With some clients, unusual or unexpected gestures by their lawyers may be a deeply appreciated part of the attorney-client relationship; these gestures may be doing things that are "not really your job." John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing recently blogged about how to Give Your Clients Success Tools (via Stark County Law Library Blog). He advises thinking long and hard about:
How can you become more valuable to your clients. What can you offer to do, even if it's not really your job, that would help them be more successful, get better results, solve more problems. Do that, and you will find the universe will make you more successful in the process.
In this vein, why not suggest to appropriate clients that they design their own funerals? The process of creating one's unique end-of-life event has many benefits and those to whom you suggest it may be very grateful. Your clients -- and you -- likely will discover so many advantages to designing your funeral or memorial service, regardless or your age or state of health. These advantages and benefits include:
- A gift to your family and other loved ones
- A gift to yourself
- An expression of your personality, values and life
- A new awareness
- Improved long-term choices
- Better day-to-day decisions
- A fresh perspective
- An acknowledgment of the continuous flow from ancestry to life to legacy
Learn more about why your clients and you would want to design your own funeral. Included in the designing might be music, readings, passing on of roles, life storytelling, plants and flowers, ceremonies, program, dress, location, guest book, memory display, food, photos . . .
Just in the last two weeks I have learned of three situations in which people are wrestling with both grief and the task of planning a service that fulfills the unknown wishes of the deceased. The guessing would be unnecessary if the wishes had been left behind. Thus the first of several benefits listed above is the gift you leave your loved ones; the guessing is eliminated in the time of pain. Why not suggest that your clients leave that gift, too? Might such a suggestion make you more valuable to appropriate clients? And I don't mean that this suggestion should be confined to estate planning clients. To many lawyers of various kinds of practices, the right clients for this tip probably will be obvious.
As the Baby Boomers age, the planning of one's funeral has increased greatly. The Boomers are changing the face of funerals as has been frequently covered in the media. Remember Me: A Lively Tour of the New American Way of Death delightfully describes many of these changes. Some Boomers are writing their own obituaries. Here's the way to write a good obit for yourself. More tips are found in Life on the Death Beat: A Handbook for Obituary Writers. Before sharpening a pencil for yourself or your client, you may get inspired by reading The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasure of Obituaries by a journalist who has written obits for many of the most famous and often spends several hours a day reading obituaries from around the world.
Another helpful tip for the right clients might be to suggest the writing of an ethical will. While legal wills direct how property should be distributed, ethical wills pass on a person's values. From the Web site of Barry Baines, MD, author of the book on the topic Ethical Wills: Putting Your Values on Paper:
Ethical wills are not new. The Hebrew Bible first described ethical wills 3000 years ago (Genesis Ch. 49). References to this tradition are also found in the Christian Bible (John Ch. 15-18) and in other cultures. Initially, ethical wills were transmitted orally. Over time, they evolved into written documents.
Posted on the Fidelity Investments Web site is an excellent overview of the what, when, why, how, and who of ethical wills: "Using an Ethical Will to Share Your Values" [link no longer works]. Quoted in it are two attorneys talking about how they use ethical wills with their clients; one attorney chooses to call them values and vision statements instead of ethical wills. Regardless of what it is called, writing one can be a profound and eye-opening process.
This month is particularly suited for the topic of this idealawg post. For several years, October 30 has been officially registered as Create a Great Funeral Day. Today I learned that three years ago Lynn Isenberg, author of the novel The Funeral Planner, registered October 10 as Lights Out Day for funeral planning. This truly is the month for it. Let's all lean back in our chairs, close our eyes and think about our funerals. Have some funeral fun and share it with the right clients.
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