KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Building a Probate Niche with Beti Bergman

Episode Date: February 9, 2026

Summary:This episode is a highly tactical interview with guest Beti Bergman on how to successfully work with probate leads. Beti shares her personal journey and provides a step-by-step framework for building a profitable niche business. The conversation focuses on the importance of empathy, consistent follow-up, and a referral-based approach. The hosts and guest break down the entire process, from initial contact to securing a listing, offering specific advice on how to navigate the complex and emotionally sensitive probate market.

Good afternoon. Welcome to Probate Weekly on Bill Gross at Bill Gross Probate on social media or Bill Grossprobate.com if you want to want my contact info. We do this every Thursday at 4 p.m. Pacific time, 7 p.m. Easter and every time in between and on either side. And normally do an interview. I have a guest lined up and I am not sure where she is. Now obviously we work with attorneys and they're busy and we want to give them time to run their business. And I also know in my neighborhood, there's a power outage here in LA. It doesn't affect me. It affects my daughter who lives just a mile away. So we'll see how she goes.

Let me just kind of do some housekeeping here while we get started. Let's see here. The probate weekly is probateweekly.com. And let me share the screens. You can kind of see who we are. And if you want to get more information. There we go. So our Facebook group is Probate Weekly as well.

We have over 4,000 members. Yay, thank you for those who support it. I hope this get on. But you can come into a couple things. You can have referrals out of the area, look for referrals in your area, for attorneys and realtors, as well as post your probate in avoiding probate, state planning content here as well. So we can work together and get more views. Other agents here are interested, as well as vendors and attorneys and the like.

So love to have you. join there. Also, there's our guest. Also, Betty, how you doing? Let me just, I just, I'm sorry. I was on, I think I clicked on the wrong thing to get on. Asked K. Turney, we all forgive you. I'm glad to have you here for what I pay for. So, thank you. And then if you want to join in and get registered, probate weekly.com is the email. We're going to be moving a format August 8th. We're going to move to a 9 a.m. format and we're going to go back to Zoom so agents can participate. and ask questions of our guests.

Stay tuned for the details there. In the meantime, make sure you're registered. You can also scroll down and get your favorite audio formats as well as past episodes on YouTube. We're excited today to have our guest. If you follow my YouTube channel, we interviewed her about a month ago. She's fantastic, so I admire to come back. Betty Bergman is Peninsula Law,

which is now all over California, we have peninsulas, but in her case, it's the South Bay Peninsula that we're talking about. We're actually Pasverides in Rolling Hills. Betty, thank you for joining us today. Oh, you're very welcome. Thank you for having me. So excited to be here again.

You know, we talked, and I really feel like we connected. Just a couple of things jump off the page when I start with you is I noticed on your website right below your name, Probeats Specialist. Now, I know that realtors, we use that word a lot or we apply words and we look for things online. Your attorney, what does that mean if you see an attorney like you with that term or one that doesn't have a term? What does that mean to you? Yeah, that is a great question, and it's important for the public to know. So when someone is a specialist, because you cannot use that term unless you're actually certified as a specialist in a field of law. And what you need to do to get certified in a field of law, like for example, for me, probate trust and estate planning,

I'm specialized, a certified specialist in those fields of law, you have to take a separate bar exam. and pass that exam in that area of law. And you do have to be, have other people, other practitioners, refer you or act as a reference to kind of stand up and say, yes, we know her and she does practice in this field of law and is knowledgeable and is a good practitioner. So there is a process involved to become a specialist in a field of law.

You do have to apply with the state bar to get certified. So there is a whole different separate or apart from the regular bar, a screening process to become a certified specialist. And I think if I could just add, as a real estate agent, when my customers have an attorney, and they give you the name, the first thing I do is I go to the calbar.org website, Calbar for the California bar. Now it's different every state, similar, but different every state. Calbar.com. I'm sorry, calbar.com. And I look up the name of the person. In this case, we're going to look at Betty, and this is where we verify that she's a, I already did.

So it's not like, there's no system. But what you do is you can get their contacted. Now there's similar name, but we know this one's the right one. And it has their contact info. If it's hard to find them, their phone number, their email address in some cases, not all. Website if they have one. But more about this attorney, you click down and you see certified legal specialty. And here we have estate planning, trust probate law.

