Helping Clients Navigate Two New Planning Scenarios
Natalie Choate is a reknowned expert on tax planning. She practices law in Boston, Massachusetts, with the firm of Nutter McClennen & Fish, LLP. Her practice is limited to consultations on estate planning for retirement benefits.
Natalie’s books, Life and Death Planning for Retirement Benefits and The QPRT Manual are leading resources for estate planning professionals.
Join Natalie Choate for a discussion of the new CARES Act, which impacts retirement benefits in two important ways—minimum distributions are “cancelled” for 2020, and special tax breaks are permitted for Coronavirus-related distributions.
PLEASE NOTE: InterActive Legalsubscribers can access this recording FREE on the InterActive Legal Subscriber website.
The principles of The Legacy Project believe that Estate Planning is dead—and paint a new vision for the industry
Our lives are more than our portfolios. Wealth Management doesn’t mean diddly, if it divides your family and sets them up for failure. We need a new way of thinking, to build value for our clients in a rapidly changing world.
Wealth for it’s own sake is not enough. If we fail to instill our values in our children, and if we’re not teaching the lessons we’ve learned, then we need a course change.
The Legacy Project
We recently built a website for a group of Estate Planners and Financial Advisors, with an interesting take on Estate Planning.
Community, Conversation and Collaboration is the key.
We’re more than the sum of our parts.
Legacy Planning is more than a kinder-gentler take on wealth management. It’s rethinking the goal. If estate planning is meant to protect assets for future generations, and if our heirs are losing the ground we’ve paved for them, then we need to better understand the equation. And we can’t do that alone, in a vacuum.
Where there is no wise guidance, the nation falls,but in the multitude of counselors there is victory. – Proverbs 11:14
To discern why traditional estate planning is losing ground, we’re gathering the best and brightest, building a community that gets at the heart of the problem.
Daniel Scott, Chad Reyes , and Jonathan Blattmacher have a plan for a better way to manage estates, focused on your legacy. Legacy Planning is more that wealth. It’s wealth management focused on improving the lives of your heirs.
Dan Scott is the Founder and Principal of Scott Law, where he focuses on legacy planning for individuals, families and businesses. He is also the co-Founder and CEO of Spotlight Advisory Group, a wealth and legacy management firm designed for artists, entertainers, athletes, influencers and other creatives
Chad Reyes is the President & CEO of Wealth and Legacy Group. For nearly 2 decades, Chad and his firm have coached, consulted and guided highly successful entrepreneurs, industry leaders and generational families to tax efficiently create, protect and transfer their wealth to future generations through the utilization of their L.O.V.E. Based Approach.
Jonathan Blattmachr is recognized as one of the most creative trusts and estates lawyers in the country. Among industry accolades, he is Director of Estate Planning at Peak Trust Company, InterActive Legal, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, and Co-Author of Wealth Transfer Planning™.
Is your business struggling during the Corona Virus crisis?
For your practices and your clients, the CARES Act provides for assistance to small business. Anxiety abounds as programs running out of money, new rules are being issued and we’re all struggling to maintain our businesses—and keep employees and payroll during this unprecedented shut down of our economy.
Interesting that I write this on April 15th—Tax Day. It’s not lost on us, as we address both our taxes, and our business works to survive the Corona Virus crisis.
As a small business owner myself, it’s important to get professional advise–and there’s not much happening in this regard. If your practice helps business make these decisions, you should be communicating that you can help.
Coronavirus (COVID-19): Small Business Guidance & Loan Resources
Health and government officials are working together to maintain the safety, security, and health of the American people. Small businesses are encouraged to do their part to keep their employees, customers, and themselves healthy.
Our nation’s small businesses are facing an unprecedented economic disruption due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. On Friday, March 27, 2020, the President signed into law the CARES Act, which contains $376 billion in relief for American workers and small businesses.
Take advantage of this Economic Injury Disaster Loan Emergency Advance and keep your business in business. Our firm lost clients at the onset of the Corona Virus crisis, due to events that had to be cancelled.
This loan advance will provide up to $10,000 of economic relief to businesses that are currently experiencing temporary difficulties. In theory, they can provide funds in 3 days. Find out if you’re eligible—and ask your financial and legal professionals for help.
The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is intended to help you keep people employed. This loan program provides loan forgiveness for retaining employees by temporarily expanding the traditional SBA 7(a) loan program.
Rules are changing and money supplies are dwindling. We recommend you work with your accountant or tax planning firm to file this one. Penalties for abusing this look to be severe.
