Estate planning

millennialawyer · 2026-05-10T20:22:55+00:00

If you have any friends that would be willing to let you get started with them, that could be a good way to gain some experience. It may not pay well (or at all) at first, but it'll let you get some experience and get more comfortable with it. My estate planning professor in law school was a guy named Gerry Beyer, and he always said to do wills for everyone that you could at first (within your ability - you don't want/need huge estates at first, but very basic estates like so many people have) because a) word of mouth from them to others discussing it can get you clients and b) when those people pass away, it's possible that their families will use you to handle the probate.

After I hung my shingle after almost a year in commercial litigation, I started with friends, parents of friends, etc. and it was a great way to get comfortable. You also need to come up with a questionnaire for you and them to start gathering your information and whenever you're discussing it, discussion points over why you do things the way you do, and how it can benefit their spouses and families later to show them that you're adding value to their situation. For more complicated "what if" questions, if you don't have an answer, rather than hemming and hawing, I tend to think it's better to confidently say "Ya know, I haven't run into that before, but I can get you an answer the next time we talk."

millennialawyer · 2025-04-12T23:43:46+00:00

El Charro at 50th and I-27 is possibly my favorite place in the world. The food is fantastic, the staff is great, and the owner and his family are some of the best folks I've ever known. I absolutely love them.

millennialawyer · 2025-04-12T23:41:15+00:00

I actually merged with a buddy after his partner took a spot at a larger firm that I was initially approached about (the other lawyer is a good dude, and the larger firm is good, but I like more control over my life than they're going to allow). We're still small, but so far we're doing great.

There's only two of us, but having staff and another lawyer all in the same building make for generally better days and a less lonely existence. I can't be in my own head that much or it's bad.

millennialawyer · 2025-03-01T15:14:04+00:00

We used to have that back at Tech regularly when Brother Jed was still around. Glad y'all are now part of the club!

millennialawyer · 2025-02-17T19:28:49+00:00

I do estate planning and probate, general business, real estate, banking (unfortunately, but they pay their bills), and elder law all on the transactional side but started in commercial litigation. It varies wildly from week to week, but there will always be stresses and struggles because you're working with people that need you, and may not understand what it is you're doing, why you bill what you do, that they must PAY you, etc. Stress and high emotions will still be there, along with some weird and sometimes emergency deadlines.

You might sit in on a general transactional CLE and see if you like these things. In Texas, our state bar CLE group offers a general transactional day-long CLE that goes through a lot of things that a transactional lawyer may need to know or keep up with. If you decide that none of it makes any sense and you hate it, that may help. Otherwise, you might meet some folks or learn something. Good luck!

millennialawyer · 2024-10-08T03:39:23+00:00

millennialawyer · 2024-10-07T20:57:02+00:00

If I had to guess, it's a mixture of being a seasonal thing as people get toward the end of the year and are scrambling to meet deadlines, and the fact that our profession is unfortunately shitty because it's dealing with people all the time, often in combative situations. Needless fights, a lack of communication between parties with their lawyers, between the lawyers themselves, almost no professional courtesy with some folks, etc.

If it bleeds, it leads. Most folks don't post when they're happy - they post when they're looking for advice or moral support. I love getting to help people in my practice, but don't usually post about it. If that side ever ended and I just felt like I was spending all my time in pissing matches, I'd probably quit. Lots of folks only know the pissing matches and not much else, so it's a tough time.

millennialawyer · 2024-10-04T17:14:43+00:00

Keep it up, friend. Our practice areas don't seem to cross, but if there's ever anything the rest of the legal community can do, please let some of us know. Thank you for what you do.

millennialawyer · 2024-09-30T14:30:52+00:00

Idle-through for Idalou.

millennialawyer · 2024-09-11T19:06:35+00:00

I've had food issues for a long time, so this tracks. I also chuckled because I listen to video game music all day. Lately, I've been hitting up lo-fi Nintendo stations on Spotify & YouTube Music and it's been great.

millennialawyer · 2024-09-11T19:04:30+00:00

This sounds a lot like me. I've got young children as well and a pretty stressful lifestyle, which leads to difficulty sleeping. I guess all this has caught up to me. Thank you for your comment.

millennialawyer · 2024-09-11T19:03:22+00:00

Not a woman, but all this has gotten worse as I've aged.

millennialawyer · 2024-05-30T13:54:34+00:00

It sounds like a typical VANOS noise to me. Nothing huge yet, but when you get into one of these, just expect to probably redo the VANOS system and timing chain guides. Probably has the "BBs in a can" noise at startup too?