And what that means is she is approved and that standing gives her a certain authority to put a logo on her website, a market material, but it's more than that. And as she said, unlike realtors, we get that logo by paying for it, to pick a $200 fee, take a class and send you the logo. In the attorney's case, to me, this is a very important distinction. And if you have a client with a attorney that doesn't have this on a probate matter or probate litigation matter or for estate planning, man, that's a red flag and I appreciate to explain that to us but he gives us a chance to go through that

so obviously your license you could do all kinds of law like as a realtor I could I could sell houses vacant lots commercial property industrial property the the Brooklyn Bridge I guess or I should say the Golden Gate Bridge um how did you end up in probate in particular state planning yeah I really you know kind of a stump I don't know if I wanted to I was was a city attorney before. And then when I had children, I didn't know that. Where? In Los Angeles, in the city of Los Angeles. Oh, wow. Okay. Right. So that's what I was. I was a civil litigator before I became a probate attorney. And I do probate litigation, a lot of litigation in this area. But before I was a civil litigator, I was with the city attorney's office. And before that, I was with

private firms and when I had my children I really wanted to be able to one have some flexibility with my time but also I thought about how can I apply my my skills to kind of help families and and kind of go in that direction because I was so family oriented at that time my kids are now in college so so I'm a little bit more removed now but anyway it was it was just such a great area of law to immerse myself into, and it's a very, very detail-oriented field of law, which is kind of how I'm wired. So I'm very good at, you know, very specific details, being very organized, and a lot of estates being accounted for or challenging accountings for estates or trust, defending accountings for estates or trust. And I have two degrees in mathematics. So that just

is really comports with my way of being. So it's just a, great area of law for me to get into and specialize in. So that's kind of how I kind of came into this. I suppose if I hated it, I would have done something else, but I just love it. And I love working with families, helping families, and trying to correct a lot of wrongs that are done that happen out there, especially against senior citizens. We do a lot of financial elder abuse and it's great to be in work in those cases and try to protect senior citizens. To be precise, you litigate against elder abuse. You don't actually do. You don't commit elder abuse. We don't commit elder abuse. Yeah, we try to protect.

You probably be really good at it if you decided to turn to the dark side, but a little slip there. Okay. So I think, and one of the things you point out there, I think, is that you must therefore have, I think, really a combination of two opposite skills. There's the soft skills of wanting to work with families and working with families. And there's more technical skills of, in your case, math as well as law. So how do you bounce those two? I mean, I had this challenge myself. I deal with attorneys and filings and petitions and numbers and contracts.

And then I've talked to something just lost their parent and be sensitive and understanding to their needs. How do you bounce those two kind of seemingly conflicting sides of yourself? Yeah, that's so interesting. And I don't feel like it's conflicting because it's really, I don't feel like I need to try to do either ends of those things. I think one of the things that made me successful is working with people and being able to understand people and listening. And this is other people, but colleagues have told me this before too.

Listening to people, just, you know, I think people have a lot of conversations and dialogues with people, but they don't really catch all the details and they don't really listen that well. Sometimes they're just waiting for their turn to talk and be able to say something. I somehow have a knack of being able to listen very, very well. So I think it's easy for clients to work with me because I could, I hear their stories, I can relate to them, and then I can go do the work. And that's all the detail-oriented and things that come into place.

there and and just yeah working up their case and and and also continuing that communication that's also important too i you know what percentage your time is building the barn and getting cows in the barn to keep them safe i.e estate planning and trust versus cows got out of the barn trying to round them up and figure out who's responsible i.e. probate litigation and probate administration what percentage would you say your businesses kind of pre-need and what percentage would you say your businesses kind of pre-need and what percentage of a discount post need? Yeah, I think just because of the nature of the beast of litigation, that consumes most of my time. Because once you get into litigation, it's very consuming. And so I would have to say the majority of our time is spent on litigation cases because of the

nature of those kind of cases. But we do do the planning and we do the administration too. So it may go in the order of time consumed or energy spent in these cases, probably litigation is number one, administration's number two, and planning is number three. Now, that is not to say that planning should not have good time devoted to it. I always say, because people probably think litigation is very difficult. It is. It's very stressful. It's very adversarial. It's time consuming.

However, planning, I think, is probably the hardest thing that we do in our office. office because it has a huge area of law behind it. And I think people who don't appreciate how estate planning goes, they may just kind of pull out forms and say, okay, who do you want to have as your beneficiaries? Who do you want to give your house to? That kind of thing. And it's just simply not that simple.

