KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Probate Weekly Attorney Jason Walls

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

Hey, welcome to Probate Weekly. I'm Broce, Appell Gross Probate on social media. We get together every Thursday at 4 p.m. Pacific Time, 7 p.m. Eastern Time, 6th Central, 5 Mountain. I don't know where we are in the Atlantic and the other times and Hawaii Times, but 4 p.m. Pacific Time live. We live stream this on to YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And generally speaking, this is the interview program where interview attorneys and other professionals in the probate estate planning field. Really excited to have here today.

It's just really lucky to have them back. Second time, a guest, Jason Walls with, and you'll notice the name, the Walls Law Group. Jason, thanks for coming back to us. Hey, Bill. Thanks for inviting me. Glad to join you today.

You liked it so much, you came back for seconds. Yeah, yeah, round two. Now, even something not paying attention can't help but notice Jason Walls and the Walls Law Group. So what's the relationship? between the two. Oftentimes it's your firm and it's just you. Sometimes it's your father's firm that you inherited and walked into. And sometimes it's a firm you've built up and are managing and you're the main name or the name partner. So explain to us your relationship in the

Walls Law Group. Yeah. So I actually started the firm back in 2009. So I went to law school, graduated, went to work for a large litigation law firm in North Carolina. I enjoyed that experience. but always kind of had kind of this idea of being an entrepreneur, starting my own practice. So in 2009, I made that jump. And here we are in 2024. And so also geographically, you're located in Raleigh, North Carolina? That's correct. And do you, are you licensed exclusively in North Carolina or do you also do business in

surrounding? I know there's a movement that Carolina to kind of grab a little South Carolina's business along the way there. Is it strictly North Carolina? Are you also licensed other states? Yeah. So I'm licensed in North Carolina where we are currently right now. I'm in Raleigh, but we work with clients all throughout North Carolina from the coast to the mountains. And, you know, depending upon the legal matters, we do represent some clients that are outside North Carolina on probate matters or perhaps business matters. But yeah, pretty much we are focused here in North Carolina.

Fantastic. And so let's talk, so for those on the call, mostly real estate agents, though we do also have a number of attorneys who follow in vendors. And, you know, my goal is to build a national platform of best practitioners where we share ideas, work together, refer business to each other. And if you're a real estate agent, like I am in Los Angeles, you might say, what's the point of talking to an attorney in North Carolina? And the answer is, first off, there's certain principles that are consistent across the states. And this is a way to reinforce those principles. Second, we would chance to talk to a very successful business person

that we can learn from them as well. And then third, also, I would just say referrals, that we do business in probate more likely with other states in terms of, like Jason mentioned, people maybe lived in other states, they self-property there, or they moved to other states and have property in California. And so having a national roller decks of people who can do business with

is an asset I know that I bring to the, I work with here in Los Angeles. So I really appreciate you being here. Because it's unique, if you would, let's talk a little bit about your role as the managing partner in your law firm. So I imagine you really have three main jobs, right? You're the main person who brings business to the Walls Law Group because if there's no business coming in, there's no Walls Law Group.

Second, I imagine as a managing partner, you oversee the operations. I'm sure you have staff and delegate, but you're ultimately the person who makes those decisions and then third somewhere along the line you probably practice a little bit of law along the way how would you describe your split of those three hats or is there a fourth hat i didn't mention that's a really good description um you know part of my role and the title that i have in the firm is the chief legal officer and so to your point yes um i'm always out working with um professional referral service um professionals you know you know real estate agents, financial advisors, bankers, CPAs so we can cultivate relationships.

I do provide the overall management of our firm. And yes, I do every now and then have to actually practice law and have clients. And that part of my professional responsibility has become a little smaller than what it was years ago as we've added more staff, as we've added to our team, my role in the actual day-to-day practicing a law becomes a little bit less. So when you started, were you the only attorney and then you had maybe some administrative staff and then you since add attorneys or do you start with a couple of the partners? Yeah, so when I started back in 2009, it was just me and I pretty much did everything.

And, you know, it's funny because looking back on it, I really thought that I wanted to have a very small practice, just me, one paralegal assistant. And, you know, I had a certain income range that I wanted to achieve. And, you know, that's what my goal was. But as the firm grew, my goals changed, as I began to see that we could have an impact, helping more and more families and business owners. So we have grown. We are up now to, I believe, about four and a half attorneys who are in our firm, several support staff members. I think Ashley Palmer, who is one of our paralegal rock stars,

has been on your podcast a couple of times before. One of my favorites. She's really great. Because she's really, no offense, but she's doing the work every day that we're involved with. And so in a lot of ways, she was really a great education for those of us working real estate regularly.

