The Wynne Law Firm, located in Fort Worth, Texas was founded in 1996 by its managing partner, fifth generation Texan, David W. Wynne. Primarily focused on family law throughout its 23-year history, the Wynne Law Firm has been undergoing a transition over the past three years toward becoming a firm focused primarily on estate planning. The firm joined Lawyers With Purpose in February of 2018. In February of 2019, for the first time in its history, the firm experienced a month of greater monthly revenue coming from its estate planning services than from its family law services, despite having a ratio of family law attorneys to estate planning attorneys of 3:1.
LWP sat down with Karl Spahr, one of Wynne Law’s estate planning attorneys, and Gary Hanes, the firm’s marketing consultant, to talk about both, their firm’s transition and their team dynamic.
Could you tell me about the dynamic you’re experiencing at the Wynne Law Firm as it transitions from being primarily a family law firm to an estate planning firm?
David Wynne’s intent when he started the transition was to create an estate planning section and eventually convert the firm. Internally, we’re competing with the family law side, and for the first time in the firm’s history, the estate planning revenue surpassed that of the family law side. We are now beginning to compete on a regular basis business-wise with a 23-year old firm.
That’s a tremendous accomplishment. What was your growth rate, and how did you achieve it?
We had 50-55% growth, but we found that we needed to take time to add staff, so we slowed down for a while. We’re getting ahead again, though. Our next peak will be even greater.
Our clients are sending us people from all over—by referrals. We are able to connect with people; we pride ourselves on that. So, these referrals want us doing their work; they’re coming anywhere from an hour to 3-5 hours away from cities like Houston and Austin. We also work with the communities surrounding Fort Worth quite well.
Beyond that, we are the firm that is educating the community about Medicaid and opening their eyes. As we get phone calls coming in, we find that we’re also correcting a lot of misinformation that potential clients have received. Some of our competitors are using scare tactics, but you don’t want a client to be in that state of mind; you want them to have peace of mind because they’ve done the proper planning, not lying awake at night, worried.
Speaking of your competitors, what is the climate like in the Fort Worth market?
The Fort Worth area has 750,000 families and only a handful of firms. Once you realize how broad your market is, you realize that there’s more work than all of us can do. In our favor, there’s not that many firms that get outside of doing the standard trust.
What kinds of trends are you seeing in your area?
It used to be that a simple probate wasn’t terribly expensive. Back in the 1980s, it might have been only around $1,000, but that rate started increasing. On the same note, trusts were a high dollar ticket item without much interest shown by clients. That’s changing; now, people call us asking for trusts. We’re also pushing more toward asset protection. On the outskirts of town, it’s about asset protection. Medicaid is targeted toward those who need it.
What brought you to Lawyers With Purpose?
We had historically done estate planning but had stayed out of the Medicaid planning market. When we researched it, we came across Practice With Purpose and went to the training in Tampa. We then decided to become LWP members.
We had been involved with other organizations, too, but they’re looking for a different kind of distribution pattern of probably about 3-4 years. With LWP, the process is much quicker; we went from a lack of materials to material overload. This training was really valuable since, initially, we had been largely dismissive of irrevocable trusts. We thought clients would have to divest themselves of their property; we didn’t know what we didn’t know at that time.
Also, clients appreciate having a clearly defined system when they come in. The systems and methodologies are important. You have to know how to draft a trust. In medicine, you wouldn’t want a surgeon who’d never done the procedure, and we have some clients who want to do things that are not standard to protection.
What was one of your greatest TAPER learnings?
One of the greatest learnings we had was the vast size of an estate that a person would need to amass in order to be able to afford long term care. Folks within the $300-500K range need Medicaid. After TAPER, we also adjusted our prices without hesitation because we knew the value of our services.
We left TAPER New Orleans thinking we should be at all TAPERs, so our goal is to go to TAPER Atlanta this fall. TAPER allows you to step back, look at what you’re doing and address problems without the phones ringing. You say, “Wait a minute. Here’s where we’re stalling and why.”
How closely are you following LWP’s systems and processes so far?
We use a few systems right now; we’re getting there. We’ve also changed a few things to fit our particular needs. For example, we pride ourselves on the time we spend with clients to make sure we have an in depth understanding of their family structure. If a client gets stuck and needs to have more than one meeting, we never balk at it. We also address maintenance right from the first meeting. We strongly recommend our clients get together with us once each year because they might have acquired a property, and they’re not thinking that by doing so they might have bought themselves a probate scenario.
Also, we’ve tried to do four workshops per month every other month. We did well with workshops, but we were generating a lot of business, and we needed to be able to handle the drafting workload. We needed the staff to be able to keep up. We realized we had to have help; TAPER opened our eyes to that.
We have a variation of 3-4 workshops that we do based on who’s coming. We talk to the folks who are in the room, and based on their needs, we decide right then what kind of workshop we’re doing. We’re flexible in that regard. We’ve also added asset protection stories to our workshops because we’re seeing a need for that in our market. Our goal is to do workshops around Medicaid; we haven’t done as much these, though, because you’re not necessarily getting the folks who actually need Medicaid into the room.
To some degree, we have stopped and started synergy meetings, but we know we need to be doing them. We are doing retail advertising.
What are your favorite LWP tools?
Medicaid and asset protection are the most significant tools for us. People have been to Medicaid planning, or they’re interested in asset protection if they have a large amount of wealth.
Is there a particular client success story you’d like to share?
We’ve had a few lately. In one particular case, a husband and wife came in doing well, but the husband fell the day after their appointment with us, and from that fall, he developed major medical issues. We were able to morph into crisis planning quickly. Unfortunately, the client ultimately passed away, but the family was very thankful for the time and effort we put in.
We now have a standard Power of Attorney that’s prepped and ready to go, which gives the person the POA before we finalize the contract.
You’ve known each other for 4 or 5 years, but you’ve only been working together for 3 years. You seem to have a really strong team dynamic. How did you build that?
Karl: We have a great chemistry of working together, and because of that, we’re reaching a variety of people. Also, our deliveries are different, but we each bring something to our team. Gary does the marketing and drafting, and he delivers a lot of information to the client quickly, whereas my delivery is more drawn out with storytelling. We both really like doing the workshops—so much so that we alternate doing them, and we often heckle each other! We both believe strongly in doing what’s best for the client, and we don’t have a high-pressure system; we let the clients pick what they want to do.
What’s something that people may not know about you?
Karl: My wife, Carolyn, and I have been married for 26 years, and we recently adopted two children out of foster care. Now, our oldest children are in their 30s, and our youngest two children, a boy and a girl, are just two-and-a-half and three-and-a-half years old.
What is your favorite book, and what is the impact that it’s had on your life?
Karl: I read voraciously, but I don’t have a favorite book. The Bible is great, but I believe that if I were to limit myself to just one culture, I might be missing something, so I’ve read the Quran and I’ve studied Tibetan Buddhism, where I’ve learned to be in the moment.
