I started my estate planning practice in 1996. I had two ideas that seemed obvious at the time and turned out to be uncommon in the legal profession.

The first was that estate planning should not feel like a chore. Most people put it off because they expect a stuffy attorney, an office that smells like old carpet, a stack of forms they do not understand, and a bill that arrives a month later with charges for every phone call. Families avoid estate planning because they expect the experience to be unpleasant, not because they doubt it matters.

The second was that the attorney you meet with should be the attorney who finishes your plan. Not a paralegal. Not a junior associate. Not a case manager. I had watched too many firms hand the work off after the first meeting. The client met an attorney on day one and signed documents six weeks later with someone she had never met.

Nearly thirty years later, those two ideas still run the firm. Most California estate planning firms operate with layers of staff between the attorney and the client. We inverted the model. Seven attorneys, one operations manager, and no one in between. Your attorney answers your emails. Your attorney drafts your documents. Your attorney walks you through every page. And your attorney is the one you call five years from now when something changes.

The firm only works if everyone in it believes the same things about how clients should be treated. That is why we hired the attorneys we did.

Clark Allison