Oh, she's fantastic. I would put Ashley's knowledge and her experience up against most attorneys. She's very skilled. And so, you know, as we've grown our staff, as we've grown our team, as we've grown our suite of services, you know, we're very optimistic about the future. In North Carolina, this is an expanding population here where we are in the triangle is one of the best places in the country to raise a family to start a business. So we anticipate that there will be more clients who will need our services. I think it's a big part of it that we forget here in Los Angeles.

I know when I grew up, L.A. was a growing, you know, thriving business. And one of the challenges we face that has made business challenging for everybody is we're in a economy that is under tremendous stress. Place like North Carolina, where it's growing. There's a certain excitement, health, growth, and organizations that naturally grow. Of course, there's still competition that see that and want to move in on that and compete with you. So as a businessman, how do you go? grow the business so that you not just do more, but you obviously want to make sure you get a reasonable return for your extra risks and your extra investments of time and money. So how do you

make sure your growth isn't just spinning your rules and adding on more overhead or risk versus growing and building a profitable business? Yeah. So, you know, one of the things that we did is to invest in policies, systems, and procedures so that we can operate on a very high level. And quite candidly, a lot of law firms don't ever make that investment. That is something that we have spent a lot of time with. I'm kind of a disciple of the e-myth theory of Michael Gerber. We have invested in consultants to help us think strategically about the growth, think strategically about how we put together a staff,

how do we evaluate staff, how do we handle our marketing, how do we handle the client experience? And so we think that investment is invaluable because we want our clients to have a great client experience for them to be raving fans and for them to ultimately have peace of mind. The book he mentioned is the E-hyphen myth, M-Y-T-H by Michael Gerber, one of the best-selling business books of all time. I want to say came out in the mid-80s or late 80s. And then creating like almost a cult following as well as multiple flavor. on different industries. I know there was an e-myth lawyer book.

Did you read that one as well? Is that part of your process? Yes. And actually I had a chance to meet Michael Gerber back in 2019. Wow. At a conference in Boston, had the chance to spend a little time with a brilliant guy. And, you know, certainly that was kind of the,

I don't know if it was the first to really articulate it, but it was certainly probably the biggest. It has certainly been an influential resource for business owners. I use that background in the mortgage business to build my business there. And then when I got into probate, I didn't use it to build a law firm, but to understand how law firms work. Because I want to find where is the right spot for me to fit in. Well, the only way to know that is where should attorneys be focused?

Not all are, but I want to align with the ones that are. And so it's interesting that we never discussed this before, but it makes sense based on how you do that. So anybody in this call, I would recommend the e-my myth. It stands for the myth of entrepreneurship and the myth, is that entrepreneurs are successful by working longer and harder hours. And the reality, according to Michael Gerber, and in my experience, is they have, to use the words Jason said, better procedures and processes and systems

that they leverage for their growth rather than just elbow grease and burning out and destroying your family or other methods we've all used. Okay, so that's interesting. It explains a lot of the entrepreneurship and the building of the business. So how do you see, you're in a different end of the country. You're also on the growth side versus California. We lead the country in U-Hauls leaving. I think North Carolina is part of the area that leads the country in the U-Hauls coming inbound.

How does the current market environment look in North Carolina and as a business operator? How does that affect your decision making over the next six months, 12 months or so? Yeah, so, you know, I was born and raised in North Carolina, a small town in the eastern part of the state. And so certainly I have seen the growth and development of kind of our urban and suburban areas over the course of my lifetime. As I said, we're here in Raleigh, the Raleigh-Durham Chapel Hill Market, which has become a very, it's a thriving area. It's a thriving area for entrepreneurship. It is a thriving area for our universities for major corporations.

But we also have Charlotte, which is the largest city in North Carolina, but still the Charlotte metro area is expanding. If we can just get the Carolina Panthers to get back on the winning trackball football team, Charlotte would be even better. But we're seeing a lot of people retire to North Carolina. They're retiring to the coastal part of North Carolina. They're retiring to the mountains in western North Carolina. So like a lot of southeastern states, especially in an area. after the pandemic era, we're seeing tremendous growth. Yeah.

No, and it's just so different. So how does that affect your ability to invest, capital, invest in, you know, new procedures typically require time and money? How do you look for that and does that then all right to be more aggressive or you, how does the economy sit with you as a business owner making those decisions? Yeah. So, you know, as we are growing in terms of population, in terms of, businesses for someone who is in the line of work that we are in, in the type of law that we practice,

we do want to become aggressive, but we want to be very strategic. So although we're based here in Raleigh, we're certainly looking at other areas of the state where we can begin to have more of a presence and help more families or more business owners. So I'm very optimistic about the future of North Carolina. You know, if you ask any of my staff, what are some of the things that Jason will read consistently. It is pretty much any business journal. There's three big ones here in North Carolina. It's a triangle business journal, triad business journal, Charlotte Business Journal.

