How to Do More Probates, with Attorney Lori Vella

0:02 You know, there's a saying that if you want to get something done, give the job to a busy person. And one of my challenges in probate real estate has always been that customers who want me to help them with the real estate in probate will often pick an attorney or the closest attorney to them, maybe one that handled their drunk driving or handled their divorce or some other matter. And I always try to encourage people to find not just any but the right probate attorney for the business. And usually that is available to discover by their volume and their focus and the procedures and their practices. I'm excited to have today a lady lawyer, a valid attorney in Florida and New York who does a high volume probate administration business, so high that she's actually launching a product that she's going to use to train called Probate Launch. It's a training program for attorneys and paralegals. Lori, thanks for joining us today.

0:53 Thank you for having me, Bill. I'm so happy to be here. So talk to me a bit about how did the Probate Launch? And we're going to talk about the product at some other time, but just in general terms, how did your practice end up leading you to something like a Probate Launch product?

1:09 I decided to do Probate Launch because for me, like probate has been a blessing in my life. It really transformed my law firm and not only that, it gives me a certain type of like, you know, contribution to somebody because I used to work at a with insurance companies before. They were great, the people were awesome, but as an attorney, I really wanted that like one-on-one talking with a client and getting to know them and actually feel like I'm helping them and I get that in probate. Like I never realized I'd be so good helping somebody get through their own grief. And so I like sort of being an advocate on their side. And so I enjoy probate so much. I felt like it was life-changing and I went from somebody who didn't have any probate experience. That wasn't my career. And I took it on and I was successful with it and it became one of the biggest parts of my law firm. So, meanwhile, I'm looking online, and I'm in these groups about attorneys being depressed. They're being overwhelmed. They don't like what they do. They're working at these big law firms where it's like billable hours, billable hours. And I was like, you know what? I did it. I believe they can do it. So, I decided to launch Probate Launch to show attorneys what I did. This is what I did to become successful as a probate attorney. And then I had to go one step further because I rely on very good paralegals.

2:31 And so, I needed to train their legal professionals to make sure they had the support that they needed. So, that's how it came about. So, I think one of the distinctions in your field is, you know, when you watch movies or TV about TV shows about attorneys, the ones who are the best always seem to have some really deep understanding of some legal concept or some legal research that pulls the case out of the who pulls the rabbit out of the hat. It seems to me success in probate administration is more about lowering through paralegals and through procedures and systems, and occasionally stepping in going deep, but for the most part, it's more about that kind of getting the 90% done right quickly and efficiently. Is that a fair assessment of your practice?

3:15 Yeah, it is in terms of the substantive part. So, of course, like for some reason, I have this internal deadline, and I probably don't need it, and it's probably not good for my blood pressure, but I like to pie I like to go through these cases fast. I always want the ball in someone else's court.

3:31 Right. My paralegals are the same way. So, we're go. And so, yes, we have checklists for formal, checklists for summary. And so, yeah, maybe 90% is that, but the other 10% is the fact that this is a person. They're grieving a loss of somebody who passed away, and I never lose sight of that because I want to make sure I'm meeting them at the level where they are. Because you know, when someone's in grief and they're dealing with property and they might be fighting with their family, they could be a difficult client to some people. So, we have to anticipate that and we have to treat them in the right way and treat them with, you know, a little bit of understanding that maybe they get a little snappy or something happens and we're going to approach it in an understanding way. So, that's like the 10%. That's like the human component that we can never lose sight of.

4:21 You know, and I recognize it in talking to you previously as well in that you know, if you have good systems procedures, you have the time to talk to your customer. When you don't have those system procedures, things break down and we shortcut our communication and that always It's kind of like being like being married. I'm married to the same woman so for 39 years, 8 months, and a few days. One day at a time, one communication at a time. Because if you ever shortcut the communication, yes, I can save 2 minutes, but then the rest of the day is pretty miserable. And the same is true with customers, right? If we don't It's one thing to be busy, but if they get frustrated or resentful, then we're going to not going to be able to be effective on the next thing that we need their cooperation on.

