We aim to be our clients’ “Lawyers for Life.”
It’s a simple motto, but it has multiple meanings. On one level, it means that we seek to maintain long-standing relationships with individuals and families that extend over decades. And of course, that is very true. We relish the opportunity to work with clients from a young age, seeing them through all the stages of life at which our services come into play—marriage, parenthood, retirement, and beyond.
But our motto has another meaning as well. It means that regardless of the age of a client, we see our role as helping them to live the best life they can. That requires more than having the right documents in place; it requires that we recognize our clients as real people, take a genuine interest in them, and understand their desires. Only then can we fulfill our mission to be their “Lawyer for Life,” as illustrated by the below engagement.
A wealthy elderly client came to Smith Legacy Law seeking updates to a few distributions in her will. In speaking with her, however, we discovered that she needed assistance with many other issues. She just didn’t realize her estate planning lawyer could help with them. These included:
- Obtaining her credit report, as she may have been a victim of credit card fraud.
- Various home construction projects that would make it possible for her to stay in her home as she aged and became less mobile.
- Creating appointments with and touring assisted living communities as a backup plan if she was ever unable to continue living in her home, due to physical or mental limitations.
- Finding a personal assistant to help with day-to-day organization and tasks.
- Had Smith Legacy Law’s attorneys not taken the “Lawyers for Life” approach of getting to know the client on a personal level, and not probed beyond what was needed to draft estate planning documents, her additional needs would never have been identified. She would have gone without these important services or been forced to find them on her own. She didn’t, however, because she has a lawyer for life.
