Tara (00:57):
Welcome back to episode nine of the Auto Estate Planning Podcast. I can't believe we're up so high with our episodes and as always, Carrie, it is a pleasure to be doing this with you. Hello.
Carrie (01:12):
Hi Tara. I'm excited to be here for lucky number nine.
Tara (01:16):
So today's episode is all about the 15 ideas that we have for maximising profit on your estate planning matters. But before we dive into that, I actually wanted to share some feedback that we got from one of our beautiful listeners, Lana. So she is a lawyer in the TT Precedent's Club and she very generously shared some insights on our episode number three about super strategies and the childcare subsidy, which I thought was really worth just sharing here for anyone following along with that conversation. So if you haven't listened to the episode, it's episode number three. But basically we were talking about how the way that beneficiaries of an estate or of a member fund receive super benefits can jeopardise the Centrelink childcare subsidy that they receive for their minor children.
(02:21):
And in that episode I was saying, well, I have two kids under four or under five now. And so I know that it definitely is relevant when it comes to early childcare, but I had no idea what happens when they go to school. Lana really kindly filled me in that a lot of primary age children still get the childcare subsidy benefit for before school and after afterschool care, which obviously makes a huge difference for working families being able to send their children to affordable and subsidised care before or after I am yet to be introduced to the hellhole that is the 3:00 PM pickup at school. But I can see it coming next year and I am well aware of how short those school holidays are and also how short the school day is.
Carrie (03:18):
I think it's totally normal Tara for the cat lady and the newish mother to not know the intricacies of before and afterschool childcare. So I think Lana has been kind enough. I know Lana's got a couple of kids of that age, so we want to hear from you if you have different comments for those not in our demographic, obviously we're very specific where we're at, but I think it is something that unless you're experiencing it, it's very difficult to know some of these things, right?
Tara (03:47):
Yes. And so really grateful for sharing that through and because what it means is that actually this, I want to say loophole, it's not a loophole, it's like a black hole because no one's benefiting except the government. This black hole of failed policy actually affects beneficiaries who have children from birth up to maybe 11 or 12 years old. So there's a bigger window than we initially were saying on that episode three, and I think that just lends more support to the fact that this is something that we probably should be factoring into our estate planning strategies and conversations. So yeah, thank you so much Lana, and we do appreciate everyone who is listening and giving us your feedback. It is so nice to know that people are taking the time to hear us gas bagging and keeping that conversation going. So let's jump into the topic for episode number nine, which is the 15 ways to maximise profit on your estate planning matters.
(04:57):
And I first of all don't want to say that we're experts on this by any means, but we do have the tremendous privilege of working with over 200 Australian lawyers in our TT Precedents Club membership. And I for one, take a very personal interest in our members and I watch them super closely about what they're doing. Oh, that sounds really creepy, but I'm outside the window of your office peering in, but I do whatever you're posting on social media and when we catch up and in the weekly hot seats and just the social interactions, I really do watch what everyone is doing and all the milestones that you are hitting in your businesses. And over the last three or so years doing this, we've sort of this common themes about what people are doing that I can see is helping them grow their business and live their best lives. And we've condensed that into 15 points that we've put into a one page flyer that you'll be able to download from the show nights, and I wanted to share that with everyone today listening.
Carrie (06:10):
Tara, I just wanted to add in here because I'm one of those people, I get really uncomfortable talking about money and I very much, and I'm saying this, for those that are listening that also find these sorts of discussions really difficult. I have a difficulty understanding my value and communicating my value a lot of the time. And so I think when I hear a lawyer trying to increase their profit, it's an uncomfortable topic sometimes to think about, but I last week was helping a client who is earning $333,000 per year plus a $50,000 bonus as an employee. And I think that when we're talking about maximising your profit people that we're talking about, we're not running around squillion. I think when we talk about maximising a profit, we're doing it so that you can have a business that functions really well, that takes care of the people in your team, including yourself, and makes the grind worthwhile.
