Frequently Asked Questions
Get all the answers you need to determine if integrating Tax Law is a good idea
1. What is the value of adding tax law services to my law firm?
Adding tax law services to your firm brings a range of benefits, both immediate and long-term. Here’s why it’s a game-changer:
Differentiate Your Firm: Establish your firm as the go-to expert for both legal and tax matters. Legal and tax strategies are intertwined, and mastering both makes your firm indispensable to clients.
Increase Revenue: Tax services are in high demand, and every client you serve needs tax strategy assistance. This presents a huge opportunity to increase revenue by offering services they can't easily find elsewhere.
Drive Referrals: Clients and referral sources will be impressed by your knowledge of both legal restructuring and tax law, driving high-value referrals from other professionals like accountants, financial advisors, and insurance agents.
2. What kind of services are involved in tax law?
Tax law spans various aspects of financial and legal decision-making. If you want to build a tax strategy-focused practice, not just deal with audits and litigation, here are the services you can offer, which is what the Mini Tax LLM focuses on (transactional side):
Estate and Tax Evaluations: Perform thorough assessments of clients’ estates and tax situations to identify areas of improvement.
Tax Calculations and Obligations: Help clients understand their tax responsibilities and implement strategies to minimize liabilities.
Death Tax Planning: Proactively evaluate and plan for estate taxes, preserving wealth through tax-efficient structures.
Legal Structuring: Establish tax-efficient frameworks for individuals and businesses to protect and grow assets.
Asset Protection: Identify risks to client wealth and implement strategies to safeguard it using legal structures.
Philanthropic & Nonprofit Advisory: Advise on tax-effective charitable giving and legacy-building strategies.
Business and Family Consulting: Offer strategic advice for family businesses and succession planning to ensure long-term success and tax efficiency.
Exit strategies: Proactive tax planning with entity structuring before selling a business, real estate, or other assets that are subject to capital gains and/or recaptured depreciation.
By incorporating these services, your firm can offer comprehensive, high-value tax and legal solutions that address clients' broad financial and legacy
3. Why should a law firm offer tax services - doesn't the accountant or financial advisor do that?
While accountants and financial advisors are essential for tax prep and reporting, they often lack the legal expertise needed to develop proactive, long-term tax strategies. Here’s why you should fill this gap:
Fill a Critical Gap: CPAs handle tax reporting, but lawyers are uniquely positioned to create proactive tax strategies, considering both legal and financial implications.
Provide Complete Solutions: Clients value a firm that can offer coordinated legal, tax, and financial strategies, all under one roof. This gives them a seamless experience and better outcomes.
Build Long-Term Relationships: Offering tax services helps you build deeper, long-term relationships with clients. They will return to you for both legal and tax needs, making your firm indispensable.
4. Why did you create the Mini Tax LLM Program? Why share your secrets with others?
My journey began with a business failure in 2005 that led to bankruptcy despite having a team of professionals who were handling legal, tax, accounting, investing, insurance, real estate, and estate planning strategies.
However, when I was forced into a bankruptcy, it was evident that the uncoordinated and misaligned strategies created gaps that left my assets and wealth exposed.
I've been on a mission to bridge this gap for the past two decades and am still at the tip of the iceberg.
To date, the bulk of our referrals and deals have been generated by our referral partners, accountants, financial planners, realtors, and insurance brokers, with a sprinkle of law firms in there.
But, I've realized that to truly tap into the golden opportunity that will last for the next 25-30 years (The Great Wealth Transfer) - I need to have more lawyers doing the work we do: legal and tax consulting and restructuring.
I've realized that even though we've trained hundreds of non-lawyers on how to evaluate and formulate basics legal and tax strategies, the lion's share of the advisory work reverted back to us: the lawyers.
We have created this massive, big blue ocean by understanding how to identify and bridge a gap that 90% of more of your customers are sure to face, but need more lawyers to help us monetize this opportunity.
We had a choice: train and hire a ton of lawyers at our firm and fulfill the massive demand internally vs. partner with a ton of lawyers and serve a much bigger portion of the market?
The way we look at it is: 90% of a grape is still smaller than 30% of a watermelon - we'd ready to partner with law firm owners and tap into the watermelon rather than sticking with a bunch of grapes.
That's where the Mini Tax LLM serve you, serve us, and ultimately - serve the clients that need us!
5. Is the Mini Tax LLM and the Law Firm in a Box tax-deductible? What about a traditional LLM program or law school?
The Mini Tax LLM Program and Law Firm in a Box may qualify as tax-deductible business expenses under Section 162 of the Internal Revenue Code, which allows deductions for ordinary and necessary expenses incurred in carrying on a trade or business.
Specifically:
If you use the Mini Tax LLM or Law Firm in a Box to enhance your existing legal skills, integrate tax strategies into your practice, and grow your client base, these expenses may be categorized as work-related education or consulting and marketing expenses. This makes them potentially deductible because they are tied to improving your practice and increasing profitability.
Traditional LLM programs and law school tuition, however, generally do not qualify as deductible under Section 162 if they are considered to prepare you for a new trade or business or fulfill the minimum requirements for entry into the legal profession.
Key Difference:
Mini Tax LLM and Law Firm in a Box:Focused on improving and expanding your current practice, making them more likely to be deductible.
Traditional LLM or Law School: Typically considered personal educational expenses, and therefore not deductible unless specific exceptions apply.
In other words, we look at ways to redirect otherwise taxable dollars™ towards more impactful and purposeful investments and causes that can enhance your firm, just like we do for clients: formulate a plan to help them redirect otherwise taxable dollars towards other investments, donations, or causes using the right legal entities to facilitate those goals.
