Creating Legacies: Julia Dean on Estate Planning with Empathy

Viktoria Altman: Guys, welcome to the Law Firm Accelerator. Today with us we have Julia Dean, an estate planning attorney down in Texas.

Julia, welcome to the show. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Julia Dean: Well, I appreciate that. Thank you for having me on. I’ve been practicing law over 30 years. It’s hard to imagine, but I started out in commercial litigation, went to civil appellate law and then ended up for the last almost 20 years in estate planning and probate. I just love that area.

I feel like that’s my sweet spot. So I have a boutique law firm. There’s about nine of us, three attorneys that focus on estate planning and probate primarily, some guardianship and some special needs planning and elder law that kind of dovetails into it. They all kind of mesh and I found when I got into this area, it was really important to know all the complimentary areas of law.

So that’s what we do. That’s really our focus. I’m not your usual attorney, so I don’t have the type A personality. I really just wanted to help people and I think a lot of us start out that way and then it changes over time. I found that litigation was not my area and I really wanted a law firm that could exemplify who I was and that I could spend time with people and just take the extra time to care about them, focus on their needs and proactively help them.

Viktoria Altman: Got it. Thank you for sharing that. I find estate law seems to attract more chill people, rather than some of the other areas of law, like criminal or personal injury.

Julia Dean: Right. Some people thrive on that, and I found I did fine. I did well, but it really wasn’t something I enjoyed and it just took a lot out of me.

Viktoria Altman: Yeah, that makes sense. So you started in civil appeals and litigation, and you even argued before the Fifth Circuit. Now you’ve decided to shift to estate for slower life.

What was the reason behind it?

Julia Dean: Well, it really was that I felt more and more disconnected from the people that I wanted to help. And that was not good for me ’cause I really wanted to connect with the people and the more civil appeals I did, which was for really an insurance company. We were their civil appellate lawyers.

We were just connecting with the people at the insurance company but I love the strategy and the writing and so I just thought. Well, how do I combine that all? I really felt like estate planning was my way to do that. So I crafted a firm where I could proactively help people, but I used my litigation background and the civil appellate background to help avoid those issues and those areas where I just know things can come up.

So I proactively plan to avoid that. Sometimes when people come in, they don’t realize the extent of the planning we do, but part of that reason is hopefully that they’ll never experience those issues where they do have to end up in court. What we do is extensive and sometimes complex, but that’s because we’re really trying to do the best thing for them in the long run.

Viktoria Altman: I like the phrase you just used. I crafted a firm. Talk to me about that and how do you feel that your approach might be different from other estate planning folks?

Julia Dean: First of all, I thought, what would I want if I was coming into a law firm. It can be intimidating to talk to an attorney and usually coming in for estate planning, most people avoid it even though they know they need to do it.

So I wanted to make it a welcoming firm where they felt comfortable, that they were like at a home. Not completely outta home, obviously it’s professional, but where they would feel that sense of they could open up about their family, about their finances.

Because if they can’t, then I’m not gonna be able to really help them the way that I wanted to. I wanted to have a law firm that I could spend time with people. It wasn’t all about every single billable hour. Even though, yeah, that’s important and we have to be profitable. But I wanna have the freedom that if there’s a situation, I can go ahead and spend some extra time with that person and that they know they’re cared for and that I’m gonna do the best I can for them in their situation.

That I’m listening with the empathetic ear. And so when I went into this, I thought, I wanna do excellent legal services in the context of a caring environment, and that meant empathy. That meant really connecting with people. I just continue to think of ways that I can make the law firm much more approachable to people.

Viktoria Altman: Your brand does feel very intentional. You used the phrase, secure your legacy. The way you show up online it seems like you really care about your clients. You really care about this job. How do you market that?

Julia Dean: It is very intentional what I do. When I started out with, okay, I want excellent legal services in the context of a caring environment, that has changed over time, but the foundation of it is still there.

That heart is still there.