5:03 Yeah, and I think it's about expectations. Just like with your marriage, right? There's expectations of how you're going to come to the table, how she's going to come to the table. And it's the same thing with a case. Like when I set up a matter, I tell the clients in the beginning, this is how I want to communicate. These are the stages. This is what to expect. I've put together this probate handbook that I actually put in the mail to them saying, this is what a probate is. These are the add-ons. My legal services agreement talks about this is my flat fee, but these are the extraordinary fees and this is what I'm going to bill them to you. And so, yes, if I can communicate ahead of time, let them know what they're seeing. And my endeavor, which I'm not there yet, but my endeavor is a weekly message every Friday to every probate file saying this is where we're at because I always I never want a client to say, "Hey, what's going on with my file?"

5:54 Right. I want to always answer that first. Right. Right. Now, I think that's I think that's the sign. If they're calling you asking for general update, something broke down. Real estate is the same thing, right? That doesn't mean there aren't questions during the week that they might call me about. Hey, how did the appraisal go on Tuesday? They'll call me on Wednesday. But if they haven't heard anything all week, that's a problem, I think. When I When I was out of college, I worked at one of the greatest aerospace manufacturers of all time, since broken up Hughes Aircraft. They went to become satellite systems for Boeing and DirecTV. I was production control manager. We would have a checklist for each manufacturing product that engineers approved. And my job was to review that checklist before we put it on the production line. And I took that practice to my real estate business that when I have a new listing, I make a checklist, review it with my assistant, and the customer before we go forward. I hear you as an attorney talk about checklists. That's to me that's a little foreign. That seems more manufacturing and engineering-like. But you throw that out there as a regular piece of your business. Talk to me about the checklist. Who created them and how are they used in your operation?

6:56 Well, we have a checklist for formal probates. And I would think a lot of Florida attorneys have those. And we have it for summary probates. And it's funny because now some of the courts are having their own checklists. There's different counties, you know, because, you know, there's no like probate judges. There's no probate court. It's circuit court judges that rotate into different areas. So, maybe the criminal judges are coming into probate, and they may not have experience doing that. So, they have a checklist. Do you have the petition? Are there errors? Is there a will? Is there not a will? And that's what we're doing because it's there's a lot of timelines. We have to publish in the newspaper by a certain time. The creditor period ends. And so, if I'm hiring a lot of you know, I have a of assistants, a legal assistants that don't have a lot of experience with legal training or probates. And when I want someone to sit down at their desk and do work, I never want them to say, "What am I supposed to do next?" I have this huge workflow that I put in my legal software. And so we have that in addition. So when you're there, you click it when you're opening a file and it generates the legal services agreement. It generates the invoice. And then we go through each step and it asks them questions. Is there a will? Do we have the original will? Did the will get filed? So it's a series of questions, so we never have to rely totally on our minds because it's impossible when you're dealing with hundreds of probates. And I do probate in New York and probate in Florida and they are wildly different.

8:28 And so a checklist is just an amazing tool to have. And it's also about accountability. Like I have this I have I might have a little too many checklists. That might be the problem, but I have this other document called the probate workflow. Where when I have sometimes I have a lot of staffers, I want to know who did something. I want accountability to say this is what happened, this is what happened. And that's the only way to keep going because, you know, you could get through a probate and realize something got missed. You know, the courts help you. The courts make sure you're there with it. But that can happen and it's kind of easy to kind of lose sight of it. And so I think a checklist is great. And to your point, I think lawyers should borrow a lot of things from other industries. It's not just the checklist that maybe you used in, you know, a manufacturing industry, but it's even how to talk to people. You know, law firms have been so old-fashioned for such a long time. And even before COVID, I went virtual. And when I was getting trained about how to speak with people, I hired a business coach who had nothing to do with the law. And talked to me about people and how to understand what they need. So I think as lawyers, it's time for us to kind of modernize and expand to see what other successful businesses are doing. Cuz at the end of the day, I wanted to add like we're lawyers and we want to do the best we can for the clients, but we do have to survive as well, right? We do have to be for-profit businesses.

9:52 We're not nonprofit. And as long as we're, you know, ethically doing it right, morally doing it right, it's okay if we make money doing that as well. And so a lot of lawyers have had to almost reestablish their relationship with money. And be like, "Okay, it's okay for me to earn something."

