The Rise of the Wealth Strategist
Exploring Alternative Careers for Estate Planning Attorneys in the Wealth Management Industry
NOTE TO THE READER: Many wealth strategists positions are focused more on the wealth, investments, and cash flow side of things and less on the tax and legal planning. This article is not intended to be a wholesale discussion of all wealth strategist positions, but instead focuses on how this job title and role is usually applied to former practicing attorneys.
Intro
For estate planning attorneys, the work we do can be highly rewarding. However, the grass can often appear greener when we see peers working for banks, trust companies, accounting firms, financial institutions, family offices, tech startups, and independent wealth advisory firms. We often ask ourselves questions like:
How nice would it be to shed billable hour requirements, and the administrative burdens of tracking time?
Could I go and purely do the work I love, without business development demands?
Would increasing our client contact make us happier?
Might it be easier to achieve the elusive work-life balance by leaving the practice of law?
Would this mean stepping down in compensation both short-term and long-term, and is that a fair trade-off for the improvement in job satisfaction?
Could I miss out on entrepreneurial incentives, and/or will I get bored?
Will a switch in position give me time to write more articles and become a thought leader?
Does a move outside of the practice of law impair my reputation, and could it affect eligibility for accolades such as an ACTEC fellowship?
Do I value prestige more than I perhaps am willing to admit?
These are just a handful of questions that I have encountered in speaking to peers who have left the active practice of law. Likewise, they reflect questions I had to ask myself in transitioning outside of full-time practice.
As the wealth management industry has expanded estate planning and tax service offerings, these service offerings are often buttressed by former practicing attorneys who act as in-house subject-matter experts. Often, this role does not involve the practice of law but instead takes more of a frame of education, issue-spotting, and sharing planning ideas.
This role goes by many different terms – wealth strategist, estate planner, estate planning strategist, fiduciary counsel or fiduciary strategist, advanced planner, etc. For purposes of this article, the term “wealth strategist” will be used as a blanket reference to former practicing estate planning attorneys who now use their expertise to serve clients on the wealth management and/or accounting side.
Surprisingly, however, there is little guidance out there – especially for estate planning attorneys seeking these proverbial “greener pastures” - about what exactly this position entails. For that matter, there is little guidance on alternative career paths in general for attorneys trained in estate planning. While this article won’t serve as a complete solution to these gaps, it is designed to at least provide some insight to those who are interested.
Note that while I serve as a part-time, fractional wealth strategist, my observations articulated herein may not be reflective of all wealth strategist positions. Most of my views have been developed not just through actual experience, but also through discussions with other wealth strategists and even through interviews for actual wealth strategist positions.
The Role
As a wealth strategist, you often serve as part of a broader advanced planning team for a financial institution, trust company, accounting firm, or larger registered investment advisory (RIA) firm. In some cases, you may be the advanced planning team yourself. In this role, you are usually called upon to support a front line of financial advisors and relationship managers with client cases involving estate planning, transfer tax, and related income tax issues.
Instead of first looking at specific job functions, it is perhaps more helpful to outline what this job does not entail. In most cases, you do not function as a practicing attorney. (I say “most cases,” because some advisory firms have captive law firms or serve as alternative legal service providers in states like Arizona or Utah.) You cannot draft documents, and you cannot otherwise engage in the delivery of legal advice. While the former is easy (in theory) to avoid, the latter can be difficult to adjust to if you are accustomed to delivering advice. But, it helps to frame your role as being centered less around advice and more around education about a client’s options (stopping short of specific recommendations about a course of action). This involves a strong eye for spotting issues and identifying potential solutions that will actually resonate with the client or their advisory team.
Often, your “clients” will be the advisors seeking your assistance in-house. Your job is to provide answers to their questions, and while you may be called upon to discuss issues and options with a client it may be the case that the advisor actually delivers your input to the end client as the face of the relationship. This is a dynamic through which you must develop a certain level of comfort, especially if you are used to being the “horse’s mouth.” It also means developing a different type of communication supported by deliverables or internal documentation – with a sensitivity towards a different (or perhaps missing) level of privilege towards work product when compared to practicing attorneys.
A common function of wealth strategists is the review and summary of a client’s various estate and business documents. This can include creation of flowcharts, side-by-side comparisons, and increasing reliance on AI and estate tech to assist with these functions. The role also involves a certain comfort with a client’s financial picture, requiring use of financial modeling software and general familiarity with subjects such as cash flow, budgeting, portfolio allocation, and diversification to determine how these items interface with the actual documents and legal planning. Insurance and risk management may also be areas that cross over into the wealth strategist’s expected realm of broader expertise.
While this scope of expertise can seem daunting, it is rare to require as deep a dive as one might be accustomed to as a practicing attorney. In most wealth strategist roles, the client must retain their own outside attorneys to implement plans and serve as the final say. But, you may serve in a project management role to interface with outside attorneys and provide direct guidance on what a client has discussed with you and/or their financial advisor. While some attorneys are receptive to this type of feedback and collaboration, others can feel you are stepping on their toes. As you develop tenure in the wealth strategist position, you begin to identify attorneys who value your input. Ideally, you will reach a level of rapport with attorney referral partners that allows you to effectively serve as a trusted, outside set of eyes for the overall plan.