The intended end result is that it does not cost you anything out-of-pocket to learn and integrate tax law services, in the same way it typically costs clients $0 out-of-pocket to hire or work with us. The key here: redirect otherwise taxable dollars to more impactful purposes (legally and ethically, of course).
6. What kind of ROI can I expect from learning and integrating tax law services?
In our opinion and experience, integrating tax law into your firm offers an infinite ROI. Here’s why:
1. Unlock Your Database of Old Clients: By adding tax law services, you can re-engage with former clients who may not have considered returning for your existing services. Tax issues are ongoing, which means clients are likely to seek help annually, creating a consistent stream of opportunities to reconnect and add value.
ROI calculation: Calculate $2,000 - $25,000/case x total number of clients in your database.
2. Increase Earnings Per Client: Tax law services allow you to offer comprehensive solutions, combining legal, financial, and tax strategies. This not only solves more of your clients' problems but also significantly increases your revenue per client by bundling services or charging for high-value consultations.
ROI calculation: Add-on $2K - $25K/case x total number of current cases
3. Attract Business from Advisors of Your Clients: Many financial advisors, accountants, and other professionals working with your clients lack expertise in tax law. By offering these services, you position yourself as a critical resource they can refer their clients to, enhancing your credibility and expanding your reach.
4. Attract Business from Competitors: Competing firms that lack tax law expertise will see you as an ally rather than a competitor. They are likely to refer clients to you for tax-related issues, especially in complex cases, strengthening your reputation as an industry leader even among someone who you may have considered to be a competitor.
5. New Market Penetration Angles: Tax law opens doors to entirely new markets, such as high-net-worth individuals, business owners, and philanthropists seeking tax-efficient strategies. These new angles give you a competitive edge and diversify your client base, creating more resilience for your firm.
6. Leverage It Yourself: Your firm can benefit directly from tax law expertise by optimizing its own tax strategies. From structuring your business entities to maximizing deductions and tax credits, you can save significant amounts and improve profitability, making this investment doubly rewarding.
If you want to get technical, here are a few layers of ROI you can calculate:
Total addition revenue from tax services [$2K - $25K/case on average] x Total number of old cases in your database
Total addition revenue from tax services x Total number of present cases you're working on that you can add tax services to
Total taxes saved each year by leveraging these strategies yourself x Total number of years you'll be using these strategies (rest of your life)
Total "death taxes" saved in your own estate matters (we have restructured the tax and legal structures of a lot of lawyers as well).
By incorporating tax law into your firm, you're not just adding a service - you're building a powerhouse that drives referrals, deepens client relationships, and secures a more profitable future.
7. Does the program cover theory and/or practical application?
The Mini Tax LLM is designed to teach through application, not theory.
All content is hands-on, enabling you to immediately apply the knowledge to your practice.
You’ll learn to work with real documents, forms, and tools that you can start offering to clients right away.
In short, we are going to train you and help you build a tax consulting and advisory practice AND help you conduct client calls, close deals with potential clients, and even conduct law and tax assessments, calculations, and evaluations.
8. How quickly can non-tax lawyer incorporate tax law services after Mini Tax LLM?
It's no different than any other practice area - it takes time and patience to truly understand and apply different legal concepts to a client's case in front of you.
We offer support - this is a collaborative project that we're on together. You have access to a database of clients, and their advisory teams, and their clients at your fingertips. We have the tools, technologies, and the legal offers that your clients, their advisors, and their clients need.
Our mission is to provide the knowledge and training, as well as the real-time support as though we're on the same team working on a project together, sharing our resources, skillsets, ideas, and assets to boost revenue and add more value to your clients and their pipeline of advisors.
9. Can we start offering tax services to clients right away? Do you offer support and help?
Absolutely. We provide everything you need to start offering tax law services immediately:
Tax Law Training: Covers fundamental concepts and practical applications.
Ready-to-Use Templates: Customizable documents, calculators, and forms for client assessments.
Business Tools: Full business automation, CRM systems, and marketing tools.
Interactive Sales Training and Problem-Solving: We’ll help you sell tax law services by providing ongoing support, case analysis, and strategy execution.
Our mission is to create a collaborative network of law firms that work together, not compete, to provide comprehensive tax law services.
10. What are the restrictions or risks involved in offering tax law services to clients?
Like any legal practice, tax law must be in compliance with tax codes and regulations.
We’ll guide you through the process to ensure your services are compliant, minimizing risk while maximizing your ability to offer high-quality tax strategies. We will also provide access to hundreds of cases and hundreds of official publications that can help you get the clarity you need around these topics.
Tax law is a federally regulated practice that allows you to work with clients across the U.S. and even globally. It flows into all areas of law and finance, and can be a tool to enhance your understanding of the law in a much more holistic manner, whether you choose to offer tax law strategies or not.
11. What about the pricing structures and the type of billing that we can offer to clients?
You can offer tax law services using a variety of billing models, including:
Flat-Fee Billing
Hourly Billing
Consulting-Based Billing
Monthly Recurring Services
Contingency Fees (e.g., a portion of taxes saved, AUM, etc.)
The program will teach you how to tailor these models to your clients’ needs and create customized pricing structures that work for both your firm and your clients.
12. Do you offer any marketing, social media, or advertising tips or tricks to attract new clients?
Yes! We offer proven marketing strategies to help you position your firm as the go-to destination for legal and tax solutions:
Attract High-Value Clients: Learn how to build a strong brand that appeals to clients seeking comprehensive tax and legal services.
Referral-Building Techniques: Develop strategies to create powerful referral networks.
Targeted Marketing Strategies: We’ll show you how to reach the right clients with the right message through digital marketing and content creation.