10:10 Yeah. Wow. One of the challenges in you from my aspect of this business as a real estate agent who specializes in this field is there's many times either A, I know as much or more as the attorney does in terms of the process that relates to real estate. Now, I don't know anything about the final distributions and the accounting and all that. I mean, I know a little bit, but I wouldn't pretend to challenge them. But on the real estate part, I'm pretty knowledgeable. That's all I work on. So, for example, California, if we have a full authority, we need to have a notice of proposed action where something's sent out to all those parties who are entitled to notice to say, "Hey, we're selling the house for this price. Raise your hand now or forever hold your peace." And, you know, it's one of those things where I want to ask the attorney, but I don't want to feel like I'm checking up on them too much cuz some get very weird about Some are fine with it. Some, you know, they'll send it out, but they don't include the comfort letter. In California, we need a letter from the attorney saying there's no taxes due. And there's no objections received. And it's like, "How do you integrate or do you integrate with I imagine you do if you're this, you know, highly organized? How do you integrate or do you with vendors like real estate agents or your closing attorneys or the other people in your system that need to be involved in the process?"

11:23 Yeah, I deal with them. Three. I Instead of going through the client, I want to be in touch. So, I want to be in touch with the Realtor®. And I want to be in touch with the title company. I'm very choosy with respect to title companies because they're not all created equally, but I let the Realtor® choose, but sometimes I might say in our next arrangement

11:43 We have to use another title company because I need a title company and I need a Realtor® who understands probate and how to deal with homes in probate. And so I speak with them directly. I tell them what to do in terms of like this is what we need from our end. Don't just put a closing date, but put pending an order from the court cuz we don't want our client to be stuck with like 30 days we have to close, and then I get that title commitment. And then the title commitment tells me exactly what I need to do, and then I respond. And so we kind of like create a separate folder when we're doing a petition to sell property. Maybe they need an order, maybe they don't, but I like having these relationships with Realtors® directly. I love talking to them and I love talking to the title companies and investors as well because, you know, I know a lot of property that's not on the market. And so I have a network of investors that reach out to me, and if I can help my client sell a property by just connecting them, then I'm happy to do that. And so I think I think our network is everything, really. That we can serve our clients so much better if we know people and we're willing to work with them.

12:53 One of the challenges that real estate agents like me have is communicating with other attorneys. You obviously do that on a regular basis, not so much in probate administration, but when there're contests, you know, contests, objections, and litigation, talk a bit about the you know, the process of communication with other attorneys where, you know, on one hand you're maybe you know, at opposite sides, on the other hand you have to be you don't have to be, but it's often better to be cordial, better to be cooperative, better to be professional. Talk a little bit about kind of the issues when you deal with, let's say, the attorney for one of the heirs or objectors, or they want to be the administrator, and how you manage the communication, or what you would say some of the best practices you've seen are.

13:33 Okay, well, I mainly deal with uncontested probates. So, normally, the personal representative hires me, the beneficiaries might Some might be upset. They might call me and be like, "Oh, that person's a black sheep, or nobody likes them in the family." I might hear those kind of stories, but I sort of ignore it. Like, I see myself as like a counselor that I'm going and I don't want to talk to the beneficiaries directly. I will if I have to, but it's going to be a conflict of interest because I represent the estate and the interests of the estate. I'm friendly with them. I need waivers from them. But, when we're dealing with like property and selling the property, we do that in the course of a regular probate. If I have a personal representative appointed, at that point that they're appointed, we can enter into a They can enter into a contract to sell the home, and we can sell the home during probate. You know, Florida has homestead property. It's property that's designated under the Florida Constitution, so the heirs are just going to inherit, and all we're doing is clearing title. But, when the heirs are inheriting, we can't have a personal representative just sign off on it because the title company's going to want each heir to sign off on it. So, there's sometimes we can't find people. So, we have to do like constructive service or affidavit of due diligence, or we hire, you know, private investigators.

14:50 But, we do have some issues, and sometimes if something's contested, I'll bring in a litigation attorney. But, if it's something I can solve, you know, I did litigation for 13 years of my career. I handled a lot of mediations, depositions, examinations under oath, and I like trying to resolve things for people. You know, if some You think about it this way, like someone's doing their estate plan, they put it together, and they're doing it so the family has no conflict, and I'm not going to throw it to you can to go to an attorney, unfortunately. I'm not going to rev it up and create hell for these people just so I get paid more or just because I'm an attorney and I'm going to talk to you that way. I don't I don't play those games, you know? I'm very, let's resolve this.

