Reader Update – October 2024
Online document providers, using the Substack interface, office hours, and more
Table of Contents
Thank You
While I do not express it enough, I want to thank you again for reading and supporting my content. In doing so, you are not just supporting me. You are also supporting your peers by helping solidify this educational and support platform for their benefit.
I am coming off a 2-month whirlwind period that has been filled with speaking engagements, trips, and other demands that have kept me from publishing as often as I would like. So, I apologize if my cadence has not matched my prior efforts. There are several series I still need to pick back up and continue, such as C and S corporations for estate planners, and rest assured that I have not forgotten about them. I also have some broader content coming up on topics such as the new SECURE Act regulations, special needs planning, and the intersection of M&A and estate planning.
That being said, it has never been my intention to go it alone. If you have something to say in the estate planning space that is educational and not promotional, I believe your voice should be heard – especially if you feel like you struggle to come up with topics or ideas that are new or novel, or feel intimidated when compared to other speakers and teachers out there. If you are interested, please reach out - you can do so simply by replying to the e-mail with this article.
Likewise, I am looking for some IP support for my ventures as well. If you are an IP attorney who is interested in assisting me personally, please reach out. (Please note that I am not able to respond to all inquiries or offers.)
Online Document Platforms – An Outside Take?
A lot of you know my background as an estate planning attorney. It is against this background that I get a lot of questions about online, non-attorney document generation services (often with the assumption that I am against them because of my background). I have tried to remain neutral, mainly because I don’t begrudge anyone who wants to better serve individuals and families in estate planning. I do think, however, that there are unique emotional and psychological challenges in estate planning that no amount of tech can change.
Along these lines, Michael Kitces recently discussed some of the limitations of platforms that allow advisors to bypass attorneys in providing estate planning documents in his AdvisorTech update. And, while I have some bias as alluded to above, Michael reaffirmed to me what I believe the majority of attorneys already know – there just isn’t enough demand, especially as multiple players start competing for the same business. In the article, he notes:
The question, however, is whether the opportunity for estate document preparation is really big enough to justify the tens of millions of dollars raised by the key players in the last few years. Because even though document preparation can command a higher fee than estate planning software alone – digital solutions often charge somewhere between $400 and $700 for a set of estate documents for what could be each of an advisor's 75 active clients (amounting to $30,000 to more than $50,000 of revenue per advisor), as opposed to what is more commonly $1,000–$2,000 per advisor per year for most advanced planning software – each client may realistically only update their estate planning documents once every 10–15 years as their circumstances substantively change enough to merit doing entirely new documents. Which means that a 'typical' advisor with 75 active clients might only have 5–8 clients needing new documents each year, some of whom may not actually use the service: either because they already have established relationships with estate planning attorneys, or else have complex enough needs to necessitate having the documents drafted by a human estate attorney. And if advisors only actually have 2–4 clients per year engaging in estate document preparation on average each year, then those services really might not generate much more than the $1,000–$2,000 per advisor per year revenue that software itself costs.
Without criticizing either “side” (or the fee-sharing and UPL concerns), tech providers exist because there is a perceived gap in the market. And, I believe attorneys can easily fill this gap and reduce related demand for non-attorney solutions - perhaps even with their own tech as a supplement, but not as a complete replacement for client interaction (as I will discuss below). Consumer demand for tech solutions is decreased when we decouple our value proposition from transactional outcomes such as document-drafting, estate/trust administration, and/or assistance in ancillary practice areas. And, financial advisors may be less motivated to offer competitive estate planning services when our fees reflect this decoupling of our value proposition from transactions - by becoming more recurring and relationship-driven in structure (in effect, sponging off some of the recurring fees that might otherwise have gone to advisors).
To put it differently, Paul Hood and John A. Warnick have set forth the ultimate prescription: getting back to the human side of estate planning. To me, getting there starts with relationships and actual human interactions - which is also why I choose to conduct office hours for subscribers to this newsletter.
If I had to start over as an estate planning associate attorney, what I would do is schedule as many meetings as I can with individuals and families to discuss estate planning – not with the goal of “closing” them on getting documents done through me, but instead just to help them get a sense of where they are and where they would like to go. Perhaps this is a better metric of practice success, from which revenue is sure to follow. The question becomes how to add value, of documents are not provided? (I believe there is a certain insecurity about getting paid to help people when documents are not involved, as if we do not believe we can add value without documents. I’m here to tell you this is not true. But, don’t take my word for it - conducting as many outcome-agnostic client meetings as possible is designed to help you overcome this assumption.)