In terms of the broader planning, wealth strategists often work with advisors and their clients on a “fire drill” approach to the current estate plan in order to identify gaps. This usually involves a simulation of the estate and/or trust administration process to determine where assets might go, where issues and conflicts may arise, and where information might be missing. It might also include simulations of an audit by the IRS or a state department of revenue, or a simulation of an inside or outside business sale. Wealth strategists often work with clients and their attorneys or tax advisors to fill any missing gaps that are identified for information – including digital assets (such as logins and passwords), paperwork, and tax returns.
In this vein, the wealth strategist often recognizes that even the best estate and business succession plans require maintenance. Docketing of ongoing maintenance such as Crummey notifications, entity minutes, gift tax returns, payments on intrafamily loans, and mandatory trust distributions can be a vital function. Frequent reviews of fiduciaries and key persons identified in estate and business documents are conducted. Wills and trusts are monitored for the effects of changing laws and family dynamics. Buy-sell agreements are checked for viability in areas such as funding, valuation, and permitted estate planning transfers.
From these perspectives, a wealth strategist must also balance the technical side of practice with soft skills. Frequent meetings and phone calls can fill your day, squeezing out time for the actual “work.” Sensitivity to individual and family dynamics must be developed, and it can be difficult to reconcile past attorney experience with a true view of “how the sausage is made” derived from interactions with successful families and their advisors and outside counsel. One gains a new appreciation for the planning process, and challenges relating thereto, when serving in this role. Wealth strategists often end up having sensitive conversations with outside professionals like attorneys, CPAs, and life insurance agents, and may have to navigate egos within the broader planning team.
Work-Life Balance
While many wealth strategist positions do not require billing or tracking time, this is not a universal rule. Some firms may still track your utilization, whether to gauge your individual profitability or to gauge the profitability and pricing of planning engagements with clients.
And, being a wealth strategist does not always mean you can coast. The volume of information thrown at you can seem overwhelming, and it can often seem like you are not doing a deep enough dive or a complete job when compared to your usual attorney level of scrutiny. However, it is important to remember that you are not functioning as an attorney and it is not your job to use the same level of diligence as an attorney.
That being said, you will make mistakes. Prior errors of a client’s professionals will be spotted, and likewise you will miss issues that you later realize with the benefit of hindsight could easily have been spotted with greater attention. These newer worries will replace the older worries of being an attorney, but they are worries nonetheless – some of which may still keep you up at night.
While wealth strategists may not have business development expectations, they can be considered a cost center – creating risk of redundancy in lean times. This role is often a sales support role for financial advisors, and sales demands may require meeting with clients or attending marketing events after hours. The sales support function can impede both family time, and time that one would otherwise dedicate to getting their work done if they were in the office. And, because you are a cost center, the work load might be greater than anticipated. It is harder to justify the cost of adding headcount and capacity within the broader wealth strategist role when compared to professional practices in which time can be billed.
Long story short, on average the hours and demands of the wealth strategist are lower than those of a practicing attorney. But, there are trade-offs, and this is not always a role conducive to sitting back and coasting until retirement. For the most part, you are often left to your own devices to define the role and create systems and processes – which usually become property of the firm or institution if you later leave. And, the work done to define the role may not be rewarded as much as within a more entrepreneurial professional practice. Upward growth and advancement may be limited, and earning potential may be capped. While average salaries for wealth strategists appear to be similar to those paid by medium-sixed law firms, bonuses may make up a larger part of the base salary than within the practice of law. And, of course, these bonuses may not be tied to your performance but instead to the performance of the firm or institution as a whole.
At some point, you may want to return to active practice. However, while the enforceability of non-competes has been restricted by regulation (pending the application of Loper to this and other regulations which once were protected under the Chevron doctrine), there is still the potential for restrictions on your ability to solicit clients and advisors you worked with as a wealth strategist after leaving. The wealth strategist role may not be as much of a business development catalyst for those who return to law as it appears at first glance.
Thought Leadership
While thought leadership can be part of the wealth strategist role, the day-to-day demands often leave this as a “nice-to-have” and not a part of the wealth strategist’s typical job functions. Nonetheless, you often serve as an ambassador of the firm or institution who employs you, and while some wealth strategists develop personal brands within the role I have found that this is more the exception than the norm. A lot of your thought leadership is focused internally, and not externally.
That being said, you are usually exposed to a wider variety clients and issues than you might be in a local law practice. This creates room to tackle problems from different angles, while also observing how attorneys and peers also tackle these problems. These unique insights can be used to develop educational content and thought leadership. But, development of these materials may have to take place after hours. It is rare that one can use traditional working hours to focus on writing an article or presentation.
Conclusion
The wealth strategist role is not for everybody. As highlighted in this article, there are perks to the position. But, while the demands are different, they are demands nonetheless. A career switch can ease some of the burdens of the practice of law, but it is not a complete panacea to these burdens.
That being said, the wealth strategist role is a role that traditionally is not well-supported. You can sometimes feel like an island, with little or no peer support. My goal with this newsletter is creating a community to support former practicing attorneys who have moved on to this type of role. In that vein, if I can be a resource, please reach out and note that much of the education I produce has you in mind. Stay tuned, because I will continue to develop resources which are specific to wealth strategists and similar peer roles. And, if you have anything to add to this overview of the role that you think might help your peers considering a switch, please let me know what I have missed.
In addition, if you are part of a firm or institution seeking to add an advanced planning team – including functions that might be served by a former practicing attorney or CPA – I am happy to be a resource as well. Future content will also focus on the development of, and working with, an in-house or outsourced advanced planning team (including talent acquisition versus software).