And I think it’s all really about our legacy and we’re crafting our legacy every single day. Whether we know it or not, whether it’s emotional legacy we’re leaving with our family. A legacy of love. Maybe it’s a spiritual legacy, but we’re also leaving that financial legacy and how can I help them?

Help their selves and their families by really briefing up their legacy and making sure that not only have they secured it, but we’ve amplified it. So I’ve kind of gone from secure your legacy to also amplifying your legacy because we can’t amplify it unless we secure it, but I can amplify it if I can also do some tax planning for them as well.

So asset protection, tax planning, divorce protection, things like that are just really key components in a lot of things that I do.

Viktoria Altman: But how do you market that? I’m a marketing professional, so I look at it from the viewpoint of how you translate your message. What do you do for that?

Julia Dean: Well, I think what we’re sharing and communicating, whether it’s on our ads, in magazines, community newspapers or our articles, we’re always communicating those kinds of marketing messages. Securing your legacy, amplifying your legacy, being heard, having peace of mind.

Those are the kind of things that we do in our marketing. And it is something that comes through in just how we share with them when we’re in an educational kind of initial consultation too. Some of that is just putting that out there and you do it over and over again in different methods and ways.

We try a lot of different kinds of marketing. Some sticks and some doesn’t.

Viktoria Altman: I love that we can come back to that one. Now you regularly offer talks at churches, organizations, schools. I’m assuming that’s part of your approach.Does that work well for you? How do you find these events?

Julia Dean: I’ve realized it’s kind of grown over time. At first it felt like I wasn’t doing a thing but I felt like I was giving back to the community and in education and that was my service to the community. But eventually I start to see that the clients that I was getting from there were very thoughtful clients.

They were the kind of clients that oftentimes were my higher end clients, which was great. And then they referred me to their loved ones, friends, family and financial advisors. So it just became that continuing legacy from a handful of people. I maybe have undervalued it at first, but I thought, well, I’m giving back to the community.

I’m educating and I’m getting better at a communicator, and that’s good.I think with any kind of marketing and educational processes that we want to give to our clients, I feel like it builds on each other.You don’t always see it right at first but that persistence and doing it over time.

I think part of it, and you probably tell people this in your marketing, is people have to see you. I’ve heard somewhere between five to nine times before they’ll even reach out to you. So we try to reach out in a variety of different ways, whether it’s educational seminars, different kinds of ads or different things.

So they do see us and they start to see us, the expert in that area.

Viktoria Altman: Yeah, that makes sense. Especially for estate lawyers, your sale cycle tends to be longer, so those five to seven or even eight touches should be spread around a good length of time. For instance, a criminal attorney, their sales cycle is much shorter, personal injury, but you guys have a very long sales cycle, but you also have a lot of room to make impact. Now when you schedule these events, I speak with folks all the time, and sometimes they don’t have the best luck scheduling these events. What are some tips for other estate planning attorneys out there who might want to know how you conduct such successful events?

Julia Dean: Well, oftentimes I’m doing it alongside either one of my referral partners or my clients There was a level of trust already that I could connect to them and, share from my perspective as well as connected into their faith.

And then just having those financial advisors. The clients that they bring in already have some level of trust in their financial advisor. And so just knowing that they have brought us in is such a great endorsement. And I’m not starting from ground zero, I already have that level of trust.

So I would say try to connect with your existing clients or your referral partners. Many attorneys that I’ve seen are really networking a lot with other attorneys, and there’s some value there. But I really spend my time with complimentary kind of referral sources.

And that would be like my financial advisors and my CPAs. Could even be funeral homes and other things like that. And my A+ clients, they’re awesome at being the word of mouth out there for me too.

Viktoria Altman: That’s very clever. I’ve heard about connecting with complementary businesses. But asking clients to hold presentations, that’s a good one.That’s a new one for me. I hear a lot of stuff, so to say something new is unique. So talk to me a little bit about your preferred client maintenance program.

That’s also a unique thing you do. I haven’t heard about this before. How does this work?

