Drafting Client Letters in Trust and Estate Planning - 2018

Client engagement letters are the foundation of a successful engagement in trust and estate planning, administration or fiduciary litigation.  It’s where reasonable expectations are set and you help clients clarify goals.  Preeminently, who is your client?  Seemingly an easy question to answer, in reality it’s not. Are couples represented jointly or separately? Can you represent multiple generations of a family?  And what if a grown child is paying for the representation of an elderly parent?  How do you handle the potential of extant or developing incapacity?  What if you’re a fiduciary and not the planner, or if clients are in active litigation?  Client engagement letters help clarify and address many of these nettlesome questions. This program will provide you a practical guide to using client engagement letters to provide the foundation of a successful relationship in trust and estate planning, administration and litigation.

• Most important elements of successful client engagement letter
• Spousal representations – joint representation or separate, and practical difficulties of each
• Representing multiple generations of a family – who is in charge?  
• Lawyer as fiduciary – what must you do if you’re the trustee
• How to handle extant or developing client incapacity 
• Ongoing communication and billing issues 
• Providing for withdrawal from an engagement – when and how

Speakers: Daniel L. Daniels, Wiggin and Dana, LLP, Greenwich, CT and Missia H. Vaselaney, Taft, Stettinius & Hollister, LLP, Cleveland, OH

NOTE: This program was originally produced as a telephone seminar and is available on demand in streaming audio. This material qualifies for self-study credit only. Pursuant to Regulation 15.04.5, a lawyer may receive up to six hours of self-study credit in a reporting year. Self-study programs do not qualify for ethics or elimination of bias credit.