And I'm old school. I'm reading old school newspaper. Or if I can't have my hands on it, I'm certainly trying to get it online. Can I just point out I had the Los Angeles Business Journal. And they had their recent article on the top 100 attorneys in Los Angeles. only to use the term probate in their profile, and both are past guests of this program on this podcast. I'm proud to share that.

So the business journal is a great format. When I travel anywhere, I don't mean to be a plug for them, but I guess I am in a sense. I love the business journals in every local metro I ever go to. Just find a fascinating you read. Yeah, I'm sure with you. In my younger days, before I was practicing law, I worked in the political arena

and worked with kind of a very intelligent political consultant who told everyone all the junior staffers, which I was in one, you needed to read the business journal. Don't worry about what it says in the editorial page, read business journals.

Yeah, yeah, that's great. That's great advice. Okay, so just real quick, some housekeeping while I have it. Our guest today is Jason Walls of the Walls Law Group. Walls Law NC for North Carolina.com, located in Raleigh, North Carolina, well, serving all of North Carolina. And not only is he the managing partner, but also just want to point out one of our favorite past episodes. Ashley Palmer is the paralegal head of his probate department as well.

So if you notice the name or sells some movie, that's where it comes from. This is probate weekly. We get together every Thursday at 4 p.m. Pacific time. We live stream out on YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And if you want to get reminders, go to probateweekly.com, put your email address. We'll send your reminder before it goes out. You also can scroll down and send up to see the podcast in audio format and or past episodes if you want to do that as well.

So I'm really excited to have you. I'm Bill Gross at Bill Gross Probate on social media. Okay, so let me pull that off. And let's jump back on that. Okay. So we talked about the first of the main three hats you wear, which is as the managing partner, the entrepreneur of the business. So let's talk about the second part, which I think is that in some ways you have in common with an attorney-listing,

but also with any real estate agent, which is building your business. Let's talk a little bit about what you do and have done to do business development. In a traditional large loft room, you have the Rainmaker. I imagine that's you, though. I think the Rainmaker is usually like a semi-retired guy who just brings in the cases and sits around and smokes cigars all day. You don't strike me as that kind of guy. But what are the types of activities you've used to? the past to do business development and what do you do now if it's not the same yeah you know so

i'm a teacher by training i went to college uh to teach high school and and now that i say that out loud sometimes i have to chuckle of me trying to teach a bunch of high school kids but um my wife actually is a teacher so i still i still get to hear about that but my wife was a teacher as well high school students and still teaches me i'm early student she has left just there you got there you Yeah. So, you know, being an educator at heart, I've always viewed my role as a lawyer to help my clients understand how the law impacts their family and their finances. So a lot of the educated, a lot of the marketing that we do is centered kind of on on educate, whether that's educating in kind of a seminar format to perhaps potential clients or to financial advisors, CPAs,

real estate agents, whoever that may be. And we also do a lot of lot of personal marketing. And what I mean by that is reaching out to other professionals and try to collaborate and create a professional relationship. So a significant amount of my time from a marketing standpoint is having coffee with real estate agents or having a lunch with a financial advisor or a banker and talk about how we could perhaps collaborate to meet common goals for our clients. You know, one thing I find, now, of course, every market's different. And I'd say it's different post-COVID than pre-COVID.

But I always found that attorneys were very willing to meet for coffee or lunch, much more so than realtors would expect, just because that's kind of like the normal habit of an attorney is to go to lunch with somebody that they might do business with or go for coffee. And I always encourage real estate agency to meet the person. Not only asking for business, you know, meet them and go out to lunch and find out what they do and make a friend before you start asking for business. So I don't want you to get a slew of 500 phone calls here, but in general, we're talking about not you,

but the attorneys on your staff or in general attorneys in your market, is a real estate agent calling an attorney just to meet them, invite them to lunch or coffee? Is that a good move or is that being too aggressive? I would say from our firm standpoint, we would love to do that. You know, there's a lot of synergy with real estate agents and attorneys in kind of the planning and probate area. You know, honestly, there's a lot of,

there are a lot of changes that have happened and will be happening that are impacting real estate agents or impacting your clients, whether we're talking about corporate transparency act, whether we're talking about new rules. They're coming down the pike related to cash purchases of real estate. So having that professional relationship with an attorney, I would say it's certainly to the benefit of a real estate agent. Yeah.

And I think if I was just, I'd call her a little bit, I would say you're inviting them to lunch. You're not inviting them to be shaking down for referrals. And so the key there is a be professional, be treated the way you want to treat it. And I think most attorneys feel like they should be calling realtors to meet them. So if you're calling them, it's almost like you're doing them the favor of eliminating that reach out. Just make sure you do it in a professional way. I would imagine similarly as either you or somebody on your team were invited to speak at a real estate office meeting with a group of realtors. That's just multiplying your time, right?