Julia Dean: It is. I started this because potential clients were coming into my office and they would have a trust. And it was sometimes a beautiful, great trust, but sometimes there was nothing in it. So it wasn’t ever gonna work for them the way they wanted it to work. Avoiding courts, probate, guardianship and things like that.

And then I realized they didn’t know what they had, they didn’t know how to use it. So I thought, well, I need to do something to change that. And I had heard a couple other people in my community of other wealth advisors that they had a preferred client program for trust clients, just to follow up with them and do some funding and have annual meetings.

So I kind of built on that. I have an annual meeting with my clients. I go over their funding, the assets that they put into the trust. I talk to them about any updates. If they wanna use it as a family meeting to share what they’ve done with their plan, then we have time to do that as well.

And we do client seminars usually four or five throughout the year. It’s an educational seminar for my trust clients and their family. Sometimes they can bring their friends and we build on not only the trust they have, but maybe other areas. And so we do see additional planning as a result of that.

Maybe they’ve done their living trust, but they haven’t done anything for asset protection. So we talk to them about asset protection trust and ways to protect themselves. We encourage their family to learn how to manage their trust. So at least every other year we’re doing something about what does your successor trustee do?

Educate them. What is it? What do they do? What their role is? And we give them a successor trustee manual that they can use to know what happens when there’s incapacity. My parents are incapacity. What do I do? How do I handle this? What happens if someone passes away? And so we tried to give them as many tools as we can.

The other piece that we have to that is an online storage program where they can store all their documents online and they get to everything. But they also get a card that they can put with their health insurance card or ID, and that allows them to get just like the medical providers to get just their medical documents.

It’s a great resource. If they’re going into the hospital, they can just present that, not all their documents don’t have to worry about that. Or if they’re in a car accident or something, they can’t communicate then that’s they’re gonna look to see who they are and where their health insurance is at and who to contact.

And so they’ll find these cards that have medical symbols and then they can call and get the right help. They can say if they have medical conditions or maybe they’re on medication so they’re treated properly right away. A lot of our clients love that. And that’s all part of our preferred client maintenance program.

There’s an annual fee. The first year is complimentary. It’s an annual fee after that. It is a revenue generator, even though we put a lot of money into it because we also get additional work from them as they think, oh yeah, I really do need to update this from their family and friends.

And so we’re more top of mind that way as well.

Viktoria Altman: Wow. I love it. As somebody who is into recurring revenue business, you are certainly providing a very valuable service, but from a business perspective, that is very smart. You might be the first estate planning attorney I’ve spoken with who has that specific program, so that’s second new thing I’ve heard today. I’m impressed with your marketing skills and either way you serve your clients.

Julia Dean: Thank you.

Viktoria Altman: As a parent myself, I read the piece about your daughter. I can’t imagine how hard that must have been. I know that there was a personal loss there that’s really reshaped the way you talk to your clients.

Do you wanna share a little bit about that?

Julia Dean: Yeah. The piece that I shared in my blog on my website was about my daughter Bethany, and she passed away when she was 33 of COVID. She was always someone who I was prepared for everything.She loved her rubber ducks when she was a toddler. Even when she was an adult, she always had different rubber ducks but her life was that way.

She had all her rubber ducks in a row. Her life was ducks in a row. Even more so than I realized, and it was such a gift to me, her husband and the family is that she had pre-planned everything. Even to the point of she knew she wanted cremation, where her ashes would be, and she was 33, you know, and she was five weeks on a ventilator, so there was no time for her to do it while she was in the hospital.

So, she not had done this beforehand. She wouldn’t have this and she had all her medical documents and HIPAA authorization so I could talk to the doctor, her husband could make those medical decisions for her. And all her financial documents were in place and her will was in place.

And I can’t tell you what a huge gift that was to me and everyone. So I do communicate that, especially to families that have younger adult children. I just talk about the age 18 because we think that the day before they turn 18, we have all this authority. We can get access to the doctors, the schools and everything else.

When they turn 18, we can’t get access to any of that unless they grant us that access. Even with the same daughter, she ended up in a motorcycle accident. First time she was in a motorcycle with her, soon to be husband later.This was in college and both of them almost died.

