Looking for a Financial Advisor for Attorneys?

Your path to becoming a successful attorney likely included countless hours in the classroom, more than a few sleepless nights studying for the Bar Exam, and a handful of moments when you questioned your decision to become a lawyer. But with persistence, grit, and potentially several thousand dollars in student loans later, you walked across the stage proudly accepting the law school diploma that launched your career in the legal profession.

If you’re now working in private practice or at a BigLaw firm, your above-average compensation trajectory may feel like just reward for years of blood, sweat, and tears. But financial planning for attorneys can often be complicated by outsized student loan debt, lofty lifestyle aspirations, and a desire to retire comfortably, perhaps at a younger age, so you can travel the world or make up for lost time devoted earlier in your career to late nights in the library and internships you’d rather forget.

Fortunately, financial advisors who specialize in working with attorneys understand the unique financial obstacles and opportunities commonly faced by lawyers throughout their careers. These specialist advisors can work with you to develop a personalized plan tailored to your individual circumstances and provide the guidance you need to achieve your financial goals in both the near and long term.

You’ll likely find dozens of financial advisors in your community well-suited to help you reach your money goals with a general financial plan. But it may be more difficult to find a financial advisor with the experience, credentials, and dedicated focus serving BigLaw and private practice attorneys who truly understands what it took for you to get here, and what it will take for you to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle and retirement.

Today, many financial advisors offer virtual services so you can meet online no matter where you (or they) live. This means you can choose to hire a financial advisor who lives hundreds of miles away if you decide their specialized knowledge working with BigLaw and private practice attorneys could help you achieve better outcomes.

⚖️ Smart Money Insights for Attorneys

This page is organized into sections to help you quickly find the information you need and get answers to your questions:

1. Q&A with Financial Advisors for Attorneys
2. Get Answers to Your Questions About Financial Planning for Attorneys
3. Browse Related Articles

– Financial Advisors for Attorneys –

Get to Know:
✅ Matt Smith | ✅ Eric Scruggs

Three Questions with Matt Smith

We asked Houston-based financial advisor Matt Smith to answer three questions based on his work providing financial planning services to attorneys.

Q: What is a common financial planning challenge unique to attorneys that you frequently encounter when working with your clients? How do you work with them to overcome this challenge?

Matt: The most common challenge I see with BigLaw attorneys is trying to balance three things: 1) the desire to pay down student loan debt; 2) the desire to save for short-term and long-term goals like buying a house and retirement, respectively; and 3) the need to mitigate the tax burden that comes along with their high incomes.

I help clients sort all this out by organizing the sometimes-competing goals into a manageable framework that they can view in its entirety so they can weigh the pros and cons of a few different strategies. Unfortunately, there is not a “right” answer in most cases, and instead, each person has to make a decision based on their own preferences, which typically lean toward the cold hard math of things or the more intuitive side of things.

Examples of the strategies include things like maximizing pre-tax benefits to lower the tax bill while treating high-interest rate debt like the bond allocation of their investment portfolio to pay the debt down faster and still save aggressively via their investment accounts. Others may prefer to refinance high-interest-rate federal loans into relatively low-rate private loans, pay the minimums, and leave more free cash flow to save for near-term goals.

Get to Know Matt:

View Matt’s profile page on Wealthtender or visit his website to learn more.

Q: How do the services you offer distinguish Concert Financial Planning from other advisory firms an attorney may have been referred to by a colleague?

Matt: The difference is both personal and professional. From a personal standpoint, I’m married to an attorney who is a Partner at her firm but was a 2nd Year Associate when I met her. I have firsthand knowledge of the sacrifices and work required to hit the hours, earn the paychecks, and make it to Partner. I also have firsthand knowledge of what that Associate to Partner transition looks like and how to plan for it.

From a professional standpoint, I market my firm to BigLaw and Private Practice Attorneys and therefore have developed deeper experience with these types of clients as compared to a firm that may be more generalist in nature. I have also developed my own financial planning tools that cater to younger clients (non-retirees) in this profession because the traditional “financial planning” software is mostly geared to answering questions for wealthy retirees.

Finally, I think the attorney clients I work with appreciate the degree to which I’ve focused on building my knowledge via high-caliber accreditations like the CFP® and CFA®, which are fairly rare for one individual to hold. Attorneys know what it means to study hard and appreciate when their advisor has done significantly more than the bare minimum to advance their knowledge.

Q: For attorneys who are unsure whether or not they should hire a financial advisor at the current point in their career, what guidance can you provide to help them make a more informed and educated decision?

