Tara (00:57):
Welcome to episode 26 of the Art of Estate Planning podcast Today, my wonderful co-host Carrie Payne, and I want to talk about Changing the Public Perception of Estate Planning in Australia.
(01:13):
So this idea came to me as I was scrolling on social media over the Christmas break, and I just came across a post where it was pretty benign on ABC social media where they had a succession lawyer come in and they were just talking about the importance of doing a will compared to a post office will and as a sticky beak. I went and had a look at the comments and I was just shocked, firstly by how much traction this post had got, but also by how passionate the members of the general public were about how bad the advice was from the lawyer. I dunno if bad the advice was, but they were just like, "This guy is ripping us off. Of course, he would tell us, why would an estate planning lawyer tell you to go and do a will? They just want to take your money". People had strong opinions and I really wanted to talk about it with Carrie because it kind of brought up the feels. So yeah. Carrie, what did this post do for you?
Carrie (02:19):
I am ready for a fight, Tara. I was so angry reading some of those comments because the reason I was angry is that not only were some of the comments totally ridiculous when you think about how things actually play out, but also just really unfair. And again, taking it personally, you shouldn't take it personally, but I did, someone said something about lawyers being succubus and I'm like, I care so much, so so much about people in general to the point of ridiculousness where other people's interests outweigh my own. I work really, really hard to sure, I'm always doing the right thing. And so when you see something like that, God, it break, it just broke my heart and made me then wildly angry. I move straight from grief to anger like a heartbeat. But I suppose when we talk about some of those comments, I think that there's a way that we can change that narrative in conversations that we have with people, whether it be just publicly when we're having a chat with someone who's not a client all the way up to clients. I mean, I've got little points for each of the comments that were made and certainly how we can turn it, but I suppose I'm open to hearing Tara how it made you feel really?
Tara (03:35):
Well. Yeah, I wanted to do this episode because I imagined that there would be other estate planning lawyers reading that and also having similar feeling to us and maybe feeling a little bit disheartened or losing faith in the industry or just unappreciated generally. And I also guess I wanted to make this not so much an attack on rebutting people's comments, but more about a reframe of how we can think about things. And I still think we can really, it's really a positive being an estate planning lawyer and it's such a noble profession. And yeah, I guess just a few points to help people find the hope through when if they do get pulled through these social media wormholes, it works because I think we're not going to link the Instagram post or anything. I don't think that's helpful. And also this stuff is happening all the time on Facebook community groups and random articles here and there and all of that.
(04:39):
It's just generally, I guess I wanted to ask to talk more about what can we do to change the public perception of estate planning? Because being realistic, this is feedback of how the legal profession has presented itself historically over the years. And whether we like it or not or whether we think this represents us or not, that's how people feel about lawyers. And I think we can learn from it too. I shouldn't say this particular post was a middle aged Caucasian estate planning lawyer giving the advice, and I'd say he probably lived up just in this physical appearance and the tone of his voice and stuff to that stereotypical lawyer that people might have a perception of in terms of being unapproachable or intimidating. So that possibly didn't help. And I know a lot of our listeners are more diverse, at least in terms of gender and age, so maybe we are not all being tied with the same brush. But yeah, I guess I just wanted to say what can we think about or do or learn in terms of hopefully in 15, 20 years, what can we do now that is actually going to transform the way people react to lawyers and estate planning?
Carrie (06:08):
So I think one of the biggest comments I saw, Tara, which I think I want to then use to kind of branch off into how we can help with that particular a few different things, and obviously I'm not going to point out specific comments, but a lot of them were around self-interest of the estate planning lawyer. Like, oh, of course an estate planning lawyer's going to go and tell you to spend money on an estate planning lawyer. I think number one, using the information that we have to explain to clients the bigger the cost of when it goes wrong. So for example, some people were saying, oh, but courts have consistently held homemade wills to be valid, true that they have, but do you know how much court costs do you want to go to court to get confirmed that your $40 will kit is valid?