That universal law behind estate planning is huge and it needs to be kept up with and tax laws, the tax consequences of estate planning also need to be kept up with that changes almost every year. And so even though if the majority of our plans are pretty basic, the counseling and the advising with those clients when they come in is really, really important. And then how to draft that estate plan according to what the current laws are is very important. And that I'm always saying, that is the hardest thing we do. It cannot be a simple form that you're pulling out and saying, okay, who do you want to give the house to?

And if that's all that someone is hearing from their estate planning attorney, you may want to go get a second opinion. So, and I appreciate that. And I think that for too many, it is just a simple form. And then they find out there's a problem later. Yeah. I think that, you know, I find attorneys, you know, fit, two categories, one who only do estate planning, i.e., you know, well, everything's easy. And there's

other ones that do the planning, also do administration, and do litigation because they want to have more holistic perspective. Personally, I always want to learn more for attorneys who do both, because I feel like if you see what you're litigating, you're going to prevent that in your planning. And I think that gives you more insight than those who just simply felt the forms. So that said, what is the one or two most common preventable things in plans that you end up litigating on regularly? What do you see as a more common man, if they had just done this five years ago, they would have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars or all kinds of agony? What are two most common preventable issues that you see?

Yeah, probably one, keeping it updated because estate plans, like I could just kind of mention, you know, the laws change. And a people's, you know, circumstances change their family. change, people that they have named in their state plan when they first created it may not be even around to be the trustee or even to be a beneficiary. So one is to keep it updated. But a lot of things that I see is, and this probably maybe goes back to the listing or something or just you shouldn't use just a form.

Because what I see sometimes is that the wishes aren't really spelled out. properly in the trust or the will. It's kind of like, you know, yeah, someone had a template and then they kind of put that in. And the person comes in later and says, this is not even what I wanted. This is not what it says. So it's not really, I think it's not probably listening to that client to hear exactly how they wanted things distributed or things done. that comes up a lot where I said well this is what the trust says that's not what you're saying to me and they're saying no that's what we wanted but and it and it doesn't say what they want so I think

that's probably that does come up enough where I think you know whoever is doing the plan did not sit down and really listen to this person's story and their family dynamics and how they really wanted things done and it was more like kind of filling in blank I think that happens, you know, enough. I've seen that enough and heard it from clients enough. So that does come up. Another thing that kind of comes up is, well, this is totally up to the clients. I was going to say that co-trustees get named to act together because parents may think,

oh, my kids will all get along and they can act together as trustees. And that is usually the majority of the time, that does not work. That does not work. Now, if the clients insist upon that and they think that, you know, they say this is what they want, 100%. That's how you should write it because really you're there to carry out and draft the client's wishes. But they just need to be fully advised of, you know, the consequences and what could go wrong if they do something like that. So sometimes I see that and, you know, the kids don't get along. There's no way. Someone needs to get removed. And there we are filing a petition to remove a trustee because they took off with a lot of the money, spending it, not telling the other trustee, that happens a lot. They didn't get along the siblings sharing a bedroom when they were teenagers. They're not going to get along managing a multimillion dollar state 50 years later, I think. Right.

That's a pretty common case. So obviously planning ahead and foreseeing those issues is a major part. One of the things that I see regularly as a real estate agent, probably this is where I get involved more often, is, state plan is started but not completed most commonly I mean I have an estate now it's in probate so everything's public I can talk a little bit about it it's a forty million dollar state where he went to the state planner and he got a great binder and it has everything he'd out that he wanted he never signed it now maybe he wouldn't make provisions and we don't know exactly the status maybe he had

regrets and didn't want to who knows but at the end of the day legally it has it's interesting information it's valuable of sorts, but it's not legally binding. We're in probate court, spending a fortune on Chinese fees and legal fees. So I'm sure you commonly see plans that don't get finished, plans that don't get executed. How common is that? And what are your best tips to help avoid that for somebody who comes to you as a state planning client? Yeah, to, of course, to follow up and see, you know, to finish this off, because that does tend to happen. And again, you know, compared to litigation, that we do where litigation runs very, very fast. And there's deadlines, there's court deadlines

