How do “e-lawyering” and “virtual law firms” work?

Traditionally, if a problem arises, an individual will sit down with an attorney for a consultation. The attorney will listen to the concerns of the individual, ask some questions, and make a few preliminary suggestions. After that, meetings are scheduled, documents are drafted and reviewed, and then more meetings are scheduled. In the case of an estate plan, the client may come back to the attorney’s office two or three more times to revise the documents and to execute them.

If a client is dedicated, he will continue to meet with the attorney. However, many times we have seen clients begin the process and then not finalize it. We have heard the excuses as to why they cannot commit to finalizing the process and it almost always comes down scheduling. However, we as estate planning attorneys understand how important it is to immortalize your wishes because we have seen the outcome when it is not done properly.

This website was born out of those frustrations – frustration on our part because we truly believe that everyone needs an estate plan and frustration on the client’s part because they know it’s important but they just cannot make a commitment to visit the office two or more times.

To us the next logical question was: Why not bring our knowledge and expertise to them through the most convenient portal – the internet and email?

The process of our site is extremely straight forward. First, we ask you to complete the “contact us” page. On it, information is requested. If you prefer not to give it, that is fine–we do not ask it because we intend to bombard you with direct mailing, phone calls or email spam. We ask it because it is the information we need to start the process. A single man who has $500,000 in assets has different estate planning needs than a married couple with children who have $500,000 in assets.

Once we receive the contact email, we will respond via email to you with our suggestions. The suggestions will include not only the documents we suggest but also either a link to an article of ours which explain the legal reasons for the document or if we haven’t published an article on the subject, we will give you the reasons we suggest it.

If you are comfortable with our suggestion, we will ask you to agree to an engagement letter. This is required by the New York State Bar Association, but more importantly it sets forth what we will be delivering to you. If there is something you do not understand, please email us. We will explain it further. We also ask for a retainer with the engagement letter. You are not prepaying us. We hold that money in an attorney account. It will not be released until either the final documents are prepared or until the engagement has ended for other reasons (which will be set forth in the engagement letter).

After we receive the engagement letter, the process begins. We will forward to you a questionnaire. These questions must be answered. It is in word and PDF format and we ask that you complete it and return it to us via email. However, if you prefer, you may fax the answers back to us.

We will use those answers to prepare a document which we will email to you with a summary of each of the paragraphs in the document and what they mean in non-legalese – i.e. in plain English.

You may contact us with as many questions as you have as many times as you want. And in the event that you do not understand something we write in our emails, we ask that you call us. We are real attorneys who are happy to assist you.

Once you are satisfied with the documents, we will send you the final execution document together with detailed instructions on how to complete it legally in New York. If you prefer, you may meet in our office to execute the documents.

At that point you have a valid estate plan.

However, we would be remiss if we didn’t mention to you, an estate plan cannot be done once and forgotten. We always ask our clients to review their wills or trusts on January 1st of every year and we send emails to remind our clients of this. If the documents still make sense given your then situation, you can put them back in the safe. If on the other hand something has changed, we ask that you contact us to review it to determine if in fact they make sense with the new change.

That is the process.

This website and our firm believe that high quality legal documents prepared by attorneys can be delivered to over-extended individuals by using the technology available to us. If you have any questions on the process or on your situation, please contact us.