And at that point she didn’t have those documents. I should have thought about it. Yes, I’m in that position, but I didn’t, I thought about access to her educational stuff, but I wasn’t thinking about her and things happening in other ways. But that taught us a big lesson. I think one reason why she had all those ducks in a row is that I couldn’t talk to the doctor until she said that I could talk to the doctor.

That was agonizing experience as a parent. So I talked to the parents of kids going into college. But I also talk to the kids how important that is on both ends. ‘Cause we don’t know how long our life will be and we don’t know what may come in between, whether that’s an accident or something else, where we really do want our loved ones to know what’s going on and make decisions along with the doctor and not be shut out of all of that.

And also where we wanna give that ultimate gift at the end to our family of having everything in a row. She taught us great lessons that I do share with my clients and at these seminars because we just don’t know. And I can tell you most parents do not think about this until it’s too late, and then they’re coming to me and they want these documents, but I can’t give them to ’em because I need their child to sign off on it.

Viktoria Altman: Wow, I have a 19-year-old. I haven’t even thought of it. I work with estate lawyers. I’m sitting here thinking, oh my God, you are absolutely right.

I haven’t even considered that.

Julia Dean: ‘Cause I still thought of myself as a parent and I could still have access and we do. But legally you could be a parent but you can’t have access, you know? That one day makes a huge difference. And so I do encourage to get that.

Viktoria Altman: My 19-year-old is gonna get some paperwork to sign.

You’re absolutely right. Wow. I appreciate you sharing that story because that’s super important and you just never even think about it.

As a parent, you just don’t wanna be in that position.

Julia Dean: No. And we don’t like to think about our children ever being injured or predeceasing us. ‘Cause that’s just out of our normal realm of how things should happen. But we really don’t know. And just being prepared is such a gift to everybody.

Viktoria Altman: Yeah. And Judaism, there’s a saying, we plan, God laughs.

Julia Dean: Yes, that’s true.

Viktoria Altman: Okay. It sounds like you’re doing a lot of things really great in your marketing. Talk to me a little bit about something that didn’t work. I know everybody’s had some marketing failures. Talk to me about your favorite failure.

Julia Dean: Oh, my first magazine ad. It was a total flop and it was pretty expensive. I thought, I’m gonna take this big leap and do a regional magazine ad and it was just really kind of me and what I did. It was hard for me to first make that leap of doing marketing because I’ve been doing this a long time and it used to be only bad lawyers would advertise, and if you’re a good lawyer, you would get referrals from word of mouth.

But my husband really convinced me that advertising is so important, and I just need to do it in the right way. So I took this leap and as far as I know, I got no leads from it. And I thought, oh, this is really bad. So then I started doing local community like, I don’t know if you have it where you are, but we have homeowners associations and it’s like the community of several hundred homes in that area.

And they had their own newsletter that was sometimes really good and you could either write in it or do an ad in it. So I started on ads in the local areas and what I found is that I got a lot of great responses because they felt like I was part of their community. And actually I was, I’m one of them.

They were more likely to come because they knew I was part of this community. So it somehow gave a different level of trust because I was willing to advertise in their local magazine. And later I started doing articles in their magazines and that was really helpful too, because again, I’m giving the value of educating.

And eventually people start coming in, because you’re still top of mind, ’cause every month they’re seeing your advertising and your article. Then there’s already a level of trust developed before they even walk in the door because they start to feel like they know you a bit and they started to trust and rely on your advice.

So, yeah, it went from bad to turned around. I just kind of localized it and I have since then done magazines. But I think that it’s a first foray out into all of this. I think probably anything is not so good. You just have to keep going out there at least for estate planning and be seen multiple times and then they start saying, oh, I’ve seen you here and there, and start feeling like an expert.

But I think, yeah, that’s probably the biggest one.

I think that was shocking to me that that didn’t bring anything. But then it’s shocking to me later that things like the internet bring in people. Those ads can convert people. And I’m thinking, well, they don’t even know you, but it’s amazing.