and things like that. Where estate plans, there's no deadline, really. It's kind of, you know, you meet with the client, you draft it, you usually give them, we do anyway, give them the drafts to make sure that they review it and it says what they wanted to say. And it very commonly, yeah, do the clients want to think about it some more? And it's very easy for that. And it's very easy for that to drag on and not get done because there's no hard deadline to have it done. We always have like a checklist, a timeline, a time, like when do we first meet with the client, when did the drafts get sent out, when are we going to meet with them again, when do they get to come in and sign it, whatever. And so we follow up on that. So we try to

make sure that does not happen, but it could happen. Yeah, sometimes clients may, may change their mind or they just, this happens to where the clients, They're trying to think of, yeah, who to give their estate to. And they don't want to offend people. So they don't want to, you know, finally conclude that, okay, these are going to be the beneficiaries. And this is how much people are going to get. And so they, they kind of drag it out because they don't want to commit to that because they think I'm going to offend someone else by giving these kinds of gifts. And those kind of people, you know, completely understandable.

But you got to remember, like, during their life, it is amendable. It's a revocable living trust. meaning you can amend it. So if they have second thought, they can always come back and amend it and change the beneficiaries. But the important thing is to make sure, yeah, for the practitioner to, you know, keep it moving along and don't let it lapse because the client's not getting back to you. Now, if the client doesn't want to finish it, I would suggest to a practitioner, okay, you know, make sure you cover, you know, write a letter confirming. You do not. You purposely did not want to finish this.

Now, another thing comes to mind that happens is people don't fund their trust properly. That's a big thing. We go for you go there. It has another topic. Let's finish up on the finish part. And for those of us listening, if you're a real estate agent, you know, I really promote, we should be actively supporting our customers in getting a plan done. And to me, that means following through.

And so oftentimes I'll refer, you know, a client to an estate planning firm. And I'll follow up with them. Hey, did you get it done yet? because I know getting it done with real estate means the deed. We're going to talk about funding. But I want to make sure it gets done, not because I get paid. I don't get paid anything for the referral. I get paid in heaven because they help somebody avoid those problems and the job is done.

And I see people don't. So I think for those you're listening as real estate agents, I think we should feel comfortable when we make a reduction to a firm. We should make sure in our database, call back three days later. Hey, Joe, I know you were going to meet with Betty. Do you guys ever get together? Great. Did you finish the plan?

And you know, you want to know that happen to make sure it gets through because as long as you're helping the customer and you're helping the journey, that's part of being service. We're not following up for our own invasions of privacy purposes or own purposes. So that leads naturally to the next question. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I want to make that sales pitch to my listeners that we should be active in part of the solution, not just part of the problem. It's funny. So go ahead and explain the other problem people commonly have is they don't fund the plan. What does that mean? That's right.

So for a trust to hold assets, you need to declare those assets to be held in trust, which usually a trust has that language. And usually hopefully, oh, that's another thing I find sometime. I was just going to say, usually there's a schedule of assets to be held in that trust. So it's attached to the back of the trust listing like the houses, the bank accounts, things like that, saying everything on Schedule A, we're holding in this trust. and we hereby transfer these assets to the trust. That's the first step.

Now, I do see trust where it says, you know, okay, everything I, you know, on the schedule, we're going to hold in truck. And there's no schedule. That happens several times. I think, well, where's the schedule? What happened? What's in this trust? We don't even know what they meant to have in the trust.

But so one is to declare the assets in the trust that way. The other thing is to actually retitle the assets into. the trust. So if it's a bank account and it's under, you know, Joe Smith, you want to now transfer it under the title Joe Smith as trustee of the Joe Smith Trust. So you, so each asset, you do want to retitle under the name of the trust. So that's, this is the funding. That's funding it. Real property, yes, you have to have a deed. So it's going to be Joe Smith as a single man as a sole, sole and separate property. Maybe that's how he holds title. Then he's, you're going to have. have to deed that property from Joe Smith as a single man as a sole and separate property

to Joe Smith as trustee of the Joe Smith Trust. So that deed needs to be prepared, signed, notarized, and then recorded with the county where the property is in. So that's how to properly fund your trust. So you want to make sure that it's, you know, in the trust schedule and also titled in the trust. Great explanation. You know, I try to tell customers not funding, not putting the property in the trust is like buying a safe deposit box for your valuable gold collection, but you put the safe in the closet, but you don't put the gold bars in the safe and close the door. You really haven't accomplished much, right? As realtors, I want to say we should be comfortable helping our customers, make sure it gets done. The property is public record. We

should all have access, we do as realtors, to public records, and we can verify 30 days later. Yes, it was recorded to trust. Here's a copy for your record. Send it to the attorney. Send it to the customers, whoever would benefit from it, it's public record information to make sure the customer does it because if they don't do that step, I mean, Betty, how many times

you've seen a customer come into your office with a beautiful binder and a beautiful deed from the person to the trust and it's right there. It may be executed, but was never recorded. How often have you seen that happen?