If you already have a relationship with SBA, this might be a resource, or lender of last resort. Enables small businesses who currently have a business relationship with an SBA Express Lender to access up to $25,000 quickly.
Serious debt relief possibilities for those of you with an SBA loan. The SBA is providing a financial reprieve to small businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act of 2019
On December 20, 2019, President Trump signed the SECURE (Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement) Act. This new law changes how Americans will save for retirement.
The Secure Act is a game changing piece of legislation that’s shaking established practices for how we save for retirement—and how we’re taxed. Professionals who help us manage our retirements are scrambling to understand the impact.
With the decline of traditional retirement methods, most of us are now responsible for saving for our own retirement. And some figures suggest that 25% of Americans have nothing saved for retirement.
While many are quick to blame the President for changing the status quo, bipartisan support in both the House and Senate helped pass this legislation. The reality is, we need to encourage and simplify saving for retirement.
The Secure Act Decoded
Industry Expert, Natalie Choate, author of “Life and Death Planning for Retirement Benefits“, was quick to dig into the new law. She’s offering a timely webinar, that is a must see for industry pros.
Whether you are a Trusts and Estates attorney, an Elder Law attorney, a Special Needs Planner, a Financial Advisor, Tax Accountant or CPA, you’ll want to hear Natalie break down just what this means for your future and existing clients.
This Webinar is not longer viewable
You are moments away from hearing the nation’s leading author and expert on retirement planning dissect the SECURE Act and clarify just what this means for estate planners.
Planning for retirement is not as simple as you’d think. We’ve discovered an amazing book, the definitive reference book helping you plan and manage benefits for retirement for you or someone close.
Natalie Choate, renowned in the estate planning and elder law world, has update her landmark book, Life and Death Planning for Retirement Benefits. This 8th Edition was recently released in 2019 and an update is due in 2020.
Click here to purchase the physical book.
Or you can subscribe to the Digital Version. Click this button and visit RetirementBenefitsPlanning.com
With our focus on online promotion, we’re seeing trends that should serve as a wake-up call for any practice. National companies are surging at the expense of the future of your law firm. The need for digital marketing has never been greater. How does your site perform?
The American Bar Association (ABA) conducted its Legal Technology Survey report, gathering information from May through October of 2018.
Respondents
to the portion of the 2018 Survey covering websites and law firm marketing
consisted largely of solos (42%) and firms of 2-9 attorneys (32%), followed by
12% at firms of 10-49 attorneys, and 14% at firms of 50+ lawyers.
The average
age of all respondents was 54 years of age, and on average, respondents have
been admitted to the bar for 25 years.
Here are
some of the notable results:
The internet can help to level the
playing field significantly, allowing smaller firms and solos to compete for
business that, in the past, would be taken over by larger, national firms
Solo practitioners and small firms who
develop a good internet marketing strategy still have the opportunity to use
the internet to stand out and differentiate themselves.
Based on the 2018 Survey results
however, a significant number of solo and small firms are not taking advantage
of this opportunity.
Hence, we
reach out to you, now.
Once again,
the majority of solos rely on themselves (63%) to create content for their website,
alternatively, they outsource to outside consultants or providers (37%).
Respondents
from firms of 2-9 attorneys are almost evenly split between relying on one
lawyer in their firm (37%), an outside consultant or provider (35%), and more
than one lawyer in their firm (29%).
We augment
your team and help you more effectively and efficiently reach prospects.
Solos and
small firms that still do not have a web presence and a website with their own
domain name are missing crucial opportunities to bolster their practice.
One major
takeaway should be of course, that you don’t own your social media platforms.
While many
of these lawyers undoubtedly have some internet presence on other sites such
as Avvo, Facebook, or LinkedIn,
it is important for lawyers to have an internet presence that they control and
content that they own.
The
platforms are not future-proof and can dwindle off as quickly as they gain
traction. If your law firm content and information reside only on these
platforms, you’re taking an unnecessary risk.
We
understand that, while you cannot own your Facebook page or LinkedIn content,
you certainly own and manage your website. Don’t place all your eggs in one
basket, especially one you can’t control.
Learn how PracticeDev can grow your business, while you focus on growing your clients. Contact us for a gratis 30-minute discovery session.
PracticeDev, our new venture, modernizes how legal practices grow their firm
With a focus on online promotion, we’re seeing trends that should serve as a wake up call for any practice. National companies are surging, at the expense of the future of your law firm. The need for digital marketing has never been greater.
We built PracticeDev because we understand attorneys.
Longbow Strategic Group, Inc., (the Company), has been perfecting the delivery of critical services—internet, IT, and security solutions—since 2003. Longbow is based in Melbourne, Florida.
