Description:
Job Summary:Looking to hire a fully remote Estate Planning and/or Transactional Attorney Contractor in Illinois. Twin Cities/Chicago-based law firm looking to expand and take on more estate planning and transactional matters due to growing client demand. This would be a unique, highly part-time, no client contact, flexible role in which you'd be paid a portion of our fee per matter – usually 1/5 to 1/3 of our fee depending on the assistance needed.
For example, if the firm earns $3,000 for a revocable living trust, you'd be paid $600 to $1,000 for assistance provided. Assistance with transactional matters such as entity formation, commercial lease review, purchase/sale of a business, etc., will follow a similar arrangement. The main requirement is that your assistance results in us successfully and competently handling matters of varying complexity for our clients. Reliability, promptness, and expertise are what we are looking for and we are happy to pay a large portion of our fee in exchange.
This is an excellent, highly part-time, and low-commitment way to use your estate planning and/or transactional expertise to earn additional income. The role is ideal for an experienced attorney looking to make extra income or someone looking to wind down their practice but still earn some money. There may also be matters we do not want to accept that may be referred to you or you may handle as Of Counsel for our firm.
Duties:
- Respond to the firm within 1 business day of us reaching out about IL estate planning or business rules/laws/statutes/regulations generally, or about one of our client matters, specifically.
- Provide guidance on the intricacies and formalities of IL estate planning and business law.
- Be very familiar with drafting all kinds of estate planning instruments (wills, trusts, deeds, etc.) and transactional documents and recording at the municipal/county level in Cook and the surrounding counties.
- Provide templates if requested (for example, if we need a TODI or buy-sell agreement, you'd provide one).
- Review work product (upon request) with the necessary attention to detail to determine if any documents/requirements are missing, incomplete, contain omissions, or should be formatted differently or contain different language, etc.
- Advise us (upon request) on what estate planning/business options and strategies are best for our clients' needs.
- Guidance on how to handle an estate planning or transactional matter from beginning to end – both from an administrative standpoint, if applicable (filing, recording, procedures, etc.), and from a substantive standpoint.
- No duty to interact with our clients or speak to them directly, but strict client confidentiality required when receiving/reviewing documents containing client information.
Skills:
- Have strong knowledge of Illinois estate planning and business law.
- Strong legal drafting and document review skills.
- Strong attention to detail to detect any issues with our estate planning or business documents prior to recording or submitting to clients.
- Ability to analyze complex information and provide clear recommendations.
- Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written, to effectively convey to us what we need to know.
- Responsive, reliable, and thorough when assistance is needed.
Requirements:
- Must be an IL-licensed attorney.
- Should ideally live in the Chicagoland area.
- At least 4 or more years of estate planning and/or business law experience - everything from simple wills/trusts, to drafting and negotiating commercial contracts, to more complex estate planning instruments.
- Extensive estate planning and transactional drafting experience.
- Highly knowledgeable about how to protect client assets and business interests.
- Highly knowledgeable about recording and procedural requirements for Cook and surrounding counties.
- Experience in additional areas of law may be helpful. Referrals likely.
- Experience in probate, business/civil litigation, and other areas of law a plus.
- Licensure in other states (with relevant estate planning and/or transactional experience) a plus and may result in referrals.
- The ability to be patient, clear, highly responsive, and highly helpful is a must.
- Must be comfortable working fully remotely and communicating by email, phone, and Zoom.
Please apply with a Resume and optional Letter (not a cover letter, max. 1 page). The Letter should give us a more well-rounded view of your estate planning/transactional law experience and highlight the diversity and breadth of your experience in a way that your Resume may not.