(07:08):
Because when we're doing law, I think it is a little bit of a higher calling in many aspects. We get called to this position of care and commitment to people, but it is a lot of work, and so we want to make sure that the work that you're putting in is actually being recovered in the most effective way. We're not out here to punish the public and make sure that we're charging them ridiculous amounts of money. We want to make sure that when you are charging them, you're capturing as much of that as possible to benefit you and your team.
Tara (07:36):
That's a really good shout, Carrie, and thank you for mentioning it because when it comes to talking about money, I'm as subtle as a brick to the face and have no issues just saying, oh, everyone should make as much money as possible, and I've totally normalised that for myself, but I totally agree, and really what I'm seeing our members who are having really profitable practises, and what I know nearly all of you are doing is using that abundance to deliver win-win outcomes for you and your lifestyle and for your clients. I see so many of you using whether it's extra time that you're gaining for yourself or actual more money, you are reinvesting that in your service delivery, in your interactions with your clients to deliver high value outcomes to your clients. And I don't think we should be ashamed of talking about that because what do they say?
(08:41):
At the risk of sounding like a cliche, you can't pour from an empty cup, and if you are running around like a headless chalk just jumping from putting fires out all day, you are not showing up and giving your clients your best. You're not creating space for them to work through this emotional exercise. You're not coming at it with the right energy and you don't have time to work on your systems and your processes to improve the customer experience and eliminate mistakes and risks. So I just think if you are in a really good space where there's enough abundance and you can reinvest in things in your business, it's like a snowball effect, right? Because once you have enough money to reinvest in the software or the precedents or the process or whatever it is that is going to make your business better, those gains are going to accumulate and compound and then you've got more time and freedom to do the next thing that is going to benefit clients. So yeah, I know it doesn't get spoken a lot about in law firms and estate planning businesses, but I just think that is the key to a long career as a happy, oh, I don't want to say happy lawyer because Clarissa is the queen of happy lawyer, happy life, but she's onto something because we do, we need to be happy in our careers, and so working in a profitable and abundant firm is key to that. All right. Have we done enough preaching?
Carrie (10:25):
We're not preaching, we're just making sure everyone knows we're out here for the right reasons.
Tara (10:30):
Yes, and I give everyone the benefit of the doubt. I know you all have the biggest hearts, and actually I think what we see happening most of the time is actually the lawyers in our TT Precedents Club and that we see are two generous to their own detriment and to their family's detriment and are actually not capturing their value and not giving up. So it is going to be a topic that we keep coming back to because I believe so strongly about it. So let's go through our list and number one drum roll please is... precedents. Of course, that's not a surprise because at the art of estate planning, we sell precedents, but there's a reason for that, and I just think that they are so key to helping your firm. It's one of the best things that you'll get a return on almost immediately.
(11:27):
So the first one I say is integrated precedents so that they're up to date current with the law and that they integrate with your practise management system if you are using one, if you can take those or eliminate those hands on keyboard type risks of names being spelt incorrectly, addresses being wrong, names being s spelled multiple different ways throughout documents, all that stuff is. So 10 years ago, and if you know that your matter data is set up correctly and everything is verified and you've ticked it all off and then every name, every reference, everything that appears in your documents is going to be consistent and correct. What a wait off, because having to check those mundane things for typos and user error is firstly such a waste of your talent and it's a distraction from thinking about the core big issues. If you're so focused on like, oh, I've just got to check there's no typos and they haven't spelled the name wrong here or there, or all of that, then when you're bogged down in that type of thinking, it's really hard to then go, oh, have we thought about the strategy for the family home properly?
(12:50):
Or have I thought about this contingency plan and what happens in that event? Or do I need to get more instructions? It actually takes you away from thinking about the really big strategy stuff, which is where you add the value.
Carrie (13:04):
I think I've got sort of two points here, Tara. I agree with you. I think that when I look at documents, I use two different sides of my brain so to speak. One is just the detail, full stops, that sort of part. The other part is I turn off that part and then turn on the legal reasoning and look at it from like, does this work mechanically for the client? So if you've already done that, that you've already got precedents that have all those dots done in the right places, you don't have to use as much for that part of your brain power. The other one is that, and I think this is the really important one, is the client doesn't care if you're sitting there for six hours doing things like that. They don't see the value in that, right? They want to see a polished document at the end and they want to see that you care about them and their value is their time with you. So when we talk about these documents and the value that we're delivering to clients, the proposition of sitting on documents for four hours is long gone.
