certification, stuff like that, than working with a teacher.
But the teacher is the one who wrote the test, right? Who has studied the test, who has studied for… hours and hours and hours, the subject matter that goes into the knowledge, there’s still a real substantive difference there that kind of puts you and your loved ones in the best position to succeed, right, which is really where it is.
Frazer Rice (14:20.987)
To stretch that analogy further, I sit in the financial advisor role, at the multifamily office level, thinking about these issues. I have my thoughts and experiences and comments. It would not really occur to me NOT to use a lawyer. To take your analogy a bit further, having the teacher with you taking the test, but also having the mentor with you taking the test.
Brandon Rains (14:47.245) on the business of estate planning
Yeah.
Frazer Rice (14:49.295)
That is better if there are really sort of qualitative aspects that need to be dealt with. Issues like: choice of trustee, do I favor one child over another? There may not be an exactly right answer. However, there can be a best answer through consensus building amongst three thoughtful people. One who’s extremely interested in it, and then the people who are sort of supporting of that.
That joint approach to the business of estate planning I like that a lot better than the DIY. Equipping the client with digital tools to make a go of it themselves, and hope it turns out okay. Then maybe get a legal imprint or legal ratification elsewhere that isn’t really based on a relationship. I think ultimately people are looking for interactivity and they want that relationship. trend-wise,
I think that’s going to argue for, certainly at some level. A return to in-person meetings and some more tactile interactions between client and advisor. Those team aspects are going to be that much more important in getting to the right result.
Brandon Rains (16:12.448)
I would agree with that. Some of my favorite meetings are… client, attorney, financial advisor, potentially accountant, all involved, right? Because we’re all addressing the subject matter from different angles, right? It’s when you get the tutor replacing the teacher, right? To kind of keep it industry agnostic, right?
Whether that’s a financial advisor who’s trying to replace the estate planning attorney. Or the estate planning attorney who’s trying to place the financial advisor. That’s when you start running into, in my opinion at least, when you start running into different issues, right? You’re losing a team member. You’re getting people where it’s not their 24-7 type of a day job, right?
But they believe that they can still do that, right? They can fill both roles or three roles or whatever. In my experience, that can run into issues. But yeah, multiple professionals addressing those conversations
Frazer Rice (17:14.189)
That’s because…
Brandon Rains (17:19.248)
those questions from their respective angles. It’s almost like the sum is greater than its parts, is my experience in those meetings add exponential value added rather than just purely linear. It’s an awesome dynamic.
Frazer Rice (17:37.859)
Exactly. think the other part too is that, you know, whereas we used to have to defend against the absence of information, I worry about the noise and the fact that, and I think the advisors can be affected by the noise too. And to have a couple of people surrounding the problem, I think mitigates that risk, doesn’t eliminate it, but to sort of have a back and forth and be able to make sure that the right course is brainstormed, workshopped, and then defended before being implemented, think that leads to a good result at the end of the day.
Brandon Rains (18:15.95)
Yeah, 100 % agree.
Frazer Rice (18:17.773)
It’s one of these things where that’s a lot of people and many times charging hourly or charging flat rates or things like that. People look at that and say, my gosh, I just wanted to get my estate plan done and get something in place. And now you’re telling me I’ve got expensive people on the hook to try to get this going. Part of me sort of says, look, there’s two levels of planning here. You have what you need to get done so that you’re not running naked through the park uh… and then then there is the deeper thoughtful estate planning, you’re trying to deal with taxes and creditors or things like that. How do you think about it in terms of the value added when when being in front of a client
Brandon Rains (19:09.19)
I think in a lot of ways it’s, you know, the biggest benefit of working with an attorney is the advice and the counsel and the experience, right? At this point… I haven’t done necessarily a count, but somewhere between 750 and a thousand different clients in the last decade, right?
You combine that with just the knowledge that I’ve gained through studying, continuing education and stuff like that. It’s hard to replicate that from anybody else, right? Just as if I were trying to step into your shoes, it would take me 20-30 years to be able to fill in your shoes, right?
Because that’s how long you’ve been doing this for. I think that’s something that we as professionals, especially over the last, don’t know, during this time from the information age and generative AI is going to be making it a really interesting thing for us to think about is how well do we explain the value that we bring to our clients and the families that we work with.
For me, it’s the advice and counsel, the insights, the experience of this is what other people have decided. This is how I’ve seen this work out. And being able to take these abstract legal principles or even these experiences from other families, there’s always that question, I think, at the back of clients’ minds of like, okay, how is this going to impact my family? Whether it’s from a tax perspective, a control and access to assets perspective. What about family relationships perspective?
Brandon Rains (20:57.006)
Is this gonna help? What am I going to do? Is it gonna help them interact with these assets that we’re passing on to them in an appropriate way? Are they gonna interact with the world and with each other in a positive, constructive way?
All of those things that we can do that I try to bring to the table as an estate planning attorney is to help them understand how these theoretical or not their experience can play out in their own family. Because that’s really what they’re looking for.
They’re looking for clarity, they’re looking for comfort. Really the only benefit that clients get through their own estate plan is peace of mind. And so try to help them understand. The only way they can get peace of mind is not by, I would argue, true peace of mind is not just by making a decision.
By making a well-informed, well-advised, well-counseled decision, taking all these different data points and being able to apply it to their own family, their own relationships, their own personality traits, their own characters, and the people that are involved, and to be able to say, okay, this is what I think is how people are going to engage with and interact with the estate plan with each other and by extension the world around them after they receive the distribution. So to me that’s the real crux of any value add for me at least.