And even the reviews of other people validate that and has changed being out there in the advertising world I think.

Viktoria Altman: You know, it’s funny because some of those things actually still continue to work today. A lot of my clients will ask me things like, should I pay for an ad and a big website? And my response is always, unless you have an unlimited budget, the answer is probably no. You’re better off buying a space on your local community newspaper or sponsoring a local high school football team. Google will actually give preference to those kind of backlinks and mentions that are annual community versus the big national ones for a local business because they understand that people want folks involved in the community.

So a lot of this still applies today. The other interesting thing is when we design a website, what I do is I incorporate what we call social proof. Social proof could include things like reviews, local reviews, social media posts, pictures from your local community, your about us page and things like that.

So even though we are here in 2025, people still want to feel like you are someone they can get to know and they can get to know you through your website if it’s done well.

So when we create a website, it’s all about non-generic, not using images if we can help it. I love to make people get new pictures.

I am the girl who makes you get pictures and incorporating very personalized codes to action that counts specifically from the way that person does their practice and that will help with the conversions and how people feel like to know you.

Especially if there’s videos, things like that. That lesson still applies today in 2025.

Julia Dean: That’s true. I think people still really love the personal touch. They like people answering the phones. They like to know you and they want to get to know you. And I think we’ve got sometimes so far removed with our technology and social media that we sometimes forget simple things like that, that just mean a lot to connect with people.

‘Cause it’s all about relationships in what we do and encouraging people to come in so we can have that relationship.

Viktoria Altman: And speaking of relationships, referrals are gold for me, for you, for all of us, right? Do you have any unexpected referral sources that turned out to be game changers for your firm?

Julia Dean: Oh yes. A couple of our financial advisors have been amazing. Sometimes they come in with their clients, sometimes they don’t. But just their endorsement of us are game changers. And the other one is really the internet that I really didn’t think would be a game changer and really was gold.

You know, getting the ads and different things just flowing through here. And I think referrals in the form of reviews, bring in people. That really has been kind of unexpected to me. Just ’cause I just thought people would want referrals from people they know, not from the internet.

And I guess the professional relationships make sense, but I have focused on those complimentary relationships more than the attorney referrals. I think it’s so much better than attorney referrals actually.

Viktoria Altman: Yeah, that’s certainly true. How do you meet these complimentary relationships? Do you go to special events for it?

Julia Dean: That’s sometimes, but usually we reach out. We would have coffees in the office and a little breakfast brunch and invite them in the morning before things kicked off. So it was before their time where they were meeting with people too.

And had the whole team there where they could get to know them and we could get to know their team. Then we would follow up with lunches or different things. During COVID we had virtual lunches or breakfast times with them. And that was really helpful because everyone was kind of craving for people to connect and no one was really doing a whole lot of connecting except through Zoom.

What I saw in my space is that people weren’t doing it unless we initiated it. So we just needed to initiate those contacts and now there’s really a handful of people that I invest more heavily in because I know they’re the kind of advisor I trust completely.

We put my assets with them and that makes a huge difference because I want my clients to have that same kind of comfort level that I have with them. So if I’m referring, they need to know that it’s because I have that level of confidence and it reflects on me if they don’t.

But also it reflects on me if they do have a good experience and that’s what we want.

Viktoria Altman: That makes a lot of sense. Certainly networking with other professionals is helpful and I think not a lot of people put enough emphasis on it. I think they network with other lawyers. But you’re right, it’s the complimentary professions that will really get you there.

Plus you have to do really good work ’cause otherwise they wouldn’t recommend you.

Julia Dean: Yeah, exactly. It has to be excellent work. In my work, at least, I’m a perfectionist and I want it to be excellent. They may or may not know that it’s excellent, but at some point someone’s gonna know.

And that’s gonna be, can I prevent those very difficult issues and problems by doing excellent work now. So the more I can do that, the better I feel about that when I present that to them.

Viktoria Altman: Yeah, there’s a saying in my world, marketing is also doing.

It’s not just marketing, it’s actually doing the job.

