Attorney-CPA
- Estate planning and asset protection
- Trust and tax consulting
- Forensic accounting
About Ben Palkowski
I am an attorney and co-founder of the Old Colony Law firm, a law office that provides trust and estate planning legal services to middle-class families in Massachusetts.
A majority of Americans do not have an estate plan — not even a simple Will. If you do not have an estate plan, you leave it to the state to decide how your assets are distributed upon your death.
Unlike “general practice” attorneys who do not specifically focus on trusts and estates, I do not conflate Medicaid planning with estate planning.
True estate planning should focus on:
- ensuring clients’ wishes are given the full force of law;
- protecting children’s inheritances from being grabbed by divorcing spouses;
- minimizing death taxes;
- preventing court intervention and other government intrusions; and
- making the post-death transfer of assets to loved ones as simple as possible.
I am also an advocate for improving the legal profession. The philosophy I have adopted in my law practice (and which I encourage all of my fellow attorneys to also follow) can be summed up as the “Three Fs of Legal Services,” which are as follows:
- Fees: The fees around legal services are governed by attorneys’ state Rules of Professional Conduct. However, I don’t believe the Rules go far enough to deter attorneys from deceptive billing practices. For example, many attorneys will charge a minimum amount of time — say, one-tenth or one-quarter of an hour — to perform a certain task. This means that a 30-second phone call or one-word email, for example, could be billed as though it takes 6 or 15 minutes. You can see how this phantom “time worked” can accumulate over time. I believe that an attorney’s clients should be billed for actual time spent. One minute equals one minute, not 6 or 15. (At my office, we typically charge flat-fees for our trust and estate planning services, which we believe is a more transparent approach.)
- Focus: Given how complex the law is and how quickly the law can change as a result of judges, legislatures and regulators, I believe clients are better served when their attorneys focus their practice on a particular area, as opposed to dabbling in numerous areas. At my office, we stay in our own lane, but also collaborate with our clients’ professional teams — their other attorneys, accountants, financial advisors and the like.
- Fiduciary: An attorney’s fiduciary duty to their client is paramount. All too often these days, attorneys are reliant on artificial intelligence or offshore resources to render legal services. While law firms, like any other business, need to be profitable and ought to find efficiencies, I believe that efficiency should not be achieved at the expense of an attorney’s fiduciary duty to their client.
I’m always happy to talk with people about what I do, how I do it, and why I do it. Please get in touch with me at Old Colony Law or feel welcome to go ahead and schedule a consultation to get started.
