Strategic Alliance Meeting with John L.

This is my second go around with an initial strategic alliance meeting. This time it is with John L. at RCA law firm. This happens to be the same law firm that my wife works at so it was a pretty easy meeting to set.

John has some history with one of my larger clients and according to my Dad, had suggested they do something different with their trust management then what my Dad had suggested. That was enough for my Dad to write him off. I had also heard from our Trust specialist that he had a good relationship with one of the advisors in our Sun City office. With the past experience in the back of my mind, I did not have as high of expectations for this meeting as I did with Ron L. last time.

We met for breakfast at Paradise Bakery. John was really friendly and we got a little side tracked at first talking about RCA law firm and the direction they are heading. My wife has been real concerned about the bad economy's effect on the future profitability or RCA law firm and John was picking my brain for information on my point of view.

Eventually we moved the conversation to investigating the possibility of a strategic alliance. First of all, I have to hand it to Steve Moeller, his ideas on sending out the confirmation letter and giving the attorney the list of questions really sets the tone. Both of the lawyers I have me with seemed very eager to impress me and try to find a way to do business. I have not felt at all like I was the one under pressure to sell my firm.

John L. is 66 years old. He started his career at RCA in 1970, but he left after 25 years to form a boutique firm in Sun City and Scottsdale. His boutique firm had 2 other younger partners and when the lease was coming up for renewal, he did not feel comfortable signing another long term lease with his partners. He was bringing in most of the business and if something would happen to him, he did not want to be tied in to them for a long stretch of time. So he made some calls and RCA had just lost their top producing estate planning attorney and he found he could slide right back in. In addition, RCA has a Denver office, and John L. has home in Colorado and does some work there as well so it was a nice fit.

RCA has 3 other attorneys in the Estate Planning practice. John uses one paralegal as well. John spends his office hours in Sun City, Scottsdale, and Denver. The majority of his clients have net worths of $2-$5 Million with some outliers in the hundreds of millions. He said he does not have a specific client niche like doctors or business owners, his clients come from all walks of life.

He does not have a formal plan for acquiring new clients. 70% of his business is referrals or repeat business from his current clients. The rest comes from referrals from other professionals. He does not do a lot of insurance business. Not because he doesn’t believe in it, but he says some of the referrals he gets from insurance professionals are not doing what is right for the client.

He has done a lot of work with charitable planning and trusts. He was a director for the Arizona Community Foundation from 1988-2000. ACF has an alliance with Merrill Lynch and I have a couple of clients that have charitable trusts with them already.

He did not have a clear answer on his ideal client profile. He said he seems to receive a lot of clients that are on their 2nd or 3rd marriage and he has to fix or undo an ineffective estate plan. He also has done quite a bit of work on large retirement accounts and cleaning up beneficiary designations.


I asked him about his initial meeting with clients. He said he does not use a formal questionnaire, but he does ask them a lot of questions and writes down what he needs. The initial meeting is free if the client decides to go somewhere else. If they decide to use John, then the cost of the first meeting is rolled into the total cost. After he writes an initial draft, he makes sure to go over the paperwork with the client face to face. He does not believe in sending out the documents to the client to read since that just causes panic and strife.

I asked him to give me what his frustrations are with his practice. Again he did not have a clear answer and basically said that everything is great.

In review, I did not uncover any glaring problems in his practice that I can immediately help him with. My gut was telling me that he will not end up being one of my strategic alliance partners. He is a very well qualified attorney with tons of experience and lots of high net worth clients. I would trust him to work on my client’s estate plan, but I don’t know if I trust him to make my client feel good about the whole process by being friendly and extremely service oriented.