(06:59):
So when we talk about the way that we present information to clients, showing them that the value in estate planning is so much, or the costs, sorry, of estate planning is so much less compared to litigation and also just construction cases in court, and then also I think as you said before, tying it back, showing them the human element of you as a person as well, and show them, I'm not out here to grab your money, I'm here to help you with a problem, which is documenting what your wishes are. So I think those are my two points about that kind of conflict of interest argument that people have with estate planning lawyers is we make more money if you get it wrong, so have a look at how much it costs to go to court, and then also we are humans, we do really want to help you and here's this human element. We can do that. A lot of our listeners and a lot of the people that are engaged with the art of estate planning community are small firms. We don't have to have the big six name law firm like in suits. We can show them who we are as people and let them into our weird little lives. It's still professional. We're not out there doing anything unprofessional. We're just trying to show them that we are human.
Tara (08:12):
Yeah, Carrie, I think that is so powerful. Us having the courage to show up as our authentic true selves, and I guess I'm thinking social media, but in any way that you are communicating with, whether it's at a, you've got a stall at a networking event or you are just at an in-person event or anything like that, just having the courage to take up your space and show up and say, look, yeah, I'm approachable. I'm personable. I'm not intimidating. I'm not what you think a normal lawyer is. I think that can go a long way.
Carrie (08:53):
If you're going to turn up to a client's in a pencil, skirt and heels, that's okay. That might be a part of what you wear, but be aware that there's this idea of transference. If they see you in a pencil skirt and heels and a matching jacket, you'll look really corporate-y. What is the angle you're trying to do here? Are you going in the corporate? So if you're working in a big firm and they know that coming to a big firm that might suit it, but does that look approachable to most people? My experience is generally it doesn't. So everything from, as I said, if you're not doing in socials, it's even how you present yourself to the client.
Tara (09:26):
Free yourself from the suit.
Carrie (09:28):
And the heels and the heels.
Tara (09:30):
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I definitely think the face of the legal profession is changing anyway and there's a lot more women coming through and staying in the profession and in the senior role. So I think that will happen altogether. I think I like what you said about the rebuttals because my reaction too is just to get in there and reply to every single comment and be like, you are wrong. The of how confident they are with their opinions is mind blowing, but I think the more productive thing is to get that rebuttal and turn it into, feed it into your marketing plan in terms of what do they call marketing speakers? These are objections. So if you can start creating content around explaining why that's a myth or just getting on the front foot and flipping it into a, Hey, you might've thought this but actually this or whatever you can do, I think it's actually a really ripe field for creating new marketing content and going through and thinking of all the ways they're wrong.
(10:39):
I guess tying into that as an industry, we've got a long way to go around explaining the benefits of estate planning documents. And historically I think, and I'm just generalising here, but I think some of the traps that we often fall into because marketing language is very different to legal writing, is we overcomplicate the message way too much. We want to tell them everything that we know and just we have not done a great job at conveying the benefits of estate planning. So I think the more that we can improve and work on our marketing skills and starts getting that message out there in a way it's accessible, easy for people to understand and in entry level, I think that's really going to help.
Carrie (11:33):
Yeah, I mean I always talk about y oldie English. If you're not good at not speaking like a lawyer, there are so many tools that you can engage to actually help you not speak like a lawyer. So looking at things like ai, helping you write your marketing stuff, get into AI marketing people for a reason, tell them the Cliff's Notes versions of what you're trying to say in an article and get them to turn it around into human language. So rather than pushing and pushing and pushing into something you're not good at, use tools to either, sorry, I should say use tools to either get better at it if you're not the sort of person that wants to spend time into that, outsource it.
Tara (12:11):
And then maybe, yeah, I was just sort of thinking, I don't know if this is helpful or not, but no one talks about the times when the standard will administration went smoothly. No one's on there posting about how great the basic will was and there was just flew through administration and we got probate and got our money and that's it. It's only the people who have a bad experience for whatever reason, who become this noisy minority.
Carrie (12:45):
It's that rule of three, I think. Is it, Tara? You have a good experience. You tell one person you have a bad experience, you tell three people. So you're right that we probably do need to talk about all the great times. It goes well, but if we're seeing lots of negative comments, it's because that's the people that make the comments or the people that had a good experience don't actually go and say they had a good experience.
