You have a marketing problem, Tim.

Well, that’s why I hired you, Kelly. I looked down at his business card, which I was shuffling and bending nervously in my hands. Kelly Hearthstone, Marketing Specialist. I looked up at him and he pushed himself back from the huge desk between us. He stood up and turned and talked as he looked out the window.

You’re The Elder Law Firm, right?

Right.

And at The Elder Law Firm, you work on guardianship cases, right?

Yes.

And in how many of those cases do you represent elders?

Some. A lot of those cases involve elderly people.

But in those cases, you sometimes represent the elder, but often you represent the adult child  trying to be the guardian, or the professional guardian. Sometimes your client is a parent who is not too old but needs to become guardian for a mentally ill child. Sometimes in those guardianship cases there is not an elder person to be found. Isn’t that what you told me?

Yes.

And at The Elder Law Firm, you help people probate the estate of someone who has died.

I do.

How often is your client elderly in those probate cases.

Not too often. This is what it feels like to be cross-examined, I thought to myself. I hired Kelly Hearthstone because I didn’t market my business at all, and I had little idea why at some times I was too busy to catch my breath and at other times I had time to write little elder law essays. I couldn’t predict when the busy times would come or how long they would last.

In addition to guardianship and probate, you help people with their estate plans, don’t you?

Indeed.

Young parents with young kids?

Yes.

A man or woman just divorced and needing a Will?

I’ve had a lot of those over the years.

Anyone who needs an estate plan, really, young or old, right?

Yes. My estate planning clients aren’t necessarily elderly.

At this point, he spun away from the window and looked at me and the sun caught his brilliant white teeth and for a moment I was blinded. He leaned against the desk and looked at me. I shielded my eyes with my hand.

Now your long-term care consultation practice – Medicaid –  that often involves elderly clients, doesn’t it?

Yes.

But didn’t you tell me that this was the smallest part of your practice, compared with the other areas?

I did tell you that. My vision was returning and I lowered my hand. He was moving back to the window. He had impressive hair. A lot of it. Gelled and wavy and thick. Instinctively, I laced my fingers behind my head, partially covering the bald spot. Kelly Hearthstone would always have thick and wavy hair. Years from now it would be thick and wavy and silver.
 
It’s not even elder law.

What?

The Elder Law Firm doesn’t necessarily help the elderly.

Elder law is Guardianships, Probate, Estate Planning, and Long-term Care Planning. Look it up.

But in a substantial number of your cases, you are not representing an elderly person.

So.

So how many non-elderly people looking for an attorney to help them with a guardianship or with a probate case or with an estate plan look right past you because they presume that you do not serve them.

I don’t know.

750 of them every year.

There is no way that you could know that.

It’s in the data. This is costing you dearly, Tim. Maybe millions.

You’re looking at the wrong data. I don’t have anything close to a million dollar practice.

He turned slowly away from the window, sat down in his chair, locked his eyes on mine and said Exactly.

I stared back at him. As a kid, I always won stare-downs. The key is to just look, not stare. Take it easy on your eyes and they don’t have to blink. If you bulge them out or overplay it, it’s over. Kelly Hearthstone would overplay it, I was sure. But then I remembered the teeth. If he flashed that smile, I’d be seeing stars, and blinking back into focus. I caved and closed my eyes. Listen Kelly, I didn’t go to law school to be a lawyer. I went to learn how to do land deals. I wanted to work for non-profit or government agencies that bought land for parks or wildlife habitat or conservation. He was still looking at me, but I was losing him. I did that for a while until I went into work one morning for this non-profit and my boss told me that we were folding, just like that. I went home that night and looked up at the window where Dillon, my youngest of three, slept. He was about 2, I think. I decided I had better get into something a little more stable.

Kelly reached into his pocket and started to scroll through screens on his phone.

To be honest, there aren’t a lot of areas of law that I can stomach. But I stumbled on Elder Law, and I loved my grandma and thought it would be cool to work with people like her, so I started calling elder law attorneys and asking them to have coffee with me, and a lot of them didn’t even seem like lawyers. They seemed nice.

Kelly looked up from his phone. Lawyers?

Elder law lawyers. They seemed nice. One of them even gave me a job. That was about twenty years ago.

He looked at me blankly.

I see your point, though. Your numbers seem screwy but I see your point. He continued to look at me blankly. He had forgotten his point.

We are called The Elder Law Firm, and this might cause younger people to call someone else.

He nodded. That’s what I’m saying.

So what do you propose that I do about this.

He flashed a smile and leaned back and opened a drawer and removed a shiny folder. He slid the folder across the desk toward me. I opened it. The first page said Phase II Market Analysis - The Elder Law Firm - $10,000.00. I closed the folder and slid it back toward him.

I pushed up from the chair. No thanks, Kelly. I’ll live with it.