So I’m a big reader and this is a question I ask all my guests. What is your favorite nonfiction book ever and why?

Julia Dean: Well, I think one of the most impactful books that I’ve read as a leader was John Maxwell’s book, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. The very first law was really game changing to me ’cause it’s called The Law of the Lid and it basically says you can only lead up to your leadership skills and your team won’t be any more effective than you are.

So it really motivated me to get to that higher level of leadership so that I could have a better functioning team. I’ve invested in coaching one-on-one, group coaching and masterminds variety of people. And so I’m getting different influences, books and podcasts like this and listening to what are other lawyers doing in this industry.

But what are other leaders doing and how can I take what someone’s doing in another industry and translate it into leading in the law firm. What you don’t learn in law school really hurts you. We don’t learn anything about business and how to interact with clients.

I think they do more just a little bit of in the courtroom and a lot on how to analyze the law, but not to be a business owner and not to how do you interact with clients. So that’s something that I really had to learn over time. Fortunately I enjoy the portion of interacting with clients, but being a leader and leading a law firm and being a good business owner, understanding all the finances behind it, how to track things and different metrics in the firm to know what’s working and what’s not working, and to pivot in hard times and being persistent like during COVID we all had to pivot like everybody did, or you lost your firm. That was obvious to most of us. But what’s not obvious is the things that are sometimes changing in our culture that we need to change so that we’re ready for what’s coming up next.

And that’s sometimes a difficult thing to see. So being out there, listening to other people and hearing what they’re doing in the industries, not just our industry, but other industries and how they’re looking forward and planning for that has helped me tremendously. So I think just the thought that, okay, I’m the lid on this firm.

And am I being a good leader or not? Am I growing or not? If I’m not growing, we’re going backwards ‘ cause the firm is not growing so I’m constantly learning. I didn’t value that before I read this and now I really do invest in myself and leadership. I invest in my team too, so that they’re growing and learning and also learning how to be better leaders as well.

Viktoria Altman: It sounds like a great recommendation. Thank you. That is on the list now.

So before we wrap up, what’s coming up for you? What are you working on? What are you excited about in your law firm?

Julia Dean: Yeah, so actually I’ve been working on a book. It should be coming out within a few months and it’s called the Texas Estate Planning Q&A book. The subtitle is a hundred simple answers to anyone who cares,who wants to take care of their family, minimize death taxes, and protect their assets.

Basically what I’ve done is 10 different areas of the law. Then in each chapter, 10 different of my most asked questions and I answered those. And so it’s just a book a lot of people wanna research and learn things before they come in that they feel overwhelmed by the process. They know they need to take care of their legal affairs, but they don’t wanna come in until they feel like the expert.

But then they go on the internet and learn all these wrong things and they think they know, but they really don’t. So it’s just really interesting and sometimes I have to have them unlearn a few things and then learn it again. I wanted to give some good advice where they felt like, okay, I have enough knowledge that I know what to ask, and I feel comfortable coming in to the law firm and asking those questions.

So I want them to be able to take those steps to secure their legacy, to amplify their legacy, and not be held back by the overwhelm and feeling like they have to know it all before they go in.

Viktoria Altman: Great idea and if I can offer you a tip, make sure to optimize your Amazon AI page, Amazon author page, because AI uses that page to understand who you are as an entity. That’s a very important one.

Make sure you have all your keywords and the things you focus on in there. That will help AI understand who you are as a lawyer, not just as an author.

Thank you so much for joining me today. Do you have any last words of wisdom for anybody who might be thinking about venturing out on their own and wondering if they should do it?

Julia Dean: I encourage you to go ahead and do it because proactively planning is so much better than being reactive in the future. It’s always gonna cost less to be proactive. It’s always gonna be better planning than having to react and have the courts entering into all of this. You know, I’ve been on the other side of it and litigation.

We can either be in the mess or we can avoid the mess by being proactive and taking care of our estate plan now.

Viktoria Altman: Awesome. Those are great words of wisdom. Thank you so much.