Finding and Training in a New Estate Planning Attorney

Question:

I am the owner of an estate planning firm in the Western Chicago suburbs. My practice is a specialized practice that focuses on estate planning, estate administration, estate litigation, and elder law. While I was a solo practitioner for many years approximately four years ago I brought in an associate that had three or four years experience with an other estate planning firm. Unfortunately, he just gave me his notice and advised that he was leaving to join another firm. We have too much work for me to handle by myself and I am going to need another attorney with estate planning experience. How do I go about finding this person. Any suggestions that you have will be appreciated.

Response:

I have assisted several of my Chicagoland estate planning law firm clients as well as clients in other parts of the country and I can tell you that experienced estate planning/administration and elder law attorneys are like gold and hard to find. This was even the case during the 2008 recession when recent law school graduates and experienced attorneys with other skill sets were having difficult times finding jobs. Now, with the current job market, finding experienced estate planning/administration and elder law attorneys is even more difficult. Many of these attorneys tend to work in small firms, are loyal to their firms, and less mobile. They tend to stay put and often remain with one law firm for their entire careers.

I would start your search for an experienced attorney by:

Putting the word out through your professional network. Ask around.
Prepare an ad for the position
Post the ad with www.indeed.com, ISBA.org Career Center, LinkedIn, local suburban bar associations, and local law schools.
Have resumes come to you electronically.
After initially reviewing resumes and narrowing down to candidates of interest use a telephone interview as your first interview and face to face for a subsequent interview if appropriate.

If after thirty days or so you are having no luck you might have to consider using a local headhunter or simply looking for a recent law graduate and investing the time to train a new attorney. Several of my estate planning/administration and elder law clients are having to hire new law graduates and train them. Many have been quite satisfied with the results and now believe it is the best way to go. Recent law graduates start with a clean slate and do not bring in any baggage or bad practices or habits picked up in other law firms. They are often more loyal and stay with the firm longer.

A few suggestions concerning recent law school graduates:

Look for candidates that took elective courses in estates/trusts/elder law.
Look for candidates that had meaningful clerking experience with law firms specializing in estate planning/administration and elder law. Not running errands but meaningful experience.
Develop a comprehensive training plan with specific timelines designed to get the attorney billable and productive as soon as possible in easier forms of work (possibly guardianship) and then gradually move the attorney into simple estate plans and more complex areas over time.
Be patient – the process will take time – consider it an investment.
It will take time for you to make money from the new associate. Be happy if you cover the cost of the associate in the first year.

Click here for our blog on career management

Click here for our blog on human resources

Click here for articles on other topics

John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC

Posted at 04:57 AM in Career Management, Human Resources
Tags: a, and, Attorney, Estate, Finding, in, New, Planning, Training

Oct 10, 2019

Finding and Training in a New Estate Planning Attorney

Archives

Categories