Community property is a regime of marital property. It traces its roots to civil law systems. This is compared to the common law marital property regime tracing its roots back to common law. With community property, all earnings are owned by the “community” and each member of the community has an undivided one-half interest in […]

Estate Planning attorneys may come across scams that their clients may be involved in, wittingly or unwittingly.  It’s important that we are up on the latest scams to protect our clients and ourselves.  Here are some of the latest scams reported by the IRS:  Return preparer fraud.  Tax return preparers have access to sensitive, personal […]

Having Your Law Firm online isn’t just a matter of having a website anymore. Being online needs to be seen as part of your “multi-pronged marketing approach” and it should be woven into all of your more traditional marketing efforts. The harder and faster you establish your online presence the quicker you can offset the […]

If there’s one thing every law firm must have, it’s referrals. But for most attorneys, “referral” means the occasional client wandering through the door because Uncle Bob or your next door neighbor was kind enough to throw out your name. But the real power of referrals only occurs when you build a network with influential […]

Our “boot camp” kicked off mid-day yesterday. The founders, Robert Armstrong and Sanford Fisch offered an 8 hour training on the systems to make a law practice run like a well oiled machine… and the first 4 hours were yesterday afternoon. Our boot camp attendees are attorneys and staff from around the country! We have […]

As we know, an estate plan must be crafted carefully to achieve the desired results. Hopefully, through the coordination of various strategies, the result is reached. Imagine the upheaval if you crafted an estate plan for someone whom you thought was unmarried and he or she turned out to be married! In several American jurisdictions, […]

As we build our practices, let’s not forget that our businesses are not our lives. In the end, our law practice is just a way to serve our larger goals for ourselves, our families and our communities. It’s always good to remember the essence of the game because, if you’re like me, we get wrapped […]

Some clients are simply a delight to work with. They value your guidance, they follow your instruction and they trust that you know what you’re talking about… which is good because of course… you do.  But then other clients aren’t quite so pleasant. They question your every move, second-guess your recommendations and just generally behave […]

It is often beneficial to name the spouse as the primary beneficiary of a retirement plan or IRA. In fact, with a retirement plan like a 401(k), 403(b), etc., the spouse must be named as the primary beneficiary unless they sign a “spousal waiver” consenting to having a different beneficiary named. Even if the participant […]

At the American Academy we talk a lot about the importance of systems but in order for it to really work, a few things must happen:  The first is that you need to understand why you’re creating the system in the first place. Clearly writing out the end result of the proposed system will focus […]