Longbow runs like a law firm
We meet clients for discovery, determining their needs. From this we provide a proposal, all we think the client needs. The client then chooses what they’d like us to do, and the proposal turns into an agreement. While we can work at project rate, our rate card provides discounts based on how much work we provide. The more work, the lower the rate. Our rate card drives to retainer—intentionally.
We call our firm a boutique, meaning, we’d rather provide a deep array of services to fewer, quality customers. In the marketing business, we realize that to be effective for you, to return value on your investment, we need to know your business. A cursory scan of your firm is not enough to know who you are, what you’re best at, and where you’re most profitable. Working on retainer, we learn who you are.
Much of our work promoting you is content marketing.
Over time, we learn to speak in your voice and target the audience you really need to reach; not doing so is wasteful and less effective.
With attorney clients in Elder Law and Estate Planning, Tax Planning and Retirement Benefits—we work like a financial investment firm. Instead of a hundred new clients this year, we’d rather focus on a few each month. We know we can be much more effective and engaged working with high value clients—operating exactly like most law firms prefer.
PracticeDev is the expression of all our experience working in your field. We’ve taken all we know in how to build effective digital marketing, relevant content marketing and targeted outreach, and packaged it into a streamlined set of offerings that are proven to benefit your practice.
We’ve also leveraged our partners and colleagues to provide tailored IT services, document management, digital security and business continuity—exactly what attorney practices need to thrive.
We look forward to growing with your practice. The name, PracticeDev, perfectly sums up what we do: one source for all your digital needs.
If you’ve struggled to find a web firm, marketing agency, and/or IT company that understands your needs, then we welcome the opportunity to speak with you, at your convenience.
We recommend you do one thing to market your firm: Engage in digital marketing.
In a crowded marketplace, when people search for the services you specialize in, they need to find your practice. Without a search-focused marketing plan, you risk never being in the running for potential new clients.
We live in a digital era, and when a Gen X’er or Millennial needs information, they turn to Google, Bing, and other native search engines for the answers. Gone are the days of flipping through yellow pages. Search is not just one method to find your firm, it is the only method.
We cannot stress this enough, that this digital mindset has overtaken all others. As someone who just this year had to research living wills, trusts and managing the financial affairs of my aging parents, I can attest, my short list of attorneys to work with all ranked very high in search. Firms that did not have a digital presence were just not on my radar.
If we want to serve the next generation, we need to meet them where they search—online. That’s why digital is so important for your practice’s future.
Questions I need to know include:
How do I protect my parents?
What are their wishes, do they have living wills, and what is a living will?
When do I need to take control of their affairs and how do I do that?
What is “power of attorney”?
How does assisted living function?
How do I pay for it?
How do I manage my Dad’s VA benefits?
or help them manage their bills, finances and taxes?
Some form of these questions are bound to come up weekly, perhaps daily during the operation of your legal or financial practice.
When potential clients search for these questions online, what specific answers do they find? Or more importantly, who do they turn to for a solution?
The million-dollar question then, is this: Is my firm visible in local search?
We’ll give your first digital marketing exercise, pro bono.
Get found in local search.
Go to Google, right now, and
Type in, “Elder Law Attorney, near me” (or Civil Attorney, or Tax Attorney, whatever your main focus is).
View the results.
If you’re not at the top of the list, then we can help you. If you’re not on the first page at all, then you should call us and schedule a discovery session.
Through search, we want people to find you—and ask your firm for the answers.
As a digital marketing agency, we have a finger on the pulse of trends in marketing, advertising and promotion. We’re seeing that across many industries, big, national companies are dominating online marketing. They’ve discovered how to profitably advertise and use data and analytics to grow their bottom line.
National firms use digital marketing to attack our local markets—and they are winning.
The problem is, for a consultant like you, they are attacking local markets, where your practice lives and breathes.
With the rise of big enterprises like Rocket Lawyer and Legal Zoom, comes new challenges to your future business. They are commoditizing a portion of your business. . They are attacking new business, future business—they are after your leads.
Fig 1. Legal Zoom offers three-tiered pricing on living wills, leading to Attorney Advice
Rocket Lawyer takes another approach, they let you create your own living will for free, and then lead you to the conclusion that you might need more. Theirs is a “content marketing” exercise, meaning they provide great information, meant to draw you in from search.
Fig 2. Rocket Lawyer’s page on Free Living Wills.
Info + Create your own FREE Living Will = You might really need a lawyer.