So generally speaking, an attorney would be open to that if you're in the probate space doing business development. So I can't speak for other attorneys, but certainly for our firm, yes. And if you're in North Carolina and you want to have a speaker come, we certainly would be glad to do that. I personally enjoy working with real estate agents. A lot of my clients that I work with have real estate investments. So I always find it interesting to learn about kind of the dirt world, if you will, and about the investments that people are making, whether it's residential, whether it's commercial, and having those conversations.

And quite honestly, a lot of, as you know, a lot of real estate agents, agents or entrepreneurial. And it's always cool to just kind of nerd out on talking about entrepreneurism and how we grow and how we build businesses. One of the activities that my father was an old world attorney in suburban Orange County, California. And I used to work in his office when I was in college. I like to do work and use the typewriters and copters. And I noticed that during the course of a day, it wouldn't be uncommon. different vendors would come by Reggie.

Like there was a, in those days, a legal filing company, a legal research company, title company, you know, delivery company, and they'd come and drop off a flyer or a notepad, maybe some donuts, maybe some muffins or something for the staff. Does that still happen? Is that old, is that like the old world that has died out? Is that still happened today?

And is that something that is encouraged, discouraged? How do you look at that practice? In terms of vendors coming to, like, come to our office? Yeah. think we probably see that less now after COVID. I think we also probably see that less now because of workplace security. So, you know, does that happen? Yes, our front office coordinator generally greets them.

We'll get their information, but probably not like what it happened years ago. And so I think what you're saying, if I hear you correctly, is cold calling much harder to get in the front door, but people who know you can do business with you probably have more of an opportunity to come in, meaning if I happen to be on a real estate transaction and you're representing our mutual client, I almost have permission to come to the office to meet the Perleague or meet you. And while they're bringing a box of donuts, right? I come back a week later with more.

Always bring the donuts, right? Now, look at that. See the smile there? For those you're watching, I just has a conversation on a coaching call with a group in Georgia. I said, you know, once you get in the door, you bring food, you're their best friend. they're going to call you if you don't show up. So definitely take advantage of that. So what are some things that obviously every realtor would love to get referrals?

And yet, I know a lot of your business comes from realtors, so you can't refer that out, obviously. And you have then those agents that give you business, you kind of owe some business back to you. So is the number one thing that realtors can do for you is bring you into discussion with their clients? Or are there other things also that realtors do that can earn your attention or support or your business.

Yeah, you know, so real estate agents are just great connectors. You know, one of the things that I've come to appreciate about real estate agents is they really have their thumbprint on their community. They know the kind of the movers and the shakers, whether it's a banker, whether it is, you know, another person in the financial service industries. So just the opportunity for collaboration is certainly beneficial. When we begin to talk about realtors, from our standpoint, there are obviously a couple of different variations of realtors. You know, those who are handling, you know, traditional residential transactions, those that are handling commercial transactions.

And then kind of a subset is those that are dealing with real estate investors. And sometimes they're kind of straddling the line between those other classes. But any of those are great opportunities for collaboration. Yeah. I think that's where we can overlap our audiences. I think that's where the opportunity is for all of us. Okay. So that's been the business development head.

So let's pardon the hat that you probably spend less time on anymore these days, which is actually an attorney actually giving legal advice. Now, quick disclaimer, he's not representing anybody here. He's not giving legal advice. We're going to talk about kind of in generalities, the practice of law in North Carolina in certain circumstances. I notice that when I go to your website, one of the things that I always look for that allowed me to start the conversation with your firm years ago was that you really

focus this area. To me, it's just hard to be a jack of all trades. And when I go on to your practice areas, they're all related. State planning, asset protection, state administration, kids protection planning, business planning, guardianship, retirement planning. I know that all those also overlap to other areas from time to time, meaning when you're in probate administration or estate administration and you have a piece of real estate, it gets into real estate law.

