Description

Developing Professional Skills: Wills, Trusts & Estates Carla Spivack ISBN 9781636594798

The Trusts & Estates volume in the Developing Professional Skills series is designed to integrate practical lawyering skills directly into the trusts and estates curriculum, enhancing doctrinal understanding through hands-on learning. Each assignment is grounded in core concepts such as donative freedom, intestacy, will execution and revocation, construction, trust creation and termination, fiduciary duties, prenuptial agreements, will substitutes, charitable giving, and guardianship. At the same time, the book introduces students to foundational tasks routinely performed by estate planning attorneys, including explaining succession law to non-lawyers, planning to minimize the risk of will contests, and identifying intestate heirs.

Through these assignments, students develop and refine a broad range of professional skills essential to estate planning practice, including:

• Drafting legal letters and professional emails

• Preparing court petitions, interrogatories, and charitable gift agreements

• Developing client counseling plans and best-practices guidance

• Conducting negotiations

• Engaging in client counseling simulations

• Creating and delivering community presentations

In addition to skills training, the book thoughtfully incorporates the social dimensions inherent in estate planning, particularly the role of succession law in perpetuating or addressing wealth inequality. Many assignments touch on these issues, allowing instructors discretion in how prominently to emphasize them. Even without extended focus on these themes, each exercise stands alone as a complete and effective learning tool; when highlighted, however, these issues add a valuable critical dimension to students’ understanding of trusts and estates practice.

Developing Professional Skills: Wills, Trusts & Estates Carla Spivack ISBN 9781636594798, 978-1636594798 & 9781647082307

Authors
Carla Spivack
Karen J. Sneddon