Older adults face many legal issues. Some of the most
complicated relate to planning for continued life (life care planning), rather
than for death (estate planning).
Planning for aging, possible incapacity, and the potential
need for expensive long term care can be particularly complex and requires
expert legal help. But it is difficult for the consumer to be able
to identify lawyers who have the training and experience required to provide
the expert guidance needed.
Planning for senior issues like incapacity and long term care
is an important aspect of the services provided by what have become known as
“elder law attorneys.” Unfortunately, in most states any
lawyer can say he or she practices elder law or hold themselves out as being
an “elder law attorney” even if the lawyer has little or no experience
with the issues that are especially important to older adults. This means
seniors must be particularly cautious in choosing a lawyer and carefully
investigate the lawyer before hiring.
This article contains some tips you can use to find a lawyer
who can provide older adults with high quality specialized legal
services.
Certification
A Certified Elder Law Attorney (CELA) is a lawyer who has met
the rigorous standards for certification in the field of elder law set by
the National Elder Law Foundation (NELF). In
Pennsylvania, where I practice, the Supreme Court has approved the NELF
certification process and permits lawyer who have been certified by the
Foundation to state that they are certified elder law attorneys.
Lawyers who have not met these rigorous standards are not
permitted to refer to themselves as CELAs. This means that the CELA
professional designation provides a measure of assurance that the lawyer has an
in-depth working knowledge of the legal issues that impact the elderly,
including long term care. It is somewhat akin to Board Certification
for Physicians.
There are CELAs located in most areas of the country. A
listing of those attorneys can be found on the NELF website at www.nelf.org. But
some geographic areas are unrepresented. There are presently only 45 CELAs in
Pennsylvania.
Other Resources
What can you do to find qualified elder law help if there no
CELAs in your community? How can you find lawyers who have the knowledge and
experience required?
You may want to start by seeking recommendations from friends
who have received professional help with senior planning issues. Who
did they use? Were they satisfied with the services they
received? Hospital social workers, Alzheimer and other support
groups, accountants and other financial professionals can also be good sources
of recommendations.
Questions to Ask
To have an issue addressed properly, the senior planning
client needs a lawyer who devotes a substantial part of his or her practice to your
issue of concern. Experience is a critical platform for quality
services in most professional areas, especially law.
For example, if your family member needs long term care
planning, you shouldn’t hesitate to ask the lawyer what percentage of his
practice involves long term care planning. Or, you could ask how
many new long term care planning cases the law office handles each
month. There is no correct answer. But there is a good
chance that a law office that assists with two nursing home placements a
week is likely to be more up to date and knowledgeable than an office
that helps with two placements a year.
Ask whether the lawyer is a member of any Elder Law planning
organizations. Is the lawyer involved with committees of state bar
organizations that have to do with senior issues? If so, has the
lawyer held a position of leadership or authority on the
committee? Does the lawyer lecture on your issue of
concern? If so, to whom? (For example, if the lawyer is
asked to teach other lawyers about elder law and long term care planning, that
is a pretty good sign that the lawyer is considered to be an expert in those
areas by people who should know.)
If the lawyer lectures to the public, you or a family member
might try to attend one of the presentations. This should help you decide if
this is the lawyer for you.
NAELA and State Bar Associations
NAELA has thousands of members and there is a good chance
that there will be one or more members of NAELA in your geographic
region. While mere membership in the Academy is open to any lawyer
and provides no assurance that the attorney is an experienced elder law
practitioner, membership does at least show that the lawyer has some interest
in the field.
In addition, NAELA (and many state bar associations) run
educational sessions to help lawyers stay current on the latest aspects of
elder law and issues like long term care planning. Attending these
sessions takes time and commitment on the part of the lawyer and is a good sign
that the lawyer is attempting to stay up to date on nursing home issues. You
may want to look for an attorney who is a member of NAELA and/or of your state
bar Elder Law Committee or Section and has recently attended one or more of its
educational sessions.
If the lawyer has been a speaker at one of the NAELA or State
Bar elder law educational programs, that is an even better sign of recognized
competency in the field.
Life Care
Planning
Some elder law firms offer “life care planning services”
to provide continuing ongoing support and guidance to older adults and their
families. These firms take a holistic approach and supplement their legal
services with care coordination and advocacy support to help families respond
most effectively to the changing challenges of aging, chronic illness and
disability. Many of these firms are members of the Life Care Planning Law Firms Association.
Life care planning can help
relieve the physical, emotional and financial stress for families struggling to
deal with the demands of caregiving. The Life
Care Planning law firm helps the family locate available resources and
employ the right caregivers and preserve the family’s physical, financial and
emotional resources. It helps the family keep the older adult at home for as
long as possible, and make the best residential transition if that ever becomes
necessary.
The goal of life care planning is
to promote and maintain the health, safety, well-being and quality of life of
the elder client, whether the client is at home or in a residential facility.
More information about life care planning and a list of law firms who are
members of the Life Care Planning Law Firms Association is available at https://lcplfa.org.
Lawyer Ratings
Finally, the internet has become an incredible resource for
finding just about anything you need. This includes an elder law
attorney. By now most lawyers have websites. Do a search on “elder
law” and your city and you are likely to find quite a few lawyers show up in
the listing. You can then check out the lawyer’s website. Many
lawyer websites are just glossy advertisements written by marketing firms, but
some have content actually written by the lawyer. At the very least, you can
read the lawyer bio page to get some useful information.
There are quite a few lawyer rating sites available on the
internet. These include AVVO, Super Lawyers, and Best Lawyers in America. The
internet is filled with ratings, of course. Google assigns a
PageRank score to every Web site it indexes, Yelp rates restaurants, Standard
& Poor's rates stocks and bonds, etc. But rating lawyers is tricky and
subjective, and information can be stale. I once represented the family of a
lawyer who had suffered for many years from Alzheimer’s. 7 years after he
retired from practice he still was being given the top rating possible by one
of the best known rating companies. I checked his ratings again, 3
years after his death – he still had an “A” rating from that company.
So, while lawyer ratings services
can provide some useful information (for example, AVVO tells you whether a lawyer has ever
been disciplined for misconduct), they should be viewed with a measure of
caution.
Consumer Beware
Bottom line: When you need legal
help with a senior issue, it is critically important that you find a qualified
law firm that is experienced in dealing with your particular issue of concern.
Be smart and don’t fall into the trap of thinking that all lawyers are equally
knowledgeable about your issue. They are not. Do some homework
before choosing your attorney.
Lawyers
love Latin terms and there is one that you should remember as you search for an
elder law attorney - “Caveat Emptor” – which means “Buyer Beware.”