It may not be a complicated real estate legal matter, but you're still involved in it. So do you get involved in those or do you refer that out? So for example, in California we have a challenge, this is a question from a not just a good support of the program, but actually I also think a North Carolina realtor Matthew Price, Partitions. Do you get cases because in probate in California, it's not uncommon. We have two different parties that inherit. They're not related. One wants to sell. One wants to live there for free forever or doesn't want to sell. And in California, we have a partition system that pretty much will result in the foresell the property. Do you have something similar in North Carolina? And how does that overlap or does that overlap with probate from time? It's fine. Yes. Certainly there to be an overlap. And the question about that. We do have that system for basically a party has to petition the court. It's a very interesting area of law. It's actually become a little

bit controversial. In fact, I was just at a conference about two weeks together with the North Carolina Attorney General's office and a couple of community organizations. And the idea of air property, the idea that perhaps you have a parcel real estate that's been fractional, you have fractional ownership. And under the current law, if you have an investor that buys out an interest in property, there's potentially a forced sale. So for anyone in North Carolina who perhaps is listening to this, just to foreshadow, there may be some changes to that law. There is a move within the General Assembly, which is our legislative branch here in North Carolina, to make some modifications. But to your point, yes, we've been around long enough that we, you know,

we've seen a lot of things. It's kind of, you know, we've been there, we've done that, we got the T-shirt. And, you know, although we do estate law, we're familiar with, and we have to know property law. You've had no contracts. We've got to go real estate law. Now, we may not be the attorneys that you're going to call if you're, if you need to go through a divorce. but certainly understanding marital property rights, you know, divorce types of situations, all of those areas begin ultimately to kind of come into our core practice areas. Now, the partition law really, there's like two different extreme cases, at least that I see. In California, we almost exclusively have the two, maybe three errors,

and they are the immediate errors of the people who passed. And really the law works well, I think, for that case. In the South, I believe there's a whole history of abuse where I think they're primarily where freed slaves were given land in the 1860s and 70s. And they had kids and they had kids. Next thing you know, one property has 400 potential errors. Investor buys one of those 400 errors parts out and then uses the law as a cudgel to buy the rest on the cheap and people who were entitled to land generational land saw that lost.

And there was probably some abuse. We don't have that California because we only had the history that North Carolina has and not as established a state at that time. So you have to, you have both those pieces. Let's talk about, though, the case that we get in California, which is, you know, mom and dad each have maybe a separate heir or dad has, whatever, two kids prior marriages and two different marriages, and there's two separate. airships that can that would be a partition if one wants to sell and when does it.

In California, the last pretty clear, they're going to be able to force the sale, and you can avoid it and you can litigate all you want, but at the end of the day, you're going to pay and you're going to pay for your attorney's fees and going to pay for the other side's fees. And the sooner you make that available to the party, at some point they're reasonable and it ends up kind of resolving itself. Is that similar in North Carolina? How long would it take to litigate if there were two parties and they were stubborn?

One didn't want to sell. Is it years? Is it months to force that process? Yeah. So I guess it kind of depends on the situation, right? So in North Carolina, this would be considered what's called a special proceeding. An original jurisdiction for a special proceeding would fall in the jurisdiction of the clerk of court. So the clerk of court of the county where the property was located has original jurisdiction. So generally, that is a process that once the petition is filed would move relatively quickly. However, there is an appeal process. And so then ultimately that bumps up to the superior court. So if you had parties who are willing to fight it out, you know, this could be something that would

take a considerable amount of time. A lot of times, you know, my answer to a lot of these questions, whether there's partition or whether it's in testesy, disputes among heirs, it all kind of goes back to having really good estate planning. So if we have strategic, well-thought-out estate planning, we should be able to mitigate most of these types of issues. The problem comes when people either fell to appreciate that or, quite candidly, they fail to invest in good estate planning. Just because you go online and print a legal document, that doesn't necessarily mean

that you're going to achieve the ultimate result that you wanted to achieve. That's really where working with a skilled team of attorneys is worth the investment. Yeah, I think there's a common misperception that, first, the biggest misperception in California is if you have a will, you avoid probate court. And the answer to California is if you have a will, you take it to probate court and try to get it approved and processed according to the will at best, but you're going to go to probate court. in North Carolina, does a will avoid probate or does it speed up the process or is it the same you're going to go through probate at that point?

Yeah, Bill, that's such a wonderful question. So I totally agree with you. A lot of people have a misunderstanding thinking that a will avoids probate. What I try to teach my clients and other referral partners is that a will essentially is a letter of instruction to the probate court. And fundamentally, a will do two or three things. Number one is going to say, this is the person I won't in charge of everything when I die, your executor. Second, it's going to say, here's who gets my stuff, your beneficiaries.

And usually that's like an outright distribution. There's not a lot of protections with that. And then if you have minor children, so under the age of 18, it will allow you to say, here's who I would like to raise my kids. But yes, that goes through the court. you are asking the court system to oversee that process. And so for a lot of clients, that's a highly inefficient, highly expensive process. And if we can avoid that, at least for most of the clients that we work with, that's probably the wisest strategy.