Matt: Most of the attorneys I speak with are aware that the financial advisory industry is opaque and riddled with conflicts of interest between the advisor and the client. They’ve read enough to know that the average person will probably do just fine with some basic financial knowledge, disciplined saving, and avoiding people that want to “sell you how to make it rich”.

However, BigLaw attorneys are not the average person. The higher income, taxes, debt load, and work/life balance that comes with the profession are among the highest and most demanding out there. It means that there are significant opportunities for proper planning that can make a real difference in the financial outcome of their life. I try to remind people that they’ve worked so hard to get where they are and they should not jeopardize their financial future by making serious financial mistakes, particularly if they can get on the right track early on in their careers.

In my opinion, the best way to start is to look for a financial planner (somebody that does more than just investment management) that is held to the fiduciary standard, by law, via online resources like Wealthtender, XY Planning Network, NAPFA, Fee-Only Network, and/or BigLawInvestor.com. 

Four Questions with Eric Scruggs

We asked Boston-area financial advisor Eric Scruggs to answer four questions related to his experience guiding lawyers on their path to financial independence.

Q: When you first speak with an attorney, what questions do you like to ask to better understand their unique circumstances and determine how you can best help them achieve their goals? 

Eric: In initial meetings, I like to focus my questions on three primary topics.

First, I aim to get a clear understanding of what motivated the potential client to set up the meeting. Since most people don’t randomly decide to look for a financial planner, it is important to understand the pressing concerns that made them reach out. Knowing this will inform whether I can help and what should be prioritized in the planning process.

Second, I try to learn more about the potential client’s financial purpose or why money matters to them. Getting some insight into this allows the potential client to explain what their high-level financial values are and will set the overarching mission that we use to ensure we are setting the right financial goals at the outset.

Lastly, I want to learn about the expectations the potential client has when working with a financial advisor. With a clear understanding of expectations for the relationship, we can quickly see whether there is alignment between what the potential client wants to achieve and my service model.

Tackling these three questions allows for a quick assessment to determine whether we are a fit to work together, sets clear priorities, and provides a high-level vision to set up the framework for determining goals and next steps.

Q: For attorneys thinking about leaving their current employer to accept a job elsewhere or launch their own practice, what actions do you recommend they take before resigning and shortly thereafter? 

Eric: When planning to leave your current employer, it is important to plan for the financial changes that come with the move.

If you are leaving big law to go in-house, for example, you should start living on a lower income as soon as possible to give time to adjust your lifestyle to the reduced income level. Additionally, as you are leaving, keep in mind that the legal community can be fairly small, and you never know when you will interact with your former coworkers again, so try as best you can to leave on good terms. Those former coworkers could be future clients, referral sources, or outside counsel for you. 

Get to Know Eric:

View Eric’s profile page on Wealthtender or visit his website to learn more.

Q: For attorneys approaching retirement age, how do you recommend they prepare to make the transition from living off employment income to relying upon other sources of income? 

Eric: Transitioning from saving to spending your investment accounts can be a hard mental shift for many people to make.

A few strategies to consider include slowing down your work before fully stopping so that you phase down your earned income and slowly start tapping into your income from other sources. Additionally, start taking funds a month or so before you need them so that you can get comfortable that the funds will show up in your accounts when you expect them.

This transition is a bad time for surprises, so testing before you really need the money can substantially reduce the stress that comes in those first few months.

Lastly, realize that this transition is more than about where you get money from. In addition to financial changes, there are psychological and emotional changes you want to prepare for.

Think about how you will spend your time each day – even those who love to golf or fish, for example, are unlikely to want to do those activities all the hours they were working each week. How will you find connection to others now that you are not connecting with colleagues each day?

Before finally starting to retire, perhaps consider taking a few months off to try out retirement life, see what activities you enjoy doing (like volunteering, serving on a board, or pursuing a hobby), and determine how you will make connections and stay in touch with others in a meaningful way. 

Q: What questions do you recommend attorneys ask financial advisors they’re considering hiring to help them decide if they’re a good fit? 

Eric: When looking for an advisor, I think there are a few key factors to consider.

First, consider whether they have the right qualifications for the level of complexity your plan needs.  Unlike attorneys who typically have 3 years of specialized education and need to pass a bar exam to be an “advisor,” all one has to do is pass a relatively easy exam, the Series 65. But what else has the advisor done to build and demonstrate his/her expertise? Is the advisor a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ practitioner, or does he/she have some other advanced training in financial planning?

Second, ask about what experience the advisor has working with people like you and in similar life circumstances.

Third, you should determine whether the advisor is a fiduciary like you are to your clients.

Lastly, consider how the advisor is compensated. Understanding the way(s) an advisor is compensated can help you understand potential conflicts of interest and talk with the advisor about the ways he/she attempts to mitigate those conflicts. 

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