(14:00):
We want to actually minimise the time that we're spending on those documents by investing in technology so that we can actually spend more time on stuff that matters with the clients.
Tara (14:12):
Yeah, I mean, when I was practising and preparing documents for clients, I was like maybe 30 minutes spent on the documents generated with the precedents because they were so good, and then the 30 minutes is like, oh, I need a bespoke to occupy clause in here. Or yeah, they do want to do something funny with the succession of the trustees, so I've got to move the precedent around. But yeah, you're absolutely right. It's not like your time is spent word processing anymore that it's not valuable. And if you are pricing properly, which is actually, oh yeah, that's number five on the list, you will talk about that. But if you're getting your pricing right, the more efficient your systems are, the better the uplift for you. So number two on our list is precedent automation. So it's sort of the same discussion in terms of estate planning strategy.
(15:08):
Not only does it integrate with your precedent practise management system, but if you can just tick a few boxes and all the right clauses come in and you are eliminating that human error, again, not on just typos and word processing, but actual on strategy that is so valuable as well. So for instance, at the Art of Estate Planning, we have precedents which integrate with action step, Smokeball and leap, and we have no coding option as well, but with action step for instance, and with Smokeball, it'll say, well, how many testamentary trusts are you setting up? Is the testamentary trust here to benefit the surviving spouse or does it only start once both spouses in a couple have died? What are you doing about foreign persons as beneficiaries? Are they included or not included? And when you just select either the radio buttons or the dropdown menu and it produces your completed testament tree trust will in like 30 seconds, you've got all the clauses that you need in there.
(16:21):
For instance, you don't have to sit there and go, okay, so we are leaving the residual estate to the surviving spouse, absolutely in the first instance, and only once they've both died, are we setting up testamentary trust? So I need to make sure that I include the extra clause that overrides the 30 day survivor rule with respect to the surviving spouse because I don't blah, blah, blah. It's just like I'm actually even thinking, have I said that the right way around? And so every time that you are drafting, do you want to think about that and risk getting it wrong? No, the precedent knows if you've selected these options, that clause appears or it doesn't appear, so you can just eliminate so many opportunities. Again, not really opportunities, but you know
Carrie (17:17):
So many chances of it getting it wrong.
Tara (17:18):
Instances where you could get it wrong and mess it up that day that you just needed an extra coffee or your kids had you up or whatever it is, if your precedent's just sorted so that all of that is taken care of. Again, it just frees you up to really think, how can I customise and tailor this estate plan for these particular clients and get the legal foundations? So I'm just a huge fan. I think once you have quality precedents that you trust, that you have confidence in that up to date and kept up to date, and you don't have to, gosh, change the names or run the chance that someone else's name is going to be in there or anything like that. Suddenly it just eliminates so much white noise and frees you up to focus on if you've allocated four hours or whatever it is that you budget per matter. If you can spend so much less time on word processing, you've got all that extra time in the client meeting to guide them to hold their hand to have those deeper discussions. I just think it is key, which is why I've put it as number one and number two.
Carrie (18:27):
I think that ties nicely over to the third one, which is talking about having a centralised clause library. So this is a document or documents that have clauses that you've used before to include in client documents with different kind of options and things built into them. It's actually just a centralised place for your intellectual property on drafting documents. I have a bit of a story to share about this. So when Tara was my supervising lawyer many moons ago, she used to use a phrase, and I'm pretty sure she still does, I think she might've used it on me the other day about not having to reinvent the wheel. So I think that's a really valid point here. When we're talking about the clause library. You shouldn't have to go digging or thinking about, oh, who's that client that I drafted that weird clause for three months ago and now I can't remember, and I'm trying to use it again for another client.