Frazer Rice (22:30.163)
One of the things that people ask about is the analog world of estate planning and the new digital tools. Are they going to intersect? I use AI frequently. A variety of other tools help game out scenarios, look at documents, to do all sorts of things.
I don’t think what we’re talking about is that the exclusion of technology, because I think technology is going to get us to have what I would describe as more adult discussions quicker. I’m wondering how your experience with technology so far, you talked about it a little bit about, you know, sort of having drafting capabilities and so on. Where do you see that going?
Brandon Rains (23:13.74)
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think a lot of estate planning attorneys use technology more than people might realize. There’s a difference between technology in the back office and technology on the client facing experience, right? There’s a difference there. Conversations with an attorney is human, right? I would say that’s not even analog, that’s human. And that’s something that…
If AI ever replicates a human conversation, like really truly, that we as professionals can have and be just as accurate or more accurate with that advice, which is a whole different, that’s not as much of a given as we might like to think, then we’re all in trouble.
But I think what technology does for the business of estate planning, and I’ve noticed with my own practice. Leveraging technology to create systems and processes to delegate to communicate within our internal team and know document sharing with a client or whatever that looks like that allows us to be more efficient to be able to focus on the unique and individual circumstances of our client.
The business of estate planning is getting to those adult conversations faster. It also allows us to spend more time with those adult conversations too. I think part of that dynamic is already here.
Now looking towards the future, it’s really, really interesting. I don’t play around with AI a ton, I’ll have to admit that. But what they think AI can do could be pretty awesome to leverage, right?
Earlier this week, I got an introduction from a financial advisor to a client. The financial advisor used an AI-based estate planning review software program to review the estate plan. And ultimately, the financial advisor and the client had different feelings about the quality of the estate plan. The client thought it was great. The financial advisor was like, hey, this isn’t all that great. And the financial advisor sent me the estate plan and their AI-driven review.
Brandon Rains (25:39.63)
And with the in those, this is actually the first time that ever had ever done this. What I found with the AI was both a positive and a negative. So in one particular aspect is what really stood out to me.
I won’t bore your listening audience with the details. However, just with one aspect of it as an example, I felt like when I was reviewing it. I felt like it maybe overstated the strength of some of that planning that was in the document. It might have missed the mark as well a little bit.
Because it used a very specific phrase with this issue, I was looking for it. And one of my complaints about this document was the organization was a little funky. Any attorney is gonna take some time to look through a document that they hadn’t noticed.
But because it…I was looking in this one spot for this phrase that this planning structure implied. My first thought for several minutes was, AI got it wrong. I was like, there’s not this planning at all. It’s something else. Since I looked at it, I’d seen it on the AI, I said, let’s just keep on looking through. I hadn’t gone all the way through the document yet, but it wasn’t in that spot.
Lo and behold, that phrase was like dozens of pages later. I was like, oh, okay, you weren’t wrong, AI, this is great. There were a couple of places where I felt like it had overstated some of the protections. Because the AI had noticed it and picked it up in one spot at a disconnected location, it actually helped me find it.
I can go back to the client. This is the type of planning- rather than me saying, you know, you have this other different type of planning. Then they’re like, well, wait a second. So I thought our attorney said we had this and it turns out that they are right.
I was wrong. And that would just make me look like an idiot. Right. So that’s kind of, think where AI is right now, right? People say, you know, trust, but verify or don’t trust, but verify. That’s what it kind of seems like to me is where AI is. how effective it’s going to be.
I talking with another attorney just this week on the business of estate planning. He was like, AI is as dumb as it ever is going to be, is right now. I think that AI is going to impact the legal staff. It could potentially replace legal staff sooner that it will replace the attorney. Whether that’s AI-voiced phone calls or AI-driven emails. or AI might become an integral part of drafting where it can take your notes from the meeting and you organize it in a certain way and you train the AI on how to read your notes and it’ll draft your document, right?
It could get you that rough draft where before it might take you 20, 30 minutes, two hours, three hours, depending on your internal systems and processes to get to that same point, right?
So, should it ever get to the point of replacing legal advice? I might be biased. I don’t think it should. But I think it will certainly have the capability. It’s there to augment and make bigger what we bring to the table, I think is where AI is at its best place. If it’s used to replace us, then we’re running into issues because AI has shown that it hallucinates quite a bit.
I guess that’s the official term for creating stuff out of thin air or lying. There are attorneys that have been sanctioned because of inappropriate reliance on AI and replacing legal research and legal drafting. It’s not there yet. I don’t know if it’ll ever get there, but augmenting it and saving time and streamlining processes.
Frazer Rice (29:41.758)
Right.
Brandon Rains (29:59.384)
To me is the thing that makes the most sense because then again, to use your phrase, gets us to those adult conversations faster. It gives us more time to spend on those adult conversations.
Frazer Rice (30:12.696) on the Business of Estate Planning
Good stuff. Brandon, how do listeners find you?
Brandon Rains (30:17.708) on the Business of Estate Planning
Yeah, so the website is rains-law.com. Rains is R-A-I-N-S spelled just like the weather. Or they can reach out to me directly. So, Brannon, just normal spelling, B-R-A-N-D-O-N at rains-law.com. Great ways.
Frazer Rice (30:32.818) on the Business of Estate Planning
We will revisit the business of estate planning going forward. We can talk about lots of different issues for hours. Maybe we’ll put a pin in this for now and have episode two, three, four, etc. as we go forward. Thank you for being on.
Brandon Rains (30:50.766) on the Business of Estate Planning
Thank you for Frazer, appreciate it.
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