Adopt Preventive Law - Not Remedial Law. We must realize our society can no longer afford the costs of remedial law. Lawsuits, administrative proceedings, tax audits and other consequences are too slow, expensive and emotionally trying.
Realize That Preventive Law Saves. We must not resist the concepts of Preventive Law. Our experience in testing and practicing Preventive Law has been successful and we have proven it works.
Utilize Progressive Alternative Dispute Resolutions. We advocate having a judicial system within your family and business – the Integrity Agreement and the Confidentiality Agreement.
Incorporate "Legal Surgery" in All Proceedings. A preventive law lawyer must track the "action items" after each meeting – like the surgeons counting their instruments and sponges after each operation.
Preventive Law Involves Client Education. Using "Measles Memorandums", a system of written explanations for each legal document and move, we must accept responsibility to educate clients with educational memorandums, audio tapes and video tapes.
Participate in Public Education on Legal Subjects. We must educate the estate planning families on all the legal vaccinations that are available. Our schools have not done this.
"Welcome the Team" Approach. We must recognize the lawyer is not omnipotent and all powerful, and must work with a team of professional advisors : 1) an accountant; 2) life insurance advisor; 3) property and casualty insurance advisor; 4) financial planner; 5) investment advisor; 6) retirement plan actuary and administrative advisor; 7) management consultant; 8) computer consultant; 9) psychiatrist/psychologist; 10) human resource consultant; and 11) marketing consultant.
Insist on a Holistic Approach. The family and the corporation are composed of the same elements of a human body – bones, circulatory system, soul, nervous system, muscles, immune system – all must be integrated into the legal structures.
Create "Airplane Pilot" Checklists for All Legal Procedures. There is a reason why airline pilots who have over 30 years of experience still use a checklist when they land and take off.
Incorporate Common Sense into All Legal Documents and Procedures; Make Your Documents Practical. Not just the same old documents that were handed down in legal encyclopedia form books. Law must be a crystallization of common sense.
Learn and Use Legal Architecture. Legal architecture is absolutely necessary as a tool for advanced estate planning and business planning using schematic drawings so the structures may be accurately explained and communicated to all.
Involve Back Up Systems in All Documents. Estates must be built like the German battleships with multiple back up systems, at least three.
Create Documents Which Can Be Understood by Non-Lawyers. Estates must be documented so as to satisfy low-level bureaucracy, where on the surface of the documents they are self-explanatory with no document or execution gaps, which would cause the head nurse at the hospital to wait until morning when the hospital legal counsel arrives to ask him/her if the documents are valid.
Avoid "Built-In" Obsolescence. Think through having no built-in obsolescence in the documents, requiring them to be redone frequently with time obsolescence, changing conditions obsolescence, and spatial obsolescence. Think of all the "what ifs" and have provisions covering the less likely as well as the more likely.
Learn How to Act as a Facilitator. If the lawyer wants to be the quarterback, he/she must learn to be a "facilitator." This is necessary when you have a team of professionals.
Set Up Audit Trails. Until you have documents in the file and initials of completion, you are still out there in fantasy and science fiction.
Create "Selbstverständlich" Files. Your files must be self evident so they may be given to anyone in the office or another attorney and, without explanation, anyone will be able to find everything in the file.
Schedule a Network of Information Sources. You want to be integrated with the environment, set up systems for getting input to and from clients, professional colleagues, and the public so as to ride the THIRD WAVE of change and survive FUTURE SHOCK.
Involve Yourself in "Colleague to Colleague" Sharing. Have a frame of mind that the universe has abundance and we will not lose business by sharing ideas. We will only encourage more clients to overcome paranoia and accept estate planning for their families.
Plan for 10,000 Mile Checkup. We must recognize that even legal documents wear out and become obsolete or the condition changes. Estates must be periodically checked. We call these checkups Periodic Preventive Law Reviews and reserve appointments ahead of time like "Legal Time Shares."
Be Sure Your Legal Ratchet Does Not Go Backwards. Document important points, decision and action items from each meeting and phone calls to prevent them from being lost in the mind.
Learn from Peer Review. If something goes wrong, "black box the plane crash" before you go ahead again. Ask everyone involved how the problem happened and how we may prevent it next time.
Plan on Periodic Communications with Clients. The book "Accidents in North American Mountaineering" each year wrote up and disseminated the account of each mountain climbing accident with a discussion of how it could have been prevented. With Websites and E-Mail, we will be able to apprize clients and others of legal accidents and necessary prevention and correction measures.
Design Data Bases which Identify Critical Action Dates. A preventive law lawyer must discern dates in a client’s life when action must be taken, program reminders, and remind clients when this occurs, e.g.: at age 18, children must execute legal emergency documents; at age 70 ½, clients must make elections on their retirement plans; at a certain date each year, they must come in for an annual review.
Make Meetings, Letters and Documents Interesting and Entertaining. It is hard to get clients to absorb and remember dull discourse and dull documentation. Make the legal process fun as well as productive.
Teach the Public that Legal Documents Have Variances in Quality and Completeness. We must train the public to accept the additional expense of a "Mercedes Mentality" and make them realize that it does not cost much more to go first class with preventive law.