As to tech providers, I believe that pushing people to get a will solves (perhaps the wrong) symptom instead of addressing the bigger issues with hesitancy to engage in estate planning. To preface, there are many experts in this space – like Paul and John A. - doing better work on the human side of estate planning than I ever have or ever will. But, I personally believe a lot of individuals just do not think their legacy is worth the investment of time and fees (i.e., the same insecurity mentioned above with respect to the value we can add). So, maybe it is a matter of both sides – client and attorney or advisor – meeting in the middle.
Unfortunately, a lot of the marketing and education in estate planning – both from attorneys and non-attorneys alike – reinforces these insecure views. How? By telling clients and advisors alike that they can engage in estate planning in a manner that involves minimum investment of time, fees, and (most importantly) negative or positive emotion. The process of creating documents has, in my observation, become highly dissociative and alexithymic for clients and attorneys/advisors alike – especially where tech is involved.
If you truly are passionate about helping people with estate planning, I think this is where you can add the most value – by helping people to emotionally realize they are worth the self-investment in their own legacy. But, the approach matters. Emotional viewpoints are not changed by tools – they are changed by personal action and experience. This means not just enhancing your own client contact, but also inspiring (perhaps small) actions that your client and prospects can take after meeting with you. Telling people to “get a will” until you are blue in the face does not work, even if you provide the most streamlined tool or lowest barrier to completion. The public already knows they need estate planning documents, and a large portion of the public (as much as 2/3rds) is still choosing not to take action. But, waiting until potential clients are “ready” or motivated to take action – perhaps by the passage of time, or perhaps by a life event prompting action - is not an optimal outcome. What can you be doing to help them right now?
In this video, I explain more about a process of creating the habit and exercise of thinking about and building one’s legacy as a possible salve to this broader issue. I may be way off base here, or perhaps I have come up with something that is helpful. Either way, if you like this approach, feel free to share it with your clients and please also reach out if I can provide additional support:
Office Hours
I have been getting some questions lately about where to sign up for office hours. This is the link. (Note that links now appear as blue text instead of underlined text.)
If you are a subscriber, new articles get e-mailed to the address you originally subscribed under (which can be changed under your subscription settings). The office hours link can also be found in the header of each e-mail. Traditionally, links have shown up as underlined text but I recently changed this to show them as blue text as seen in the prior paragraph.
Which brings me to another set of questions I often receive – how to access current and prior articles, including audio read-throughs.
Using the Substack Interface
As noted above, I am a staff of one. In order to do so, I have chosen to use the Substack back-end instead of programming and maintaining a stand-alone system for article publishing, logins, and subscriptions. But, whether you are a paid or free subscriber, I want to make sure you are getting maximum value out of the interface.
To start, all new articles get e-mailed. If you pay for a subscription, new paid articles should get e-mailed in full to you without prompting you for a login. If they do not, please let me know. And, paid (versus free) articles do provide a free preview which itself can contain some helpful context - so I would encourage you to read the free preview. I aim for a 50/50 paid versus free mix, not necessarily by week or month but instead by average over time. If you see a lock next to an article, this shows that it is a paid article:
For prior free articles (those without a lock), you can just pull up the archive (listing articles in reverse chronological order) or use series indeces where available (to be discussed below). But, for prior paid articles, you need to log in to Substack. The Substack platform has a password option, but usually it uses a two-factor approach by giving the option to e-mail you a sign-in link by entering your e-mail in the address bar as seen here:
By entering your e-mail into that box, you should get a follow-up e-mail with a link that you can click to log in. If you do not, then you may want to check your spam filters.
Likewise, if you have subscribed but are not receiving any articles from me, you may want to check spam filters as well. In the “From” line, you should see, “Griffin Bridgers from State of Estates” as the sender.
That being said, I occasionally see subscriptions where there may have been an error in entering your e-mail address – perhaps a mistyped letter, or missed punctuation. If you are not receiving anything, please let me know and I will check the back-end to see which e-mail address (if any) you used to subscribe.
Finally, I know we live in an age where there is an app for everything. But, if you are interested, there is a Substack app. I don’t usually recommend the app, but there is one feature on there I want to highlight. The app (but not the web interface) includes an AI-generated audio reading of articles. And, the app stays logged in which allows you to quickly view current and past articles. I have chosen to rely on this feature in lieu of pasting audio read-throughs of my own for now, because including my own tends to get clunky and gum up the visual works of the article.
And, while not yet quite complete to my satisfaction, I am working on indexing prior content. Many articles appear in series, and you can (or eventually will) find (1) an index of articles in the original series article, and (2) a link to the original article containing the series index at the top of each subsequent article. Long term, the article indices will also be decentralized and found at the top similar to how my videos are indexed.
Links traditionally have appeared as underlined text, which can appear confusing as well. I recently changed this so that links appear as blue text.