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[Music]
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what makes smith barrett different
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is that we focus on what we call life
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planning traditional estate planning is
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really heavily focused on two things
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death and taxes which are inevitable and
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we certainly want to plan for them
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but our firm focuses more on planning
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for
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also what happens during your lifetime
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so that would include things like
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planning for incapacity so if you had a
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stroke and you couldn’t manage your own
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affairs anymore
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who would step in and take care of
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things and what what set of instructions
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would they follow
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a really important part of our focus is
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long-term care planning so
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a lot of folks don’t think about don’t
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want to think about
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needing to go to a nursing home or an
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assisted living facility
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what we’ve discovered is that about 70
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percent of people are gonna face some
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sort of long-term care event before they
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pass away
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and if you don’t plan for that and you
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don’t have the right
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financial pieces in place then
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what can happen is a real catastrophe so
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i think really what makes us different
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is our focus on
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on the the whole continuum of life and
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trying to plan
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for the the curveballs that life might
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throw you along the way
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our pricing model is a flat fee model
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and the reason that we do that
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is we want our pricing model to be as
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fair as possible for our clients we have
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a lot of colleagues maybe most of our
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colleagues
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who bill by the hour and what that winds
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up looking like is the client gets a
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bill
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every month from that attorney and they
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don’t know how much that bill is going
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to be
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so i don’t know how anybody plans for
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that and frankly one of the favorite
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stories i’ve heard from a client
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who formerly was with an hourly billing
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attorney and then came to us is that
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they got a bill for 37.50
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for a one-line email so i don’t know how
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long it took the attorney to do that one
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line email but it was basically 40 bucks
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for a one line email which doesn’t seem
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fair to me and the other thing it does
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is it discourages
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communication in our business
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communication is key
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we want the clients to communicate with
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us about what they want about what their
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intentions are
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so we can do the best job possible so
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once we’ve had a meeting with a client
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and we determine exactly what it is
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we’re going to do for them and we come
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to an agreement on that
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we give them an exact flat fee of what
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it’s going to cost
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and that’s what the fee is it doesn’t
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change so they’re not going to get a
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bill from us later saying
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well this took a little more time than
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we thought and now we need more money
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from you
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so they can plan upfront and also make a
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determination up front of whether it’s a
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good fit right from the start