On February 24, 2026, Hargrove Firm and NetLaw hosted a continuing education webinar, Estate Planning: A Strategic Advantage for Advisors. The session brought together Keven DuComb, Senior Advanced Planning Attorney at Hargrove Firm, and Alex Hargrove, CEO of NetLaw, to walk financial advisors through how estate planning fits into a holistic client service model, and why advisor involvement in that process is so critical to client outcomes.
Whether you attended live or are just catching up now, here’s a recap of what was covered.
Estate planning is often treated as something that happens separately from a client’s financial life. It gets treated as a legal errand to check off, handled by an attorney the advisor may never meet. But as Keven opened the session by emphasizing, that separation is exactly where things start to break down. The legal plan and the financial plan need to work together, and the advisor is the most natural person to make sure they do.
For financial advisors, engaging in the estate planning process isn’t about providing legal advice. It’s about being present for some of the most consequential conversations a client will have. Those conversations surface information that rarely comes out any other way: brokerage accounts the advisor didn’t know about, closely held business interests, charitable intentions, family dynamics that affect how assets should be structured and distributed. Advisors who are in the room for those discussions gain a far more complete picture of their clients’ financial lives.
Keven described the traditional referral model as a “black box” scenario: the advisor sends a client to an attorney, and weeks or months pass with little visibility into what’s being decided. When the process concludes, the advisor may learn very little about what changed, and the client often walks away with documents they don’t fully understand and accounts that were never actually retitled into the trust.
The consequences of this fragmentation show up regularly in Hargrove Firm’s work. Keven shared several real-world patterns the firm encounters on a near-weekly basis:
One case Keven described illustrated the stakes particularly well. A client in a second marriage had built a substantial real estate portfolio with their new spouse, but their estate plan was still the one drafted during the first marriage, and it directed those assets back to children from that prior relationship. The client assumed everything was in order. It wasn’t, and without an advisor present to raise the question, that misalignment might have gone undetected indefinitely. When advisors aren’t involved, these gaps don’t just create risk for clients. They create blind spots for the advisor as well.
When advisors are actively involved in the estate planning process, the benefits extend well beyond catching errors. Keven framed this section as the forward-looking side of the conversation: not just what goes wrong when advisors aren’t present, but what becomes possible when they are.
The most immediate benefit is trust. Keven shared an example from a client meeting earlier that same morning: mid-discussion about successor trustees, the client turned to their advisor and asked, “but you’re going to be here, right?” They looked to the advisor as the constant, the person who would help guide the family no matter who formally held the trustee role. That kind of relationship is built through consistent presence during meaningful moments, and the estate planning process is one of the most meaningful.
At a practice level, advisor involvement in estate planning also creates tangible planning opportunities that might not surface otherwise. When advisors and attorneys work together, estate planning conversations frequently reveal assets, intentions, and planning needs that the financial plan hadn’t yet addressed, including donor-advised funds and 529 accounts to business interests and concentrated stock positions. Each of those is a potential opportunity to deepen the client relationship and expand the scope of the advisory engagement.
Keven also spoke directly to the multigenerational dimension. Transferring wealth to the next generation is at the heart of an estate plan, which makes it one of the most natural entry points for introducing an advisor to a client’s heirs. Hargrove Firm regularly invites beneficiaries to participate in the wrap-up meeting, where the plan is explained and questions are answered. For advisors who join those meetings, it’s an organic opportunity to begin building relationships with the people who will ultimately inherit the assets they help manage.
Practice-level outcomes of coordinated estate planning include:
On the proactive planning point, Keven walked through a hypothetical illustration that resonated with the group. Consider a client with a highly appreciating asset, whether a concentrated stock position or a growing business, who is not yet at the federal estate tax exemption threshold. The instinct is often to wait. But the best time to move an appreciating asset into an irrevocable trust is before that appreciation occurs, not after. Financial advisors who are already running growth projections for clients are uniquely positioned to identify those windows and bring them into the estate planning conversation. Done well, this creates a shared roadmap with clear triggers for when the next planning step makes sense, and keeps both the advisor and the attorney engaged in the client relationship over time.