That does come up every now and then. Usually, if there's a deed, it does get recorded. Now, remember, a deed legally actually does not need to be recorded to actually transfer title, but that is to give constructive public notice that the titling the ownership of that real property. So the deed is as long as it is signed. So that's very important to know. But usually it will get recorded. More often I will see that it never got done. It just, you know, that there was no deed or whatever that

that just never got funded into the real property never got funded just in the trust so that so that happens yeah sometimes i'll see that it didn't get um the titling is still not wrong even though a deed got done like they didn't write it into the name of the trustee in the name of the trust correctly that that kind of comes up and then you're trying to um fix that or correct a deed um sometimes you have to do that um so again and those are you know, potential fails, or sometimes the attorney can fix it, that it's important, the best case, if you put the money together in the time to build a plan, get the deed, get it, sign, and execute it, get it recorded.

That way you've finished the work of protecting yourself. I think it's so important. Okay, so obviously now you have a customer who has a plan, and like a lot of us, you know, I go in public records and I see, oh, they own the property in the name of the trust, and that's great, and it either had, they've had nothing recorded since, 2002 or it says right in there the 2002 trust dated blank blank 2002 how often should somebody have it updated if they're you know husband wife fairly simple life in my case my only child's grown up for a while now we want a house how often should they look at how often is a lot

change that some of those powers I thought I had when I did the plan 10 12 years ago may not be available today yeah I would say a good rule of thumb is at least three years you know review it and update it and take a look at it. We offer on plans that we prepare, we offer free reviews every three years because I really don't want any estate plans that we prepare to be outdated out there. So that's what we offer. But for people that have their own estate plans,

you should take a look at it every few years. Our rule of them is just three years, but certainly don't wait until 10 years. You know, because laws really just change, you know, within 10 years, there's, there's definitely laws that have changed and things like that. So you really should just, and nobody wants to do that. I understand it's probably to a layperson, like a life insurance policy. You don't want to take that down and read it, right? But at least take a look at the key provisions.

Like who did you name as trustees? Who did you name as your beneficiaries? And what gifts did you make to these beneficiaries? And what assets do you have in the trust? I'm sure your assets change over time, too. So those are like key parts of your trust that you really should visit. You don't have to look at all the boilerplate, you know, the rest of it necessarily. But take a look at those provisions and then go visit your estate planner to go and revisit that

and see if everything's still up to date and if you want to change everything. Because you really don't. Yeah. So that's another thing that you find after death is like, okay, this never got updated. You know, there's a trust that never got updated. These people are not even around anymore. These assets that are around. And then we're trying to find, like, what assets did they have at death?

You know, and the administrator or the trustee is, you know, looking for these things. You know, I did one of these interviews about a year ago, and the attorney talked about upkeep assets. And I was talking about my plan. I pointed kind of to it. And also I said myself, hold it. We just changed banks like a year ago. Yeah.

I didn't do it in the trust. I didn't even think about that. Of course, it should be in the trust. And next thing, and then I realized we have some other assets that should be on the addendum, even though technically I took title as a trust, it's extra safe to update the addendum that has, you know, the updated assets. And so I realized, you know, here I'm talking about how important this update it. And I wasn't even, I know, I'm in my own kids don't have shoes. So that's definitely a problem. I know. That's easy to do. It's really easy. And I can't say

that I'm not guilty about myself because if I do this all day long, I don't want to go to look at my own thing. But yeah, but the rule out there, do as we say, not what we do. Go and make sure your state plan is updated. Betty, I give great marital advice. I've been married through to eight years, you know, one day at a time hanging on by my fingernails, and I give men great marriage advice every day. I don't follow it. You know, I don't even do any of it, but I'm really good at giving the advice. Right, right. So let's switch a little bit to the business side, to the Betty,