15:37 Yet those games are played. I used to go to court when I started probate 7 1/2 years ago to learn. I went to court every day and watched and of course California LA has a huge probate court and very active at that time six or seven departments and every day there was a sale and so but I felt like I would often see attorneys it would be kind of like one of those Mexican cockfights, you know, where they hold the roosters against each other and get them upset. The attorneys are like holding the clients at each other and knocking each other and pulling them apart. And I would and when I was involved in some of those cases it was like why are we rioting people up? Like don't you just want to resolve this? You know, a classic would be like a we follow notice of proposed action and when the beneficiaries would object and I would say, "Well, how I just call them? I'm not attorney. I'm allowed to call whoever I want and just say, "Listen, all that's going to happen is we're going to go to court and get it confirmed. It's going to cost an extra $5,000 attorney's fees. You're going to drop the buyer, get a lower price by 5%. What do you hope to accomplish through this? You're not going to hold the sale up." The attorney says, "Oh, no, you know, I can't be talking to my client." It's like, "Well, why? I'm it's not a conflict of interest for me. I'm just a real estate agent." So, I guess the thing I would ask is what can people do to avoid obviously number one is getting the right attorney. But what can they do to avoid kind of creating the openings for conflicts that you see become at some point intractable and end up just wasting resources?

17:00 Yeah, I think people aren't really listening to what someone else is saying. Like sometimes a client will write to me and I'll see a staff member write back, but they're not answering the question. So, you really have to look what does somebody really want at the end of the day and that's what gets addressed. And so, I think there's just kind of like failure to communicate, but there's also like an acknowledgement, especially when you're dealing with Say we're dealing with beneficiaries, they have histories from when they're 2 years old. And they have They're mad. They're mad. And it's almost like acknowledge the anger, acknowledge their position, and say, "Okay, this is where we're at. How can we solve it?" But, as for attorneys, I think a lot of them come out of the gate like they're ready for law school. And the whole impression of attorneys is You know, when I was growing up, my everyone used to say, "Oh, you argue a lot. You should be an attorney." It's like attorney's not arguing. Really, we're trying to resolve things, or maybe some are posturing to get like better settlement. But, I think it's you know, I actually hired an attorney out of law school, and it didn't work out. And she sent me this long email that was rude to me. And I wrote back to her. I said, "Listen, you're just starting your legal career. Do not burn bridges. You have to be careful what you're putting out there." And she actually she didn't respond, but like 7 months later, she reached out to me again and said like, "Hey, I'm looking for work." So, I think she kind of understood where I was coming from.

18:27 That, you know, you just kind of I don't know why it gets like that. And sometimes it's expected, because if you're in these Facebook groups, everyone's like, "I need a bulldog of a family lawyer." They want that. They want that. And so, we get pressured, too, from clients to be that way.

18:45 Well, I think there are clients who are paying for that experience, right? It's like you go to a You go to a certain restaurant, they and you know, they cook the food in front of you, and there's all kinds of flames and clapping and all They throw the stuff in the air. You're paying for all that on top of the food.

18:58 I love that. I always catch the shrimp right in my mouth. I'm like, "All right, hit me." Okay. But with attorneys, yeah, you can pay for the good legal advice, or you can pay for the legal advice plus the whole drama. And I do think And I And I've had clients like this. They want the drama. Like they're paying to go to Disneyland. They're just paying to have the attorney do it for them, and that's to them their entertainment. And you want to say to them, "Why would you settle for this in your life?" Why would you go But you like can't cuz they don't hear you. They're just They're stupid.

19:24 No, they want something, you know, for their money. And But I think with probate, I think the biggest thing I hear I actually did a survey in one of these like layman groups where they want to talk to attorneys. They want to talk to probate attorneys. So, I said to them, "What has been your biggest problem in probate?" And it's funny, they're all the same answer, lack of communication for my attorney.

