Frederick R. "Fred" Franke, Jr. - Lawyer in Annapolis, MD

For over thirty-fiveyears, I have been an estates and trusts lawyer and the firm has been an estatesand trusts law firm. But it did notbegin that way. When I first hung ashingle, I enjoyed a general practice that exposed me to a broad band of legalexperiences and issues. In the early 1980's, however, I made a consciousdecision to dig deeply into the law of estates and trusts rather than tocontinue as a generalist. There wereseveral reasons for my decision. The lawof estates and trusts is largely a world unto itself: federal gift and estatetax law requires much dedicated effort to understand and to stay abreast ofchanges, and, the non-tax aspect of estates and trusts has its own peculiarrules and practices. Most importantly,these laws, rules and practices must be dealt with, maneuvered around in somecases, and used to achieve clients needs and goals.

Thus, I decided tolimit the scope of my practice to the law of estates and trusts. Yet I did notwant to overly restrict the range of my practice within that limitedscope. So, within our practice niche we«do it all» — offering estate planning services, estate and trustadministration and fiduciary litigation. By structuring the firm this way, we apply the lessons learned frombroad experience and apply them to each clients particular matter or case inmeaningful ways.

I am, of course,the name on the door. As the managing attorney in the firm, my job is to makesure we deliver first-rate estate and trust services to our clients.

For our estateplanning clients, this means that our clients' concerns must be addressed andan estate plan constructed to meets those specific concerns. A generic«cookie-cutter» or pre-fabricated approach does not work becauseestate planning is a dynamic process where a client's unique situation willdictate the range of planning alternatives. In practice, of course, a clientcan readily identify their concerns and objectives but may need us to helprun-through the various planning options and to help come up with anappropriate plan for that client. We are set up to maximize the efficientdelivery of good estate planning services from the initial meeting to theimplementation of the estate plan.

Almost every newestate planning client meets with two lawyers at the initial meeting to discusstheir concerns and objectives. Thisreflects our approach to treat each client as a client of the whole firm? notjust a single lawyer in the firm. Several lawyers are involved in reviewing and discussing drafts of theplanning documents, participating in the follow-up discussions, and discussingand overseeing the tweaking of the plan. Additionally, at least one paralegal is assigned to the team to assurecoordination of efforts and, importantly, that client matters progress onschedule.

A similar teamapproach is used for our administration and litigation clients. The onlydifference is who comprises the primary team that works along with me todeliver those services. It is this team approach, however, that enables us tokeep our representation of clients at the highest possible level.

It is not just thatwe are a small office free of bureaucratic layers but we have organized theoffice so that a client-centric team is able to stay on top of the needs andconcerns of each client. I realize that it is popular to claim that this orthat business operates as a team. We actually do: we consciously anddeliberately function as a team.

I am pleased to havegained the respect of my peers over the years. I am past-chair of the Council of the Estates and Trusts Law Section ofthe Maryland Bar Association. I am a Fellow of the American College of Trustand Estate Counsel (ACTEC). I have taught as an Adjunct Professor of Law at theUniversity of Baltimore, School of Law. Ourfirm is included in the first tier of estates and trusts law firms in the US Newsratings.