Speaker 1: 0:00

You're tuned into the Marketing Law Cast with James Campbell. Brace yourselves for game-changing digital marketing tips and exclusive interviews with industry gurus and top-tier attorneys, smashing the six and seven-figure barrier. It's time to drive your practice to success. Welcome to the Marketing Law Cast.

James Campbell: 0:17

Hello and welcome to the Marketing Lawc ast. I'm James Campbell, Chief Growth Officer for Integrity Marketing Solutions and your host today for this episode. Today we have a special guest, Thomas R. A. Limón, who is an estate planning attorney out of Las Cruces, New Mexico, and a recovering litigator, as he would put into his own words. Just a few quick things about Thomas so that we can all be aware of who we're talking to and the insights that we're going to glean from today's conversation. Who we're talking to and the insights that we're going to glean from today's conversation.

James Campbell: 0:47

So Thomas graduated law school from Gonzaga University of Law on a merit scholarship. He practiced a long while as a deputy district attorney in New Mexico and tried cases on both state and federal level and even won appeals at the federal level. So an experienced litigator, but has transitioned his practice into estate planning. So we're going to talk about his transition and how he's built up to a successful estate planning practice in a relatively short amount of time, where he was in that transitional period from a litigator to start something completely new. So, thomas, welcome to the podcast. Great to have you on, great to be here, very good. So we're going to get into just learning a little bit more about you and about your practice, thomas, but you started your legal career as a prosecutor, as we put out there, sort of a criminal defense attorney, and you handled some high state cases. So what sort of inspired you to transition out of that and into estate planning and maybe why you call yourself a recovering litigator?

Thomas R. A. Limón: 1:53

Well, I have three reasons why I switched to estate planning, and that was my wife and my two sons. You know it was an exciting life in many ways, but I was spending too much time in the courtroom, too much time doing preparation for trials, and while it was exciting, it was also time consuming and it was dividing my attention too many different ways. And my children weren't getting any younger, and the older they got, the more I began to realize that I really need to spend more time at home. I wanted more time dedicated to helping out with Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and going to soccer practices and soccer games and doing all the dad stuff that I really didn't want to have to miss out on, and the life that I was living wasn't really super conducive to that sort of thing. You know there are people who can balance that, but I wanted a little something more from my family life.

James Campbell: 2:57

Yeah, I love that. So that was kind of the primary driver for you to sort of get out of the courtroom, so to speak, right.

Thomas R. A. Limón: 3:06

It really was. Yeah, and you know, even when you're not in the courtroom, gosh that line of business, you take it home and it lingers with you. So even when you're there, you're not really fully present, and I just wanted to switch gears and go at a different pace.

James Campbell: 3:27

Yeah, Sort of being more control of your own schedule and uh kind of call your own shots to a degree as well, Correct.

Thomas R. A. Limón: 3:35

Definitely. You know the court calendar doesn't really care so much about, uh, your, your son's piano recital. It just is what it is. Um, and I like being in control of my calendar and that's an important aspect of running. A successful practice, I think, is successful calendaring and making the business conform around your life and not the other way around.

James Campbell: 4:03

Were there any things from your litigation practice that sort of shaped how you do estate planning? What are some of the maybe some of the skill set or some of the things that that did transfer over?

Thomas R. A. Limón: 4:15

Sure. So you know, one of the big things is talking about mortality, and when you're doing estate planning, people have to confront things that they don't like to have to confront. That, as Hank Williams Sr once said, no one gets out of this world alive. And while everybody knows that's true, most of us don't go around all day thinking about it and it's an uncomfortable conversation. When I was prosecuting and even as a criminal defense attorney, heavy conversations had to be had and I would meet people in their grieving state. I would meet people in their lows and being able to competently navigate those and navigate people's feelings, navigate people's psychology.

Thomas R. A. Limón: 5:08

Regarding that, I think I've picked up a lot of ability to do that through many witness and victim interviews and additionally, too, I think that people come to you for advice Now sometimes, I think all lawyers, but especially estate planners.

Thomas R. A. Limón: 5:27

At times, the range of options are wide and vast. So how do you apply yourself to someone's situation in such a way that you're really in a role of trusted advisor, trusted counselor of law, and you're not so much just opening up a can of worms of endless options, but you're actually guiding people to an outcome, to something that actually helps them, benefits them and will put them in a better place after they're done working with you. So all those skills picked up as a prosecutor. Lawyers call that client control. I don't like that phrase so much. It seems like it diminishes the value or the independence of the client. But I think what people are getting at when they say client control is really the ability to guide, counsel and advise and help the clients actually achieve something for themselves that maybe they don't even know that they want or that they need.

James Campbell: 6:30

I love that. I think that's a great transfer over of skill set being able to talk about the uncomfortable things and not being yourself uncomfortable in those moments. What about your mindset shift? What sort of had to shift from criminal law to estate planning? What are some of the things that you had to sort of start paying more attention to that maybe you didn't have to in the criminal law side of things.