With millions of dollars behind their digital marketing efforts, they seek to gobble up your first line of inquiry—they’re after your leads. And they are winning.
Sophisticated digital marketing strategies, detailed tracking of data, and access to Google’s enterprise toolset*, gives them a massive advantage.
Does that mean you should retire and shutter your practice? Of course not, but it should be a wake-up call, that you need to make sure you are visible to an online audience. It’s about the future of your practice.
While this seems daunting, marketing your practice isn’t a one-time, massive expense. Rather, it’s an intentional effort, driven by measurable goals that gets your results.
Digital Marketing is Proven
If the 600 lb. gorillas are using digital marketing, then what are you doing to compete? In our exercise above, the firms who were at the top of that Google search list, are also using digital marketing.
AlongsideInterActive Legal, our marketing agency provides solutions that build up your online presence.
At PracticeDev, we provide digital strategies that grow your practice, and it all starts with one call, a 15 minute discovery session. Contact us, today.
***Google Analytics 360 (formerly Google Analytics Premium) is their enterprise toolset, and costs $150,000 to use, with additional service level plans.
The world of Estate Planning is changing, and attorneys and planners alike are looking to realign their practice for a newer audience. Natalie Choate, Estate Planning’s leading expert on retirement benefits planning, asked us to do just that with her groundbreaking eBook, “Life and Death Planning for Retirement Benefits“.
Together with InterActive Legal, we created a site, that promotes this work to a new audience. RetirementBenefitsPlanning.us is a modern platform from which to view this cornerstone publication of estate, tax, and retirement benefits planning.
Updated and in sync with the 8th edition of the book, in 2018, Retirement Benefits Planning is the state of the art for estate planning, featuring frequent updates, full support for mobile devices, increased security, and an array of tools to help you deliver to your clients. Most importantly, the site is easy to navigate and access from your desktop and tablet.
Natalie Choate’s book is a crucial reference manual for the Estate Planning and Tax Planning industries, important to countless professionals in the field. We enabled the material to be presented online, accessed by subscription. This gives reader the ability to search for specific topics and then links to abundant resources and case materials.
Why was this update important?
Retirement Benefits Planning was upgraded from Flash to HTML5, allowing it to operate smoothly and efficiently on mobile devices such as tablets, phones, and Apple Products. Flash has become increasingly unsecure and needs to be replaced as a web technology. This update provides the security and modernity Natalie’s site needed to function in the present day and beyond.
About the Author: Natalie Choate
A renowned author and a pillar in the Estate Planning Community, Natalie Choate and her two books, “Life and Death Planning for Retirement Benefits” and “The QPRT Manual” are leading resources for estate and tax planning.
She has been named “Estate Planner of the Year” by the Boston Estate Planning Council, listed in The Best Lawyers in America, and one of the legendary first ten attorneys to have received the National Association of Estate Planners and Council’s “Distinguished Accredited Estate Planner” designation.
Her comments and writings are regarded across America as the premier source of information for estate planning, tax planning, and retirement benefits.
Life and Death Planning
8th Edition is now available in print and online.
Since it was first published in 1996, Natalie Choate’s “Life and Death Planning for Retirement Benefits” has been the foundational text of Estate Planning. It contains well over 550 pages of drill-down content essential for Estate Planners, Financial Advisors, Investment Planners, Tax Planners, and Attorneys all looking to delve into the mechanics of Retirement Benefits. It is not simply a guide, but a in-depth reference manual of which there are none equal.
Retirement Benefits Planning runs on FlippingBook, an online reader with an interactive table of contents, fully searchable text, and extensive links and backlogs that help you to find that exact court case you needed to reference.
It uses a subscription-based platform, allowing for frequent updates to the content. To stay relevant, simply subscribe and get immediate access to all new changes and updates.
“Longbow’s new redesign has helped Retirement Benefits Planning achieve our vision of a living, breathing foundation for our work, from which estate planners continue to build upon,” Natalie told us.
Since spring of 2017, Longbow has been working side-by-side the Estate Planning world with one major goal in mind; to provide attorneys and their practices with websites that work.
“Thanks to Longbow’s efforts, we are able to keep Retirement Benefits Planning continually up to date—and deliver Natalie’s critical text to the next generation of Estate Planners.” – Matthew Tove, InterActive Legal
Longbow is a digital marketing firm, advertising and PR agency. PracticeDev is our new venture focused on the legal space, building modern websites with responsive design, powerful functionality and security.
We help attorney practices, estate planners and financial advisors to better promote themselves with branding, content and digital marketing. We provide simple, easy-to-manage solutions to help you get ahead of the competition.