Tara (13:06):
And so maybe the estate administration, if you do a bit of both planning and administration, you can sort of start sharing case studies about the good times and the positive outcomes for just the plain villa stuff, override some of that negative memory bias and start levelling out all the terrible stories too.
Carrie (13:29):
I think Tara, too, there were a lot of comments connected to this concept of simple circumstances mean they can be simple. It's only if you've got complicated circumstances or lots of assets that you need to go to a lawyer. And I just think that is so common to hear that style of argument from people. And I'm not saying that a valid of post office won't necessarily get you from A to B in some circumstances, but as we a society get more complex, we've got superannuation interests, we've got life insurance, we've got million dollar properties, so the size of wealth is increasing astronomically, and then family structures are a lot more complex now than they ever used to be. Most people have something that takes them out of that kind of plain vanilla simple circumstance now. So how we message to clients that we don't want to say when they ring us up saying, oh, I've got simple circumstances, we can't buy it back and say, no, you don't, or I bet you don't. That's not going to make them want to come and see you. It's about how we show them how different things affect the complexity of what we have to end up doing.
Tara (14:39):
Yeah, I mean I definitely think we really need the skills of salespeople as well as lawyers and the honest, helpful salespeople, not the use car salesman, but yeah, I think you're right. Just communication skills, getting the messaging. I think the more we invest in that, the better outcomes we are going to have with the clients or potential clients we are interacting with, and eventually I think that will trickle through. I guess sort of going back to your point too, Carrie, it's not an even representation of everyone in society and all the views that when you see these public comments, I think if you can go back to thinking about who is my ideal client or customer avatar and like you said, Carrie, is it the people who are a bit more complex? Is that who your ideal client is? Perhaps the people we're seeing posting on social media, they're the ideal client of the online will providers, and we've had an episode on that. They're just competing to bottom now. I think some of those services are even free now, always free forever because obviously there's some catch on the state administration side or something.
Carrie (15:57):
I think this concept of value is really interesting to me because I see, as you said, those platforms that offer free kind of estate plans or sorry, free wills, not estate plans. We have a free legal will service across most jurisdictions in Australia. We have the public trustee. You can go and book in and get a free will prepared by the public trustee.
Tara (16:17):
Well, everyone knows the public trustee is a pain in the neck, but for some reason the online wills are different.
Carrie (16:25):
But I'm so just saying is that this, it's a hilarious argument that people have, oh, it's too expensive to see a lawyer, but even when it's free, they don't do it. And then I mean other people were saying, oh, I can't wait for AI to replace these people. I'm like, I have lawyers that don't even want to have an online, not lawyers, clients that don't even want to have an online meeting, let alone trust computer technology to actually write their will for them. So I think you're right. When we talk about who our client is, our clients aren't the ones saying these things. That's not our client.
(16:58):
They're not saying, oh yeah, we'll just use AI because as I said, they don't even want to have a meeting online. They don't want to use a free will because people have been able to use free wills forever. You can write your own will on a bit of paper. I'm holding up a bit of paper and shaking it here. You can write it for free, but that's not our client.
Tara (17:16):
So I think just don't get distracted by thinking, oh, because these people are posting, these keyboard warriors are posting it. That's how everyone feels. Your ideal client values, your expertise and values, investing in the process and needs your expertise and just keep focused on that and almost have the blinkers and block out all that noise, I think would be my tip to stop getting emotional about seeing these things or feeling deviating off your course. I think if you keep sort of, I almost, yes, generally if we just keep showing up in our own beautiful, authentic way, because I truly believe that everyone who does estate planning, it's a calling and as you said, Carrie, we are not making huge amount of money. If we wanted to be rich lawyers, we would be doing mining, joint venture law or something.