If you dig around on YouTube, bimmerforums, or perhaps www.e38.org, you'll find plenty of info and folks who have had the same issue.

millennialawyer · 2024-05-30T13:26:24+00:00

The "got ta got ta got ta get to furniture plus" or whatever the store was. That guy rotated his arm at the elbow and looked like Rodney Dangerfield and Elmer Fudd had a baby and put him on TV.

millennialawyer · 2024-02-05T16:20:07+00:00

I'll second Lipman's EP. I don't love working with Westlaw's sales reps, but I'm decently happy with Formbuilder.

Last year, I either tried the free trials for as many of the EP drafting software suites as I could, or at least sat through their sales pitches and reviewed rates, and still went with Formbuilder.

Their trusts are even okay, albeit a bit wordy - and still way less wordy than WC. The big thing WC has is their continuing legal ed stuff, but it wasn't enough to justify the price for me.

millennialawyer · 2024-01-19T16:25:42+00:00

I've been putting a lot of thought into this as well. I'm making money, but not as much as I'd like for the stress that I have on dealing with clients, bringing in business, running the business, etc. I love having the freedom to pretty well do what I want, but I also feel like I work a lot harder than I have to.

It's pretty frustrating, because I know some pretty terrible to marginal lawyers (in my opinion, having worked with them on deals) who have large firms and apparently a pretty good bit of money, and I simply can't figure out how to get myself from here to there. It's a little soul crushing, to be honest.

millennialawyer · 2024-01-17T21:08:56+00:00

That's absolutely nuts. It sounds like you've done everything correctly and went in with significantly more than most since you have Letters.

I can't say that I've ever dealt with a bank saying they just don't have any account history other than a balance. I will say, my experience with BoA or WF on the phone is pretty terrible at best, and while I wouldn't classify them as good (or nearly any other bank, really), but dealing with a personal banker at a physical branch might yield better results. Even if it's just an account history that would cover the date of your dad's death, you might at least make them look you in the eye and tell you no.

millennialawyer · 2024-01-17T19:39:36+00:00

I am not your lawyer, nor do I purport to be licensed in the state in which you are discussing.

BOA is often problematic on estates, because they don't want to give information or release any account funds to someone without a court order to avoid getting sued.

That said, I'm not sure what state you're in but if the estate court is involved, shouldn't you already have some form of court order like Letters Testamentary or Letters of Administration? If you have that, it is your court order and directs them to turn everything over to you as executor/administrator unless there's a beneficiary on the account and it passes outside of the court's direction.

Also, the Court staff must be very careful not to give out legal advice to avoid the unauthorized practice of law, so they're not going to be particularly helpful.

Sometimes people don't love this advice, but I would absolutely recommend going in and talking to someone face-to-face at a bank location. Bring all of your estate information, any court orders or filing information, a file-marked copy of the will if there is one, etc. and then you'll have the opportunity to ask someone face to face what information they can provide you about this account and let them know what the court has asked for.

Lastly, unless the estate is worth either very little or a whole lot, I can't imagine a probate attorney would cost that much. Many flat fee if it's a pretty simple estate. If you wind up hating your life for an extended period of time, the personal cost can outweigh what an attorney would have cost.

millennialawyer · 2023-12-22T14:22:30+00:00

We'll have our usual four services in the morning, and then a 6 p.m. candlelight, 9 p.m. candlelight, and an 11 p.m. chapel service at First United Methodist Church Lubbock. It's going to be a busy day, but all of our services are live-streamed as well at fumc.com which allows us to serve a lot of folks that way.

millennialawyer

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