Thomas R. A. Limón: 6:58

Well, uh. So unfortunately, crime just happens Right. And when you're a prosecutor, there's no question about who your client's going to be. It's the state. There's no question about who you're helping, and those are the victims of crime, right? Or the people at the state of New Mexico just kind of came in the door. It was plopped on my desk by my paralegal once. It was assigned to me.

Thomas R. A. Limón: 7:32

But when you're out on your own, you have to go source these clients. They don't just find you magically right and so you have to get them. And then also along those lines too, what's the value that you bring to the table? It's really direct. When you're prosecuting, what's your value? Your value is the ability to obtain a conviction or a verdict In criminal law. It's your ability to secure an acquittal or some sort of amenable resolution, a plea. When you switch to estate planning, who's your adversary? You know, when you're a litigator, you're in combat, right. You're opposed to somebody else. It's the state of New Mexico versus so-and-so. So what's the adversary here in transactional work? And I come to find out that in my mind the adversary is adversity itself. It is probate, for instance. How do you avoid probate? So, contextualizing myself as a probate avoidance attorney. I'm avoiding conflict, not necessarily engaging in it directly, relishing in it. You know that's not where I make my bread and butter. It's actually in avoiding the conflict, and that's the adversary.

James Campbell: 8:52

I love that. I love that approach. In fact, let's talk about your clients and how you advocate for them to help them avoid adversity In estate planning. It often requires a different kind of advocacy compared to litigation. So how do you define your role in helping families plan for the future? I can't imagine it's strictly probate avoidance, but that's just one of the things I would assume. Expand on that a little bit for me if you would Sure.

Thomas R. A. Limón: 9:21

So people don't always see the full picture of what it means for end of life, right. And it's not so much about what happens to your stuff when you die, but what also happens to your person while you're still alive, right. So sometimes the focus can be on you know what happens to your property once you're gone and you're no longer there to steward it. But I think a lot of times people miss that period before death, that period of incapacity. That is really essential. See my firm, we like to focus on a full service estate planning package. Yes, you can drop a will or yes, you can drop a trust, right. But to me that's insufficient. And getting people to see the broader picture, advocating for them in such a way that you want to make sure that they're taken care of during, with durable powers of attorney for finances, ensuring that there's an advanced healthcare directive or living will in place so that people's wishes are being honored during that period where maybe it's time to let go and go about their journey, period where maybe it's time to let go and go about their journey. So advocating for them not just in death but also advocating for them in life, particularly that period of time before death.

Thomas R. A. Limón: 10:58

Statistically, we're just living longer, and because of the marvels of modern medicine, we hang on to life a little bit longer than our minds do in many respects, and so you really want to take care of the whole individual in life and in death.

Thomas R. A. Limón: 11:15

Additionally also, you want to take care of their children. You want to make sure that they're leaving their legacy. Leaving their legacy they're not just making lawyers richer in probate, but that all of their life's work, all the things that they've struggled so hard for in this life, get passed on to the people that really matter to them. And so those are just kind of some of the ways I advocate for my clients and also helping them to realize that they need this service, that you have a great value to bring to them, that they may not want to have that uncomfortable conversation, but it's a conversation that they need to have. I often congratulate them at the end of the signing ceremony that we have them. At the end of the signing ceremony that we have. I congratulate them on taking the bull by the horns and doing the right thing, not just for them, but for the ones that they love.

James Campbell: 12:13

Yeah, I love that. When you think about helping people through that process, who would you sort of define as your ideal client, or what types of families or individuals do you kind of feel like you connect with the most or have the most, bring the most value to maybe? So where are those ideal clients fall for you?

Thomas R. A. Limón: 12:35

Sure, I think there's maybe like two answers to that question perspective. Our ideal client, or our ideal avatar, right for what an ideal client would be, is someone kind of straightforward. You know, perhaps in their early 60s children are growing out of home. They're all wildly successful, you know, like Lake Wobegon right, a prairie home companion, everybody's a little above average. Their children are, you know, doing just fine. There's no gambling addictions or drug addictions or anything like that. So just outright distributions. That's one client. That's the client that's really good for business because we can charge our standard fee. It's relatively straightforward to put together. So that's super from a business perspective.

Thomas R. A. Limón: 13:27

But there's also a part of me that likes the challenge and really being able to make a meaningful impact in people's lives. For instance, there are people who, let's say, they have a child or some sort of descendant that has a drug addiction child or some sort of descendant that has a drug addiction, all right. Well, the estate planning and the gift of money I shouldn't use gift because that's a legal term of art, but the bequest of money to an individual really should be a blessing and not a curse. But for someone who's drug addicted it could be a curse and not a blessing. And so how do you ensure that a bequest is a blessing, to help that person through life and not simply signing a death warrant, for instance? You know, for people with a drug addiction that could be a catastrophe. A large amount of money. And so going in and putting on parameters, delicately stepping around family dynamics that can be problematic or at least difficult to address, and making sure that they have HEM standards, health, education, maintenance, support standards put on guardrails so that the money that they receive is a blessing not a curse.

