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My brother is a financial advisor and has many clients who would need assistance in getting wills and estate planning. I just recently passed the bar, and think this may be a good way to get some cash. He want's a referral fee, and it's my suspicion that is not allowed in CA (maybe falls under legal practice with non-lawyers), but hopefully he would still share my information through the kindness of his heart, even if so grudgingly...haha.

Even though I've studied wills and trust, what is the best way to learn how to make an actual will for a client? What formalities would I need to complete before actually doing lawyerly work for a client? If anyone has any resources they can point me to, that would be great.

1. Hang a shingle
2. ????
3. Profit

This is probably one of the better areas for solos. Form books are going to be your savior here.

My roommate is a financial adviser and the attorney that works in house for them does almost entirely wills and trusts. Makes about $600k/year. Can't think of a better situation to be in and a great work-life balance.

IMO, you need to really know what you're doing and have a good grasp of your state's trusts/estates laws. But I can't see it being too hard... most of it is boilerplate.

Know that standard wills/living trust/etc work is extreeeeemely commoditized. I worked in a firm that did a lot of them for IIRC something like $75 each. I could pump them out often in like 30 minutes for the majoity of ppl that didn't have any interesting assets, which frankly is probably like 98% of the population

To make bread you really need the wealthier clients with da milllyyyyys that need legitimate "estate planning" moreso than the joeshmos that are under the estate tax exemption. I think it would be very hard to survive specializing in this, but for sure think it could be a good practice area around with others. The typical ones that go hand in hand are often things like tax, family, divorce, bankruptcy, maybe even low level crim and small value civil lit

Just in my humble experience

ballouttacontrol wrote:Know that standard wills/living trust/etc work is extreeeeemely commoditized. I worked in a firm that did a lot of them for IIRC something like $75 each. I could pump them out often in like 30 minutes for the majoity of ppl that didn't have any interesting assets, which frankly is probably like 98% of the population

To make bread you really need the wealthier clients with da milllyyyyys that need legitimate "estate planning" moreso than the joeshmos that are under the estate tax exemption. I think it would be very hard to survive specializing in this, but for sure think it could be a good practice area around with others. The typical ones that go hand in hand are often things like tax, family, divorce, bankruptcy, maybe even low level crim and small value civil lit

Just in my humble experience

That's what I would guess. I mean if form books are all you really need, the anyone with a license could pump one out pretty easily. It's probably over time when you attract a solid reputation and even more solid networking skills that you could attract those clients with milllllyyyyys. But even then, they'd probably just go to a bigLawl