19:44 100% Or I pay I pay them, and I didn't hear anything. And See, the attorney might be doing stuff in the background, but they don't know what we're doing unless we're kind of telling them every step and everything that's going. So, I've started doing a bunch of things to counter that. I've started Again, I want to do these weekly updates, but I've I'm doing like memos to the file, like status updates, like this is what we've done. And another thing I've done for my client is called milestone meetings, where instead of just talking to me in the portal, like people want to talk to me. They want to make sure everything's okay. And so, I've set like if somebody gets appointed personal representative, when the creditor period is over, when we're ready to distribute, we have set meetings, and we'll tell them when it's time, and then we can get on the phone with me for an hour, and we talk. Because when I talk to clients, and we sit there like you and I are doing, so much gets resolved in such a short amount of time. And I know It's funny that You know when you become an attorney, everyone wants client contact. And then when you're like in law school in the first year, and then afterwards, it's like you don't want client contact. Don't bother me. I don't want to deal with you. But they're everything. They're our lifeblood, right? These are our future referrals.

20:59 The money we get paid is a reflection of the value we create for our clients. And so, they're the ones who decide how happy they are. We don't get to decide that for them. We can We can set them up to be happy, but at the end of the day, if we did our job perfectly and don't communicate to them, they're going to be they're not going to get it. You could build the pyramids of Giza by hand, they're not going to appreciate it if they don't talk to you about it. It's just really at the bottom line. And you know, that gets me to another point as far as your business and as you look at yourself, obviously when we what attracted me to you was I saw you know, you describing your product and the way you run your business. I thought it was very interesting and was anxious to meet you. And I enjoyed talking to you, but I'm just curious how you would answer a question. What percentage do you think of your success is your, you know, legal knowledge, experience, technical understanding of the law versus the soft skills of communication both with your clients, communication with attorneys, and communication with your staff. If you had to balance those two, where would you see yourself on that scale?

21:58 I think the communication with clients is high up there. I've I actually hired an attorney and she's not with me anymore. And a couple of my she's she took over some client communications with me and like two different clients called me up. They're like, "Lori, listen. I hired you cuz of you. Like I like talking to you. I liked how you know, and she's getting us nervous. She's giving us anxiety." So, I like putting people at ease. So, I think it's a combination of that and I think it's a combination of my confidence. Because people want somebody who's confident. Do they know at the end of the day? I mean, with estate planning, my confidence comes out more because I'm actually talking about the Constitution. I'm talking about why I'm drafting what I'm doing. In probate, it doesn't come out as much, right? Because we're it's very form heavy. So, maybe in the beginning when I'm talking about timing of probate, sometimes I tell people, "This is too much of a debt-heavy estate. Call me in 2 years. It's not the wrong time to file a probate. Don't let anyone convince you it's the right time." And so, you know, I'm confident in terms of that, in terms of those discussions. So, I think it's a combination. I wouldn't say my highest thing is with my staff. You know, I come from the generation where you know, I'm in my 50s now. And when we were raised in these law firms, they were, you know, a boys club.

23:17 And we were spoken to very harshly. And maybe there were times we cried in our offices. And that's what we did as young attorneys. And we just did the work because you were supposed to do the work. And it's been harder for me now when I have younger staff and it you know, you everything's lead with love and do all of this stuff. It doesn't come naturally to me. And so, it's been more difficult in terms of the staff because I'm more of a get your head down and do it type of person. And so, I think what's best is for me to hire an office manager and they can do all of the night I like I do an email and I'm like boom. And then I look at it and I got to go back and write good morning.

23:54 It is interesting. You know, I'm older than you and I and I end up I have a team of agents underneath me around the country who are building their businesses and I and I you know, coach them up. And I grew up in an era of hard coaching. Like the famous coaches, Vince Lombardi, John Wooden. You know, they told you how to tie your shoes. They told you how to put your socks on the correct way. There wasn't room for kind of doing it on your own. And yet, I do think there's a place for that's really lacking in that the younger generation. It's important to have self-esteem. It's important to feel good about yourself, but it's still important to do the right thing. It's still important to do to learn to do things the right way. And so, that's a challenge I'm sure that you struggle with and maybe you hired a intermediary to help soften the blow a little bit. But I do feel like

24:38 You know, I think they've gone way too far on the whole soft side of things and there's too much opportunity. Maybe you have to select the right people. Like for me, I have to make sure I get the right people under me who appreciate my style coaching because otherwise they're just going to be upset and leave.