Thomas R. A. Limón: 14:46

Similarly, along those same lines, might be a family with children. Right, something that I can personally relate to, and you know, through the estate planning process we can designate guardians. What happens to your children if you're on date night and you get plowed by a semi truck? Something horrible happens, god forbid. Right, people don't often think about. Well, they're kids. Well, mom and dad are going to take my kids, ok, but what's the process for that? Have you thought about that? What happens to them in the night that the officers come to knock on the door and the babysitters at home? What happens to them that night? Where do they go? When mom and dad live three states over? Do you have a temporary guardian here at home.

Thomas R. A. Limón: 15:33

Are the law enforcement going to have some kind of direction about what to do with them in that period of time, and do you have the guardianship nomination forms in place so that mom and dad don't have to think a lot about you know how to go about the process of X, y and Z to make sure that they can get the guardianship. Well, you know, those are all things that have to be considered and should be considered. And for people my age, you know, I call myself an OG millennial too. You know, not just a recovering litigator, but I'm an OG millennial. Um, we're getting older. We're young, but we're getting older and we have kids, we have families and we want to take care of them.

James Campbell: 16:11

I love it. I think that that is a um. When we look at families that have young children, a lot of times we still see ourselves as invincible, you know, and we carry so much responsibility with providing and protecting that we forget that. Well, who's going to do that if we're not here? Right, how's that going to pan out? So I love that. That's a niche that you've kind of opened your heart up to a little bit. A lot of people, when it comes to estate planning, have some trepidation or some hesitation about making it through and getting it done. What are some of the sort of common concerns or objections that you hear from clients and how do you address them? What are some of the things that you hear from people that sort of come up over and over again and what's your retort to that?

Thomas R. A. Limón: 17:05

Sure. So a couple of things, one uh dovetailing off of the example that I just gave, which is um, what happens to my children? Well, for some people, that's an easy answer, right. For other people, that's a much more difficult answer, depending on what their finance, family dynamics look like. And so the question that I would ask them would be okay, what's going to happen to your children? They don't know Well, who would they go to? And they hem and they haw. So the question I might ask is well, who's better than CPS? Who's better than state custody? Right, because you have a long list of people perhaps that are not the best solution, but they are a solution to the problem and they are a safe place where your children can go and live if something were to happen to you.

Thomas R. A. Limón: 17:53

So sometimes people get caught up in this impasse of, well, I don't have a perfect solution. Well, we can begin to narrow that down. Give me a list of names of people who are better than state custody and then, once you have that list, then you can begin to navigate. Well, what are your values? Okay, what are your values as they apply to guardianship nominations? And you can list off the values and you write them down on the list who best conforms to those values. And it's just a process of whittling down that list of people who are better than CPS to get them into some sort of position where they can actually begin to put names down on paper. And it gives me something to work with, names that I can draft in order for them to come to a solution to that problem. Just ignoring the problem, the ostrich with the head in the sand, that's not an option, right. And so you know, bringing them forward, giving them tools and an analysis that they can run to come to a solid solution, that's really helpful.

Thomas R. A. Limón: 19:01

Coming up with solutions around blended families you know people now. You know they. They have one, two third marriage. They come to the table with the Brady bunch family you have, you know, greg and Bobby on one side and Cindy and Marsha on the other side, and then they get married later in life. How do we make sure that the property is equitably distributed there?

Thomas R. A. Limón: 19:27

I live in a community property state, so there is some community property that they have acquired together, but there's also separate property. Structuring a trust around individual trusts and then also a community trust, a joint trust that they can engage in and people come to an impasse with that. People come to an impasse with who's going to be executor. You know we call the. They're personal representatives in our state, but people use the word executor almost like they would executioner. They kind of sound alike right that this person in charge is the boss and that person is going to have all the power and the control. Demystifying that so that they can be at peace with person is not. You know, this powerful wizard that's going to, like you know, throw a big monkey wrench and everything and hurt lots of feelings along the way. Demystifying that for them is also really important.

James Campbell: 20:35

Yeah, I love that. I think helping people have a clear future and not just about the public at large, but like their own specific lives, like how does this affect me, my children, my future, my family, when you kind of bring that clarity to people and sort of bring them to a way where they can intellectually and emotionally make a decision, they can sort of formulize it a little bit for them. So I love how you help them through that process.

Speaker 1: 21:06

That's a wrap on this edition of the Marketing Lawcast. Thanks for joining us. Head over to imsrockscom for more growth-focused insights. If you're ready to skyrocket your firm's marketing, don't hesitate to book a free strategy call with our team right on our website. Here's to your success. See you next time.