(19:22):
We should be taking the opportunity to access a clause library where there are examples of where we have used it before. I think it used to be, and I'm not an old lawyer, I'm going to say I'm old, but I'm not an old lawyer. I think there comes this fear from some older generations about giving people your intellectual property that they're afraid to centralise it somewhere, because I know I've worked with one of these old lawyers before and you'll be asking for a clause and they'll pull something out of the middle of nowhere. That's nowhere else for anybody else to find. So it's a series of emails backwards and forwards, this 20 minute exercise that could have been a two minute exercise from a centralised clause library. So I think we've got to let go of the fear of other people having access to our drafting skills and think about what are we here to do? We're here to service the clients in an efficient manner. Let's have this one place where we can go to actually draught up these clauses. So that's my feelings on a clause library. But Tara, I think you've started most of the clause libraries, and we certainly have one that comes as a part of your TT Precedents Club membership that we're always actively going and changing. Tara and I have two at the moment. We're working into the clause library. So...
Tara (20:30):
Yeah, Carrie, I was a bit nervous about what phrase you said
Carrie (20:33):
I was going very pc, I promise.
(20:40):
But yeah, no, my whole life is about let's not reinvent the wheel. That's probably, I'll put that on my tombstone just so in the TT Precedents Club, we do have a clause library for members. I just checked, it's today's recording, it's 92 pages. Now, there is an index and it's highly searchable. And what I love about it is we've got variations of all the different types of clauses that you might need. You need a right to occupy clause. Here's six different versions of it, depending on whether your will is a basic will without a testamentary trust or one with a testamentary trust, and is the property going into the trust right away or is it staying in the estate until the right to occupy ends? We've got all these different versions, and yeah, Carrie, we're pretty much updating it every week. We, as we are learning things as the one we're working on this week, someone was giving us a suggestion or saying, you've got the standard professional charging clause in your precedence for professional executors, but if we were the only executor and we're charging for non-professional work, how does this clause work?
(21:52):
Or is it enough? And we're like, you know what? We could probably make it better to suit that scenario. You can bet that not only are we sending that updated clause to the TT precedents club member, it's going into the clause library for everyone's benefit and your story, Carrie, about people hoarding their clauses. I just attest that because we can benefit from our shared knowledge. A few weeks ago, we talked in the TT precedent's club about a case that I had seen in Queensland. Let's see if I can explain this simply. So it was about a conditional gift of a property to one of the three adult children of an estate. And the idea was that the gift of the whole property went to child A on the condition that they paid out a third of the value of the property to each of child B and child C.
(22:54):
And the dispute in question was, well, can we use the property in question as security to borrow so that we can make those payouts, which is the condition to the gift? And some people were saying no. And then the child who was the sipping of the gift was saying yes. And so looking at that, I was like, oh, that's a really big learning. I had just assumed that that is how it would work, but nowhere is it clear in our sample clause, all the clause that was the subject of the case that that can be done. I was like, let's hop to it. We're going to put in some for clarity, this, this, and this. And now two years on, when someone needs to come and draught that type of clause, they're going to have the benefit of that updated wording that we spoke about in a hot seat back in 2024 that they may not have necessarily seen or listened to or remembered. And we just are all collectively getting better and better, and our drafting is getting better and we're eliminating the risk of making mistakes.
Carrie (23:59):
It really is that two heads are better than one concept, right? Why wouldn't you want to put your shared knowledge into one place? So I think the next one is also me. It's talking about the investment in understanding and using testamentary trusts with your clients. And with that, I mean like a whole series of different things. It's about learning how to explain them and teaching clients how to understand the value of those. And I think this is something that comes up really often in direct client work where someone will reach out and they'll say, my circumstances are simple. I just want a simple will. And then you'll get in and you'll look at their asset holdings and they've got a million dollar life insurance policy. And so I think that when we talk about testamentary trusts, there's sort of two arms here. There's obviously educating yourself and what you know about testamentary trusts, and that's where we have people like taralucke.com au, and then there's how you actually sell that to the client, right?
(25:01):
There's those two arms. So when we talk about selling to the client, again, Tara has some things here, but I think that there's two pieces. There's obviously things like flyers that explain to the client what testamentary trusts are and why they are beneficial when we use them. Some examples. So again, Tara has a flyer that comes with the precedent pack that explains what those are, which you can rebrand in your own branding, and I sometimes actually proactively send that out before I even give pricing because then they'll already be on board with understanding that what we are looking for is a more comprehensive solution. Then when I send my pricing, make it really clear both in the pricing document itself and in the email sending pricing saying this includes wills with testamentary trusts being protective structures for your chosen beneficiaries. If they've got young children, I'll say, your children hit those right strings for them, understanding what they're trying to protect.