24:53 Yeah, and it's hard. It's hard I There three systems coaches I hired cuz I was trying to figure out like, what am I doing wrong? Like, why are things not going as smoothly as I want them? And each systems coach told me, "Your law firm is built out than any law firm I've ever seen." And I don't know if that's true anymore. Now with AI, everyone's doing all kinds of things, but this was like 7 years ago. And they were like, "You need rockstars." And it's hard to get rockstars. You know, it's been I think that's one of the hardest part is you want to scale, you want to go next level, but it's hard to find the right people. And I've been blessed that I have my core team have been people with me in the beginning. I have this one paralegal. I've trained her. She had no experience, but when I was first starting out, she worked for me for a year with no pay.

25:39 Wow. Because she believed in me. And then I made up for it, but I'm lucky to have those type of people by my side. I would I would always take somebody I could trust, somebody I'd like, somebody that's kind to me over anybody that's competent. But, you know, sometimes I take one for the team, and if there's a real good paralegal that may not be the softest person in the world, but she knows what she's doing, I'll take it for the team. And I want that person on my side. I love competence as well.

26:08 Yeah, that's interesting. I think it's the what you're saying is I think this has been my experience too that you have to be very careful who you hire because they have to fit your culture. If they do, it's going to work. If they don't, if any too much hand-holding or, you know, you need too much time for me explaining things. I really don't have time to

26:25 I know we don't. We have all the systems and procedures and I just need people to follow them. And I do get a little, you know, I want to serve my clients well. It means so much to me as an attorney to do the very best that I can do. And it's hard when you start getting high volume, and you start getting so busy that your hand can't touch everything. Every Everything can't be touched, and it's just like, I don't like how this is happening. Oh, why did we write that message that way? Why did we say it this way? And so I go through and audit it and see what's happening and I sometimes I have to go in there and repair relationships with clients to make sure we're speaking to them in the right way and making sure we're addressing them and you know, I get the other day someone was writing in my case and my staff told me but I forgot. Like I need more of a reminder. So they emailed me on Saturday. It's like, Lori, you didn't see I'm like, I did see it and I responded immediately, put him in touch with other attorneys and got he's like, thank you so much for responding promptly. It's hard because we have to have a life, too, right? We can't be working. We can't be on demand. So you have to get rockstars in place

27:34 Right. That are going to help you be better and scale and do more if that's what you want to do because at the end of the day, like we can't we can't kill ourselves for our clients cuz if I get a heart attack or something, then they don't have me anymore.

27:48 Right. So and that balance though has been really difficult and so what do I do? And now I open now I started a new company, Probate Launch and I start doing that. So I don't know why I do these things but I see a need, I'm compelled to act, and I act.

28:03 Well, I'll tell you what, I look forward to learning more about your next act. We started talking about Probate Launch and we're going to have you back once it's launched in the next 90 days we'll have you back on Probate Weekly to

28:13 Great. Go into detail and be able to share with attorneys or paralegals who might be interested in learning what the product is and or the services and how they can use it to benefit themselves. So Lori, I really appreciate your time today sharing with us. I think the keys to success in any business you we talked about the communication, soft skills as well as the hard skills, procedures and all that. And so congratulations on your success and continued success. We look forward to

28:35 Thank you. Bringing you more as you go down the road. For those who are interested, if you want more of Lori Vella, you can get her Probate Attorney licensed in Florida and New York, [phone number] or lorivella.com. If you can't get that cuz you're driving, reach out to me. I'd be honored to make an introduction. Lori, thanks again. Look forward to having you back maybe in about 90 days or so.

28:55 Thank you, Bill. I really appreciate being a guest here. Thanks so much. And for actually this is Probate Weekly. We get together every week. Usually with probate attorneys. In this case we have a probate attorney and a service being launched. So we'll see how that works out. Let me get your comments. Like it if you like this. Ask a comment put a comment in the in the comment section. Ask a question if I can help you in any way. Reach out. I'm at Bill Gross Probate on social media. As always, make today your best day ever. Thanks so much.