Bergman, entrepreneur, businesswoman who runs a business. Obviously, your attorney, you have customers you give service to, you have staff, you have to manage and oversee. And then at some point, you know, you have to develop business. Now, you have a, obviously, reputation, being in the area for quite a while. Do you still do business development? And if so, what percentage of your time do you spend on developing new business and what kinds of things that you do? You know, I'm going to, I'm going to knock on wood and be very, very, very, you know, grateful count my blessings that I don't I really got into a point where I don't do any marketing necessarily or go out and generate business now having said that I just happen to be very very active

in my community so I'm you know on maybe some boards I'm part of different groups I do that just because I just like to keep connected with the community other practitioners and they've all become friends of mine and so I am involved in the community a lot and that is only because like really I've just become friends with the people that I that I'm involved at these organizations with and so I like getting together with them and it's what percentage of my business comes from that I would say like I do get business from that and that's really not even the purpose of me being part of these organizations I just like being connected I like being give it back to the community. I like just being part of the community. So I, so that's,

so I do that and I probably do get business from that. But, um, let's say if I, I stopped all that. I mean, I don't think that's how I don't think my business would necessarily die. Hopefully not. But, um, yeah, I think it's just, um, luckily has come from the fact that I, you know, yeah, maybe my reputation is known. People know me and I get referrals, referrals from clients, other colleagues, and things like that. So if you had a family member that was looking to get into probate real estate, and the goal was to be of service to probate attorneys, not to be a cold call or obviously or a direct mail billboards,

all that nonsense, but really wanted to learn how to be more effective and support attorneys in exchange for that and earn some business, what would you amend activities for realtors to do, and what are the things you've seen real estate agents do that you would recommend them not to do? Yeah, well, you know, that's interesting because I do have a realtor friend who I did bring into, you know, local bar organization. And he just, you know, he will say this to this day. Like he's so grateful for that because it really opened up his whole business and got him connected with so many people in the community.

So I would suggest, you know, getting involved in your local bar organizations, local boards and things like that. And you really get connected with a lot of people that way. And it's very important to always keep in front of, like, let's say, if you want to, you know, get the probate sales from probate attorneys. It's, you know, because there's so many people like that. There's so many realtors that really solicit. You know, I get calls from realtors, emails from realtors all the time. And I'm sure a lot of other probate attorneys get that as well. and you just got to keep that constant connection

and be in front of people's faces. Otherwise, it's so easy either to forget that person or someone else is very actively in front of them. And so when the probate attorney is thinking, okay, I need someone to do the sale, and I've been in recent communications with this person, that person's just on their mind. And so it's easy just to turn to that person.

So you so, you know, the realty game, You really need to be out there always in front of people's faces. So you're on people's minds. They don't forget you. So for listeners, just to expand what she's saying, you don't have to be a member, you have to be an attorney to go to Bar Association events. Most Bar Associations, which is a term for a legal group. I don't mean a bar is in your local pub.

I mean a bar is in an attorneys gather. Almost every local area has a bar association. We in L.A., we have downtown L.A., we have Century City, Beverly Hills. And I think they all will have memberships, or most of memberships for affiliates, just like Weasier Wilters have affiliate memberships in our groups for mortgage people, title escrow. So does the Bar Association. And I think it's important to go there to learn more into network more than it is to take down somebody there for their business.

The mistake I see your agent is running around with business cards really soliciting. And the attorneys are usually there for education. They're usually there for networking referrals from other attorneys. but I won't give an example. I went to a Bar Association event and one of the local attorneys who was really very well known gave a great talk on Hegsted petitions. And by listening and paying attention and they had handouts, the next time I had a customer called me and said, hey, I had this case where it was supposed to be a trust but the deed wasn't put in or was taken out for refinance, wasn't put back. I said, hey, that sounds like a Hegsted petition and I had the forms and had an attorney to affirm to and got a listing as a result of that.

So I think the opportunity for realtors is go there to learn as well and also find a choice that you can maybe befriend and can be researched for you. We can ask some questions and learn about probate and then be a service to them with things that they need. So thanks for point in that up. I think it's a good point that in our industry, we always talk about cold calling attorneys. I say, well, don't do that. Nobody wants to be that person, but be the person who shows up and helps out. Right. Right.

