This is especially useful if you have valuable belongings, monetary assets, or more than one potential beneficiary. All you need to do to get started is find an attorney who can meet your needs and work with you to the degree that you require. In order to find the right attorney, you should keep some things in mind.
Qualifications
All attorneys take the bar exam, so they have all learned what is necessary to practice any kind of law. However, most attorneys choose 1 or 2 fields of expertise. This has the effect of giving them plenty of experience with cases of that type without interspersing their workload with unrelated cases. If you want to find a great estate planner, you’ll need to find an attorney that specializes in estate planning or advertises estate planning as one of his or her fields of expertise.
Once you have found a few good candidates, you should compare them. Who has been practicing longest? Has there been any kind of bad press about any of your potential attorneys? It is a good idea to speak directly to each attorney or firm to get a feel for how they interact with clients and potential clients. Remember that if you need a lot of time from an attorney, you need to hire one who has the time for you.
Temperament
Everyone needs something different from a professional, so don’t be shy about researching an attorney’s temperament. Some people feel that they need a compassionate attorney who can connect with them empathetically. Others feel that the compassionate type is unnecessary or even irritating; they just want to get the job done as quickly and efficiently as possible and leave emotions out of it. Try to figure out what you need from your attorney before you begin your research process.
Do you need help with things like wording? Are you uncertain what is considered an asset and what has merely sentimental value? You will need an attorney able and willing to explain those things to you in nontechnical terms. Are you relatively well versed in legal jargon? Do you know what you want to say and how you want to say it? You probably only need someone to oversee the legal aspects of planning your estate.
Reputation
One of the best ways to make decisions about any kind of business is to find out what other people are saying about it. Attorneys are no different! In this age of free information exchange, anyone has the right to go onto the Internet and leave a consumer review on various websites. This is an extremely valuable tool for people like you who are seeking specific services.
If there are online reviews, what do they say? Are they mostly positive, mostly negative, or a good mix of both? It is an unfortunate truth that some businesses hire professionals to write positive reviews for their services or products, so if a potential attorney in Greenville, SC only has positive reviews, try to ask some questions of reviewers. If the attorney really is just that good, then you can feel safe hiring him or her. After that, planning your estate should be fairly easy!