Estate planning is a deeply personal undertaking for clients. However, it’s typical for clients to complain that they don’t understand their own plans. The most common complaint is that their Will or Trust is filled with jargon and boilerplate language, has names misspelled, or doesn’t include a provision that they thought was in there. Lawyers need to do have better legal writing, and take the time to overcome these client objections.
Complaint: Legalese and Complexity
Legal documents often seem like they’re written in a foreign language, making them intimidating and difficult for clients to understand. Will drafting or trust drafting can be particularly difficult to understand by a layperson.
Difficulty Understanding: Legal terminology and convoluted sentences can leave clients feeling lost and unsure about the contents of their estate planning documents. Terms like “testator,” “per stirpes,” or “abatement” may be second nature to lawyers but can be overwhelming for clients.
Overly Lengthy Documents: Lengthy paragraphs filled with dense text only add to the confusion. Clients may struggle to extract the essential points from pages of legalese, leading to frustration and misunderstandings.
Complaint: Lack of Personalization
Clients want their estate planning documents to reflect their unique circumstances and wishes. When estate planning documents feel generic, it can lead to dissatisfaction and concerns about their effectiveness.
Generic Templates: Pre-written templates might save time, but they often fail to capture the nuances of each client’s situation. Clients may worry that their documents lack specificity and fail to address their individual needs.
Failure to Address Unique Situations: Every family and asset structure is different. Clients may have specific wishes or scenarios that they feel aren’t adequately covered in standard documents. This lack of customization can leave clients feeling uneasy about the effectiveness of their estate plan or worse, offended by a lawyer’s perceived lack of understanding or attention.
How Lawyers Can Address These Objections
There are several ways that lawyers can address these client concerns, as follows:
Clarity and Understanding: Using Plain Language in your estate planning drafting and other legal documents removes barriers to understanding, empowering clients to make informed decisions about their estate plans. Clearer language reduces confusion and ensures that clients fully comprehend the contents of their documents. Try using Plain Language drafting and include modern phrasing. When possible, try including an example of a complicated formula or a statement of the Testator’s intent in a trust.
Conciseness: Documents should be drafted with brevity in mind, focusing on conveying information effectively without unnecessary verbosity.
Empowerment Through Personalization: Tailoring estate planning documents to each client’s unique circumstances instills confidence and trust in the process. Clients feel heard and valued when their wishes are accurately reflected in their documents. Try to include details like the relationship of the person named in a document (e.g., I nominate my sister, Jane Doe, as the Personal Representative) and non-binary pronoun choices when desired.
Client Education: Lawyers should take the time to explain each document thoroughly, ensuring that clients understand the purpose and implications of each provision. When possible, provide clients with narrative summaries of documents, diagrams, or custom to-do lists.