Carrie (18:12):
I know another lawyer that's on $450,000 a year and I'm like, I'm in the wrong job. I have the same qualification to be able to go and get to the succession point of being in that role as well. But I don't, I want to be dealing with people. I want to be dealing one-to-one. I want to be helping people with what is probably one of the most sensitive topics that's out there other than potentially family law. And even that estate planning can involve elements of family law. So I just think that one of the people that we used to work with, Tara once said something to me in a different phrase. You might remember the phrase, I can't remember the phrase, but it was something like, why would you invest all your time, energy, and effort into doing something that you're not good at? Why don't you instead put that into the things that you're good at and you like because that's going to bring you so much more joy and bring you so much more success.
(19:02):
I dunno what that phrase was or what the sentence was, and we know who this person is, but I think that's the message we've got to take away here is that put all your energy and your effort into the things that you're good at and that you love because the rest of the stuff is not going to ever serve you. And if you are not doing stuff that you like and that is making you a better person, you're not going to be putting any good energy out there into the world either to change the general perception.
Tara (19:29):
Yeah, I think that's probably our key messages, isn't it? Don't let this stuff distract you from your plan, your marketing plan, your purpose, and the clients that do value you and need you. And I wouldn't engage in the comments even sometimes. I mean I've definitely engaged in that post, but preserve your energy for where it's appreciated and we can take those comments and objections and feed that into our marketing plan. But I think if you just keep being your lovely, authentic, trustworthy, approachable self and keep showing up and spreading your message, if we have enough of us doing that over time, I think it will just gradually change. The perception of estate planning in Australia is my hope. The fact that we're even having these conversations and everyone in our TT Precedents club has all these conversations and puts so much energy into finding better ways to deliver who their clients and get their message across, it makes me factually feel really hopeful.
Carrie (20:39):
Yeah, I think you're right. I think the legal landscape in general is changing largely due to diversity in the workplace, allowing different styles of approach when it comes to providing legal services. So I think hopefully that will change. But I also think that as I said, that there are always going to be people that bring their views and experiences to spew out on two different mediums, and it's not our job to change their mind. I think you can give them things, as I said, you can put out into the public all the information that they need. It's not your job to change their mind. What you want to focus on is how you're going to help the people that want to be helped.
Tara (21:15):
Carrie, did you have any more points or did you have some zippy one-liners in response or anything that you would desperate share?
Carrie (21:23):
I've got a lot of angry comments in response. I wrote all the comments out and I'm like, I needed to go through that exercise to feel better about myself. But then as I said, when you sit down and you get the anger out and then you're like, okay, what's going on here? Where are these people really coming from? It's a lack of knowledge, a lack of experience, and also probably trauma from the situations they've had and experiences they've had. I'm not a psychologist. I'm not even close to being experienced to as one. It's not my job to do that. I mean, it's what you said, Tara. Sometimes not engaging is something that we need to learn as humans. We're not going to fix anybody or change anybody's mind. What I'm going to try and do is work in the community the way that I can to explain about why we're here, and it is really to help.
Tara (22:09):
Yeah, I love that. And I mean, if you really do feel like you have to set the record straight, which I mean I completely understand that maybe there's smart ways around doing it too that can preserve your energy. Whether you make a blog post on your website that's common myths or things and you just have all the objections and then you are well thought out considerations. So you're not there writing it on your phone with your thumbs and getting worked up. One, you should be playing with your kids or something and then you could just send post that blog post or something, or I don't know what, but our job is stressful enough too, and preserving our energy or the people who value it and whether that's clients or our family and ourselves is really important too. So yeah, this is a funny little episode.
(23:01):
I guess I just wanted to say something, keep encouraging everybody and also just take a step back about where we are. I think our honest feedback is historically we haven't done a great job about communicating the importance of estate planning and the complexity of it to clients. And yeah, we're part of that generation, which is going to change that, and hopefully that's going to be part of our legacy too. Well, on that note, we might wrap it up. Thank you so much for tuning in. This is an episode that I would really love to hear your thoughts and to keep the dialogue going. So if you do want to add anything generally or you've got a different opinion to us, the Art of Estate Planning Facebook group is a great place to share that. And yeah, we'd love to keep the conversation going. Talk to you next time.