Let's avoid probate. You know, it pleasantly surprises me how many people with a lot of money don't have an estate plan. I say pleasantly because I get a phone call from the journey. these cases. And, you know, I have one right now where a bill state investor at 20 commercial properties. He had a company where he probably managed another 20 properties and millions of dollars in securities. And he had to stay plan that he never executed. He was in process, you know, whatever for years and never finalized it. And so here we are. And I literally on the phone today with one of his former best friends, key client, very upset that it's taking a while to get

the full distribution on his property management and he's kind of bad-mouthing our fiduciary. And I said, it's not a fiduciary. You know, it took three months to get the court approval, which is pretty good. It took a month to get the bank online. That's pretty good. And now we're starting to write checks. None of this would be the issue had we had an estate plan. And I'm going to ask you, do you have one in place?

Because you own the property now, he owns his own property. This is what you don't want to have to your family or to your friends or to your clients. It's so hard to, I don't know, if I could have a stick and hit people in the head and make them get an estate plan, I'd be busy. And we'd have people lined up out the door of your office to get estate plans put together. Feel free to use this pitch. Why should people, you know, if they don't care enough to take care of their children or they don't have children, why should they care about a proper estate plan when they have a business and real estate and assets? Yeah, so you know, when you have a business, my personal and professional opinion is you have an obligation to your employees or to your customers. That's who.

And so, you know, someone has to continue to make payroll. Someone has to pay your vendors. Someone has to perhaps continue to provide a service or a product to your customers. And so when you have a business owner who passes away and they've never done strategic estate planning and perhaps that business, is now stuck in the middle of probate. We've got a problem. And, you know, quite candidly, this is where we also see the devaluing of a business.

So, you know, if I know that Bill, you have a business and you pass away and, you know, someone who has not been in your business is now the executive of your estate, and maybe I'm a competitor of yours, I'm probably going to see if I can scoop up your business for a penny a dollar. No question. It's basically a fire cell. I've seen this many times before. And so what that does is going to put your family or your loved ones in a really an unfair position because what could have been the value of that business, they're just not going to be able to get it. Yeah, it affects so many people that you just don't appreciate. It's like watching, it's a wonderful life. You know, if you could see your life without you. all the people affected by you. And like I said, I felt, in fact, in this case, the seed, and I never met him.

I knew of the company, but I know the attorney who brought me in. And the customer was so mad at the fiduciary. And I said, this guy is doing a great job. I mean, we did an ex parte to get approved temporarily. We got, we fired the bank because they wouldn't recognize the paperwork. We got the new bank up and running. But, and I had to be frank with him and say, this isn't the fault of the fiduciary. This is your friend.

and this is what you need to do an estate plan because you know what, your friends and clients and vendors and employees to go through this. And you know, as it relates specifically to probate, probate is kind of intentionally designed to be slow. You know, I advise most of my clients here in North Carolina if we're going to go through probate,

we should assume that this is probably going to be on the short end, probably a 12-month process. And if we're dealing with complicated factors, This is something that could take 24, 36 months. Now, the alternative to going through probate is if you have a strategic estate plan, maybe you've used things such as trust. Generally, that process is a lot smoother. It's a lot quicker, which certainly if you're a business owner or if you're not a business owner would be to your business or to your family's advantage. So we've got a lot of people from North Carolina on call today.

I didn't specify the state in the title as we promoted, but I think your name is pretty well known. In fact, I don't think we put your name in. We were going to do it after the fact, because I really didn't want it to be a pitch fest. But you have a lot of fans, Jason. Matthew Price says, North Carolina says you must have received an email or two from him and as is the rest of your staff.

Brian Nolan asked a question. What do you expect in exchange from a realtor for a probate referral? Now, that's an interesting phrase. because I think the truth is, in general, more realtors bring probate cases or attorneys than vice versa. We as realtors assume, just so you know this, we assume that you sit in your office all day long on a big throne and you hand out probate listing referrals called like Santa Claus with candy canes at the mall when you're a little kid.

And I think every realtor has that fantasy of being the realtor invited into the room to get those referrals. And I know that's not how it is because a business comes to you from relatives, B, clients have their own thoughts on who they wouldn't have sell the house, but I do know that there are times that you have a chance to refer a business. So he's asking about, do you expect a referral fee when you refer out? In some cases in California, there are attorneys who ask for, I would never pay it because I work hard for what I earned and I don't ask the attorney for anything when I bring them business. But there are attorneys who ask referral fees. Is that a practice in North Carolina? And can you accept it? And is that what do

your thoughts on that practice? So kind of depends on the referral fee that we're talking about, but generally the answer to that is no. Attorneys can't fee split with people. So we generally stay away from any type of referral fees. But, you know, I probably want to know a little bit more about his question specifically, but in general. Good. And I did other attorneys who have a spouse maybe who's a realtor and they work together. And, you know, I think as long as you work well together and they're good at what you do and they care about your business, that can be a positive if the whole purpose is just to get the commission, if you're not delivering the service, then you're going to end up hurting your customer and hurting your own legal business or

realtor business, depending on which side you're on that deal. So, Laura asked a question. This is a little fundamental, Jason. Can you explain the client was told by their attorney, by the probate attorney, that they needed a surety bond and they put the house in the market. what's the Shirti Bonds do? Now, Laura, before you answer, I'd like to get your perspective, Jason and North Carolina. Last week, we had a national vendor of Shurdy Bonds, Jet Shurdy. And Laura, I'm not sure what state you're in, but if you email or text me, I'll send you a link that they have with their product, with a bond calculator. You can get a second opinion on the price of the bond.