For advisors who aren’t sure how to raise estate planning without stepping outside their role, Keven offered a practical framework. The goal isn’t to provide legal advice. The goal is to ask questions that surface client intent and identify when an attorney should be brought in. That’s a role advisors are already well-equipped to play.
Typical planning touchpoints include:
Keven also highlighted an opportunity that is easy to overlook: for advisors whose firms have a trust department or corporate trustee capability, the estate planning process is an ideal moment to introduce that option. When clients are working through trustee succession and want neutral, professional oversight, being able to offer the firm’s corporate trustee as a solution within the same planning conversation is a seamless way to deepen the relationship and retain assets under long-term management.
Alex Hargrove walked attendees through the NetLaw platform and the collaborative model Hargrove Firm has built around it. The core design principle is that advisors, attorneys, and clients should be working together in one shared process, not in parallel silos.
From a single advisor portal, advisors can add a new client, schedule an initial consultation with a Hargrove Firm attorney, and, using the platform’s AI-powered intake feature, upload an existing estate plan so that client information is automatically pre-populated before the first meeting. Calendar integration ensures advisors are included in every follow-up meeting, not just the ones they schedule themselves. Throughout the process, the advisor can communicate directly with the legal team, provide additional context, and help the client work through decisions, without crossing into legal advice.
At the conclusion of the process, Hargrove Firm sends a notary and witnesses to the client’s home or office, at no additional cost, to execute all documents. The fully signed and reviewed documents are then returned to the advisor’s file vault.
For advisors thinking about the time commitment, Keven described a typical engagement as a three-meeting model (initial consultation, plan design, and wrap-up, each running about an hour) spread over a two-to-four month period. Total advisor time, including support during the trust funding process, generally runs three to five hours. The most engaged advisors Keven works with often add a few informal check-ins with their clients between meetings, serving as a sounding board as decisions take shape.
Hargrove Firm’s most widely used offering is the Advanced Plan at a $4,000 flat fee, covering comprehensive foundational planning: a revocable trust structure tailored to the client’s state, financial and healthcare powers of attorney, a pour-over will, and lifetime protection trust provisions for beneficiaries. A baseline plan for simpler planning needs is available at $3,000. Learn more about the different planning packages here.
Alex also addressed a point that came up during the Q&A: in an era where clients can generate estate planning documents from online platforms with no attorney involvement, the question of accountability matters. Who drafted the document? Who stands behind the advice? Too often, the answer is no one. Hargrove Firm’s model is built on a different premise: a licensed attorney, carrying malpractice insurance and admitted to practice across all 50 states, drafts the documents, advises the client, and takes professional responsibility for the outcome. That accountability is part of what makes the advisor-attorney partnership meaningful.
Estate planning is a strategic advantage for financial advisors, not just a service to refer out. Advisors who are present in the process build deeper trust, gain a more complete view of their clients’ financial lives, and create natural opportunities for long-term engagement. When legal documents and financial accounts aren’t coordinated, gaps go undetected, sometimes for years. The cost of that fragmentation falls on the client, and the blind spots belong to the advisor too.
Early involvement also changes what’s possible from a planning standpoint. Proactive estate planning, particularly for clients with highly appreciating assets or growing businesses, can significantly reduce future tax exposure. The window to act is always narrower than it appears, and advisors who are already running growth projections for clients are uniquely positioned to see it coming.
At the practice level, being present during estate planning conversations surfaces outside assets, opens doors to the next generation, and reinforces the advisor’s role as a long-term partner. Holistic planning requires both legal and financial expertise working together, and when that collaboration is working well, clients feel it. That’s what retention is built on.
If you weren’t able to join us live, or if you’d like to revisit any part of the conversation, the full webinar recording is available:
If you have questions about Hargrove Firm’s estate planning process or would like to explore how we can support your clients, we’d love to hear from you.
Email us at support@hargrovefirm.com.
Schedule a demo here.
Follow us on LinkedIn for updates on upcoming webinars and CE opportunities.