Article originally published in the Quarterly V12-I2, 2018. Author: Patrick Carlson, JD, LLM. Get all your business and estate planning information by becoming a Quarterly subscriber.

Sadly, many attorneys do not approach their client development efforts with an eye towards creating lifetime value. When you transition your mindset, it can have far-reaching – and valuable – implications for how to approach your marketing efforts, initial intake, client service, and the cultivation of additional legal service opportunities with those clients.

Most states have a child caretaker exception to their Medicaid transfer rules.  An elderly parent can transfer their home to an adult child who lived in the home with their parent for the two years prior to that parent entering into a nursing home. Such a transfer of the home would not violate Medicaid look-back rules.  The child must have provided care to that parent that allowed the parent to remain in the home for those two years, instead of the parent needing institutionalized care during that time.  A child, for the purposes of this rule, must either be a biological or adopted child.  Other relatives – stepchildren, grandkids, nephews, etc. – do not qualify. The purpose of this rule is to help keep elderly folks out of a nursing home for as long as possible. 

With the ability to learn almost anything and buy whatever you want at your fingertips, it’s hard to fathom that the internet’s role in our daily lives will diminish. On the contrary, more and more consumers are turning to the internet to shop for goods and research the best service provider. To survive the times, many law firms are turning to the power of the virtual world to attract more clients and run more efficiently.

Unlike a traditional firm, virtual firms have much smaller start-up costs. In ditching the old brick and mortar office for a virtual one, the list of tools an attorney needs to run a successful practice fall into two main categories: hardware and software.