It has some of those explanations there for you. I think any realtor involved in probate should learn about Shurdy Bonds. Jason are bonds required? And in what cases they require on probate in North Carolina? Yeah. So, you know, North Carolina does require bond, basically to bond the executor. Although sometimes that can be waived through the estate planning documents, like a will that was explicitly stated. So, yes, potentially that would be required.

It also, there's kind of a unique wrinkle if you are an executor outside. basically you're not demasiled in North Carolina. So that's probably a little bit better. Ashley Palmer question for maybe a future show. That's why we had her on twice because she does this stuff all day long. No offense. Yeah, no. I'm sure you could appeal the case if there was no bond and should have been,

but she's the one I think that knows who to go to for the bond and get the best price and execution. That's correct. No offense at all. You're surrounded to have hired her and kept her. So you can credit for that. And she's one of my favorites. Yeah, but again, I would say to that question, Lord, look at last week's episode.

Jertie was the vendor. And then again, I'm not sure what state you're in. If you text or email me, I'll send you a link with your state with their information in it specifically, and hopefully they'll be helpful. William May gives us a super chat. Thank you, Bill, for all your helpful information. Wow. I think that's my first super chat ever.

So I really appreciate that, William. And thank you so much. And I need to create some sort of a bell or whistle or something. You know you go ahead of the line whenever you have any questions or anything I can help you with. Robert Hoke shout out that he's in Asheville, North Carolina. Okay, thanks so much. And let's see.

Matthew Price says he's in Fukari Verena. Pequay Verena. There you go. Yeah, it's not pronounced like it looks like, right? Wake County, North Carolina. I'm in California. It's all Spanish. So once you get outside of that, I'm in trouble.

He's up for good conversation at barbecue. My guess Matthew is that that's a tempting to operate. opportunity for any attorney. So, okay, and let's see. Other questions. Yeah, and Brian says, again, here in L.A., he gets asked a lot for referrals from attorneys. I'll just say really, Brian, I've never been asked that.

I had one attorney who had a spouse, and he asked me if I could work with her, and I was able to work with her on that. But I would just say that anybody asks you about your commission. It's no different than attorneys. They're not valuing your service. And so if they value your service, they're not going to ask for a referral. If they think you're just one of any of the realtor they can call, why not ask for a kickback or reduction in fees?

So I do think as realtors, we'd always think about, you know, what we're doing to create our value. So Jason, again, to go back to the attorney's hat, and so this is for you as well as your attorneys on staff, and knowing the EMIF model, what percentage do you feel of your success is the technical skills of the attorney, the law, the procedures, all that. And obviously, there has to be as well a large portion of the soft skills of communication, empathy, sensitivity. You know, you said you started off as a high school teacher. That was your plan.

I can just tell by the way you explain things, you're very communicative. So how do you assess your strengths on the technical skills versus kind of the people and soft skills? Yeah. So one of the things that we value, we're trying to hire an attorney, will be their people skills. We kind of have a running joke in our office that there are a lot of attorneys that just are terrible people. They're not the kind of people that you would want to have coffee with or, you know, to have a drink with at the work. So for us, that ability to communicate, to connect with clients is super important.

I mean, you could have the greatest degree from a law school, the top of your class, whatever that may be. But if you're unable to connect and make that personal relationship with the client, you're probably not going to do well, at least in our firm. And you really have to have those soft skills with the client, with attorney and the client, right? Because attorneys have bad days. Attorneys have moments that they fly off.

And I think I say regularly to one of the twos I work with that I'm great working with problem customers. You know, you're not a problem. The attorney, to me, that's where I draw the line. I don't want to work with problem attorneys, but I will work with great attorneys and help them with their troubled clients. It almost becomes like a sport, right? I feel like I'm hunting lions or hunting, I don't know what you could, what wild animals are allowed to hunt and kill. But I don't mind hunting the troubled customer. But as long as I can go back to the lodge afterwards and have a drink and put my feet up,

I don't want to spend all day with troubled attorneys and trouble clients. I'll just be honest with you. That's something that the legal profession has really tried to emphasize is not being kind of like the lawyer that you see on TV or in the movies, that this is a profession. You have to be gracious to your colleagues. You have to be gracious to your client, regardless of what area of law that you provide this. And so, you know, for us, that's always kind of at the forefront. We want people who are detail-oriented. We want people who have the ability to learn.