And that's such a good point, Bill, because if you go to a probate attorney, if you're just having confidence, conversation with a probate attorney and you start talking about something like Higgs setitions or things like that they will you know well to me anyway I would remember oh okay this is a knowledgeable realtor and he knows about you know kind of the probate machinations and how to deal with probate sales or transferring probate properties things like that so if you say things like that and you know that that would you know just kind of alert a probate attorney like oh this person is knowledgeable So you're very, very right.

So a lot of these organizations, there's a lot of, they always have education, there's always speakers at it, things like that. And you learn a lot from those organizations and the seminars that they put on. And so that is key. And I always say to like, and I'm, you know, I've never been in sales or anything, but I've heard this from other people that are more in, have a sales role in their professions. But, you know, business is like, it's all about relationships. It's not like, oh, yeah, exactly.

like cold calling and trying to just cold call someone that that's i don't think that's going to get your foot in the door that's not going to get you that far it's all about building relationships with other people and once you have that relationship you know you've got it gets some loyal relationships going um you're golden you know so the the best marriage advice i got was when i got married not that i follow it i know it and i talk about it but um i've been married 38 years one day at a time. The vice was the key to marriage and I think business is not finding the right partner. It's being the right partner. And I think in a relationship, you know, as you want to do business with a real estate agent or with an attorney, you want to be the realtor that attorney

wants to work with. What does that mean? Be pleasant, be nice, be helpful, be productive, be valuable, help them with their business and they'll have to use you going forward. So I had to ask a question, which I think is great, which is any bar association events coming up soon. And the answer is, Audrey, it depends on where you are. Right. There's bar associations. And then more importantly, many of the larger bars have chapters for groups. Like we mentioned in the beginning, that Betty is a specialist in a state planning of probate.

Me, the bar associations have a trust in the state's department or a real estate department. And frankly, I would go because I would have a state. learn the content myself I've gone and learned so much in LA in particular because we have so many bar associations we also have the LA library which has classes both online and downtown LA great resources to learn about the business but I'm not sure are to where you do business you're in Los Angeles but it's a big market LA you know I'm yeah there's Santa Monica Beverly Hills Century City downtown right Betty you're in the South Bay or where where's which is a position do you participate with so that's South Bay bar yeah there's a South Bay bar

down here. There's a Valley Bar. I'm sure there's more than that. So all in the way, look it up just Google search in your area. And again, many of them have, most of have, excuse me, affiliate relationships where you can join as a member, get a discount on the fees, being the roster, you can sponsor events. That's why how you want to go with that. So definitely I would go. Right. And there's an overall, uh, uh, LA County bar too. So that kind of encompasses. I'm part of the executive, Committee for Trusted Estates on the LA County Bar. And so that's the main LA County Bar.

And then there's all the local ones like you mentioned. So yeah. So you want to really kind of get involved in probably your local area. So you can get to know the people around you. One thing I did was the LA County Bar had online with, especially with COVID, with all the judges. And the judges would explain the probate procedures they wanted. I just went online and took notes and then shared my notes with all.

the attorneys that I had met along the way. And, you know, nothing says, you know, you're the right person, then showing them that you're paying attention, you're learning, trying to help them do their job better. So it's really important, I think, to be their right partner in one way is to go to those events. Okay, so Matthew Price, do most parts offer a non-attorney vendor type relationship? Matthew, the answer is, yes, most do, but not all do. And that's one of those things where it varies, but some are free, some charge amount of money, some give you discount if you're not a member of the bar. So obviously, it just depends on which ones you deal. I'm a member of the National Bar Association's affiliate. I get the National Bar Journal, a month magazine,

and I also get the trust subset, which is interesting as well. So again, each area is different. Each state is different, each county is different. So, okay, good. So, so. So, Let's see, I'll ask you next question. So obviously, we deal in, you know, very volatile times business-wise things change. COVID. We were shut down. I think in the where you were, the South Bay wasn't as shut down as we were in L.A. Just general tensions.

You have, you know, economics, politics. What percentage of your business, did it change on dealing in person in your office versus online? How much, what percentage of customers actually come to you, sit down with you, sit down with you, the book with you versus do you handle things online? You know, it's almost, it's almost half and half, I think. You know, certainly during the COVID time, everything, we did everything on Zoom. And all the court appearances still are remote. You can go in person.

We've got to go in person for trials. But regular appearances, we're doing that remotely. When we meet with clients or even do consultations and things like that, right now it's almost half and half because, you know, we now we're reading with people in person. Some people just want to meet in person. They feel better, especially if you have more kind of older people.

