Knowing the Law and the Issues are Important!

I am simply amazed.

Attorneys will often to talk to each other about interesting or tough issues as they come in their practice areas. Sometimes I get an inquiry from an estate planning colleague about an issue that really makes wonder if they know what they are doing.

A few days ago one attorney asked about estate planning for a non-U.S. citizen spouse and how to handle. He asked if anyone had any samples of trust documents to include for this situation. This question was alarming for a few reasons -- it indicated that the attorney did not have practice area books with sample forms and languages in his office, did not have online access to such forms or samples and could not get the gist of the issue to handle the research on their own without asking on a general forum to all attorneys.

Sure, general forums are helpful for the interesting cases or to talk strategy, but for what I thought was an experienced attorney and has been practicing in a certain area for many years -- some of the basic issue questions can be scary and really show lack of knowledge.

The scarier part is how can a client tell this? As a client, how can you gauge how respected your attorney is? How knowledgeable he or she is? It's a tough one.