And we want people that like people. So let me ask you if you had a next generation, you know, a child or niece or nephew that was looking to get into real estate and, you know, came across, you know, lectures or the opportunity or saw my podcast and said, hey, I want to get involved in probate real estate. I want to work with attorneys as a referral partner. What would you recommend them as a plan of action to be successful in that endeavor? I think probably at the forefront is really research the attorneys that you can partner with.

Make sure that their firm culture matches your values as a realtor. Make sure that quite candidly, this is kind of their area of expertise in not just one of the 15 other areas. of law that perhaps that firm tries to practice. You know, the, from my perspective, the model of a law firm that, you know, has multiple areas of law, I think that model is going away. And we've seen that in medicine. You know, you don't have, if you have a heart problem,

you're not going to a medical provider who's also going to, you know, diagnose your foot issues or, you know, your eye issues, you're going to go see a specialist. And I would say the same as in the law. So for that real estate agent who's interested in this, you know, this kind of niche market, cultivating those relationships with attorneys, I think would be pretty, pretty important. Brian Nelson's the second super chat. So wow, superchats. I've never done that before. I've really flattered you guys. Thank you so much for your support appreciation. Yeah. And I think getting to know the business is such an important part of who you're doing business with.

In California, all the attorneys are in the bar. I imagine that's true in North Carolina. And so we have a website, calbar.org, which is the California Bar Association. And you can search any attorney. That's where the license is. And they have specialties. You can see if there's specialty is listed. And it's trust in the states.

It doesn't say probate. But that means the probate falls under trust in the states. specialty. And, you know, attorneys often will pressure realtors if they're certified or not, because in the California bar, that specialty does require extra work and is a, I think, sign of expertise. With realtors just men, we paid for a program and got a certificate. But I do think that if you're going to take the certificate, take the class, learn the business. You know, that's why I started probate weekly, because I believe that realtors in this field should be. be educating themselves at least an hour a week on probate if you want to consider yourself an expert.

I just thought it was to me a minimum kind of standard to participate. And so I appreciate you saying looking for specialists. I just, and I don't know that all states have that specialty. I do know that many bar associations have divisions or links or groups within the general bar. And I was encourage you to try to find the bar group in your, when I say the bar, I mean the group of attorneys, not a local bar. But the bar group that has the trust or probate group in it, because that's where you're going to learn. And they usually have like continuing ad webinars, speakers, and that kind of stuff.

Do they have that? I imagine that's similar in North Carolina. You have Bar Association groups and they have continuing ed classes online or person, things like that. Yeah, you're exactly right. And, you know, researching that. And I think the next step is to, you know, go online, search their website, search their LinkedIn's, search their social media. For anyone who is on the call tonight, feel free to go onto our social media sites.

You know, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter X, I guess it is. LinkedIn. You know, that's a great platform that we now have, that we didn't have 10 years ago, maybe 15 years ago, to start sharing information with people who we think we can have a collaborative relationship with. Make sure you find what last school they're with, so you'll make the wrong comment, especially in Raleigh area. You guys have a couple of good law schools there. Don't compliment the wrong one, wrong person. Don't make that assumption in basketball season.

For sure, in basketball season. Be very careful. NFL season, you're in pretty good shape in North Carolina, rooting for whoever you want out of state. But if you're doing business in North Carolina during ACC basketball season, you better have the right team or keep quiet if you're talking to somebody from the other school, just to take it very seriously down there. I doubt. Well, look, Jason, I really appreciate your time. I know you're busy. I've watched your firm grow and enjoyed, you know, your staff and Ashley and you in the past as well. Continued success. We'll point people to the walls law. I'm sorry, wallslaw nc.com website. And you have the phone number there as well. I'll put that into the description on our YouTube and Facebook and LinkedIn. But just thanks again to you and your staff to make this happen today. I know on behalf of everybody, I really appreciate your attitude of giving. and your high standards of professionalism and education, I really appreciate it. Well, Bill, thank you for allowing me to be a return guest, and let's do it again sometime. I would love to. Thanks so much.

And for everybody else on the call today, this is Probate Weekly. We do this every Thursday, 4 p.m. Pacific Time, 7 p.m. Eastern. If you want to sign up for reminders, go to Probateweekly.com, for your email address, and you'll register. You can scroll down if you want to get the audio version. We're on Spotify and Apple and all that good stuff on the audio side and past episodes on YouTube. YouTube as well. And hopefully this is an educational process. Thank you so much.