They just really prefer coming and meeting in person instead of doing it on Zoom or something else, some sort of video call. So it's, yeah, so we get both. And because we, yeah,

we do serve some, you know, some senior citizens and things like that. I find like, they are much more comfortable coming in person. So it's half and half. So there still is that in person element and that you offer that. I think that's important.

And I think for all of us, it's about, you know, you have to make decisions how you want to run your business and understand those costs. You know, personally, usually if a customer has to meet with me, I'll bring in a partner and refer it out just because it's more efficient for me to work for my home office. I know some attorneys prefer that too. And yet others work in an office location and you're located. I think in Torrance or Pospherites?

I am in Torrance, on Sepulveda, right across from the Madrana Marsh here. And yeah, and I work from home sometimes, but I happen to own my office, so, you know, I might as well use it. You don't have people here, so like I feel like I kind of need to be here to answer questions. I mean, although if I am at home, I do, I will talk to them on video like this. But, you know, since this is, it's almost half and half in person meetings. and Zoom meetings. So oftentimes I am coming in here because I've been in-person meetings.

Now, of late, we've had some drama at the LA County Court. How's that effect of you the last couple of days and where's that headed, do you think? Yeah, gosh, that was really something. Yeah, so that happened, I think June 19th maybe, or July 19th, so the systems, so the people who don't know out there,

the court system was shut down because they were victims of ransomware. And so you couldn't file anything. Nobody could do their remote appearances because all the systems were just shut down. It is opening up now. So now I think it's kind of back up.

But I'm not even 100% sure about my next court appearance if I could do it remotely. But it was frustrating because I was trying to get something filed and we want to get something served on someone. and we couldn't do it because it was just shut down. We just, you know, we got a filed, but it didn't get, it didn't come back from the court yet because they couldn't do anything. So that was, I was just holding my breath there.

And that finally went through, I think, the last couple of days, yeah. So. I think it's still expanding. They still have limited services that are not available. It's been a dramatic couple days. And I think the, it's interesting how dependent business-wise we are now, you know, years ago, electric filing was such a nice opportunity when you wanted to use it. And now you have to, if you're an attorney.

And remote appearances was so nice during COVID, but now we're all kind of addicted to it for court appearances. And it's just an interesting reminder about the business. For those of you're not following a little drama, the entire LA County court system was shut down for a few days. And even now is still kind of reeling from the effects of it. So we'll see what comes. Well, look, Betty, I really appreciate you take a time to day to share with us in

particular explaining about certification, explaining about the importance of getting good, stay planning ahead of time. I really appreciate your help overall. I know your website is peninsula law.com. Peninsula law.com and on there, a nice picture of you. Is that the best way to get in touch with you? How should somebody who wants to be? Yeah, yeah, through that and it gets routed through, yeah, through me if you want to have a meeting with me or anything like that. You really should go through my secretary and that that that the the main line because I can't get to all my emails and calls and everything. So so someone needs to get in front of my face. They got to get go through the channel of my secretary. So again, thank you so much.

I appreciate your time today and anybody interested in estate planning or a probate administration or probate litigation. She's obviously a very accomplished litigator. Betty Bergen, thank you for joining us today. I really appreciate it. Oh my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. And for the rest of you, this is Probate Weekly. We do this every Thursday at 4 p.m. Pacific time, 7 p.m. Eastern time, and every time in between and on either side of it, we have a Facebook group with over 4,000 members. So if you're looking to refer out, leads, listings, attorney needs, and such, go on the Facebook group.

If you have probate-related content or state planning content, put there to help you get more eyeballs, more views, more subscribes, all that good stuff. If you want to join regularly, probateweekly.com is a place to go. You're going to want to make sure you're subscribed because we're going to be moving over to a new time. It's going to be 9 a.m. not next week, but on August 8th. And we're going to have a Zoom format so we have more interaction with agents and a chance to talk to the guests directly. If you're interested to go to probate weekly.com, scroll down, you can subscribe in your favorite audio formats, as well as see past episodes on YouTube.com. So again, thank you to our guest today.

Betty Bergman, who is an attorney, Ian Torrance in the South Bay of Los Angeles County. Appreciate you guys, Betty, thank you so much again. Have a great week, everybody. Thank you so much.