(26:01):
And then I'll also have in the planning meeting, explaining to them differences between simple or what we like to call basic wills now and testamentary trust wills. So I think when we're talking about maximising profit, the actual drafting time from a simple basic will to a testamentary trust will can be very similar depending on the circumstances, but in terms of the value to a client, it's much higher. And so you can actually increase your profit margin when it comes to the pure just work side of things. And that involves, as I said, those two elements of you upskilling and understanding. And number two, how to then communicate that with the
Tara (26:43):
Yeah, I love that. Carrie. I am such a big believer that starting to offer testamentary trusts in your estate planning practise, it is the key to a profitable practise if you pair that with good precedents, because like you said, the drafting time is actually, it's probably no different. If you have a good precedent that is going to produce a really beautiful, smooth testamentary trust wheel customise based on the different strategy options that you click your buttons and select your dropdown menus and all the right clauses come in, there is more time spent on a testamentary trust matter, explaining and positioning the testamentary trust to the client, talking them through it, because every client comes to you with a rough understanding of what a basic will does. I leave it to my spouse and then our kids, and that's it. So you do have to educate them on what a testamentary trust is, how it might work for them, and empower them to make the choice of is it going to be the right solution.
(27:53):
You then also have additional instructions that you would take in the meeting. And again, you're probably reiterating those conversations about what the testamentary trust is and how it works for them. And then in the signing meeting, again, you're talking more about the testamentary trust and how it works. So your meetings will be longer, but your drafting of the documents should not be any longer. Okay, maybe it's going to cost you more on paper, a dollar more for your printing costs or something. But honestly, testamentary trust, I think they're the key to upleveling. And the thing I love about them the most is when you get into the realm of talking about an estate plan with testamentary trust, the whole attitude around the estate plan changes because when it's like a basic will or I'm going to die and I'm going to give it to my kid, it's very morbid.
(28:51):
No one feels good about it, it's not a feel good process for them. It's like, oh, I have to go to the dentist and get a filling. I don't know. What would you pick? Probably the filling. But when you're talking about testamentary trust, when you bring that into the equation, we are talking about legacy. We are talking about setting up our kids or our nieces and nephews or our loved ones for multiple generations to come. We're talking about ongoing wealth accumulation vehicles. It just turns it into a really positive and empowering conversation. And I saw this feedback from one of our lawyers, Kirsty Rainer. So she is the principal of a practise in, I want to say port, and she gave me this feedback once. She was like, what I love about testamentary trust is that once the client understands what it does for them and their loved ones, price becomes a non-issue. It's not even a really about the price because they're so invested and bought into this future plan that the price is the price. Whereas if you're just doing basic wills, that's where they're shopping around and cherry picking and yeah, what is the difference between you and an online will provider or the lawyer down the street?
Carrie (30:17):
Yeah, no, I think it eliminates those tyre kickers a little bit as well because you're seeing, you're going to be working with people that are actually interested investing in their family's future.
Tara (30:25):
Okay, Carrie, I have a feeling that this topic is going for a really long time. There's so much to say about all of this. So I'm thinking we actually are going to break this topic into two episodes, and I think this would be a great juncture to put a pin in it and have a breather and we will deal with we are halfway through the list, or we just love talking about pricing. Well, we do. I just want everyone listening to be living their best life as an estate planning lawyer and making money and having your pricing right is such a key to that. It flows through to your clients, they get the benefits, your family gets the benefit. You have a rewarding career, what is not to love? So there's so much to talk about. So I think we're going to have a break.
(31:22):
Hopefully everyone can start thinking about or digesting what we've shared so far. If you have any comments or feedback, let us know in the Art of Estate Planning Facebook group, and we will come back next week for episode 10 with part two of the 15 Ways to Maximise Profit on Your Estate Planning Matters. Thank you so much to everyone who has tuned in so far.
