Trusts & Estates Magazine: Practicing in the Age of Instant Gratification

In an article published in Trusts & Estates, Avi Z. Kestenbaum, co-chair of Meltzer Lippe’s Trust & Estates practice group, provides advice for practitioners seeking to manage client expectations concerning the estate-planning process. He writes that “many of our clients expect instantaneous responses to their questions, immediate solutions to their concerns and have unrealistic expectations that the estate-planning process will consistently be smooth and the end results will be excellent.”

These unrealistic expectations are reinforced by the rise of vastly improved internet search engines. Kestenbaum notes that “with information a click away and do-it-yourself a growing trend, many clients feel their internet research makes them more knowledgeable than we are and that they can prepare their own estate-planning documents (and our work product shouldn’t be less expensive), which doesn’t help matters (if only they Googled ‘a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing,’ they might understand the repercussions of what they’re saying and doing.”

You can read the complete text of this article by clicking the PDF icon below.

More to explorer

Trusts & Estates Magazine: Navigating the Discussion of Business Succession Planning