JD Scoop : JD Supra’s Blog : Content Publishing, Document Sharing, Expertise Marketing for Legal Professionals

We've compiled a list of some of the top trust and estate planning documents published on JD Supra by our contributors.

Topics are as varied as the lawyers who are sharing this work; but the documents included here all touch upon a vital aspect of this critically important legal issue.

Check back again, we'll be revisiting the list and adding other resources.

Reference: Top Trust & Estate Planning Documents

• Estate Plan Checklist - Steven Peck
• Sample Family Trust - Jim Bowman
• Partial Post Mortem Checklist - Stephen D Willey
• Keep the Government and Lawsuit-Happy Opportunists Away From Your Children's Inheritance - Alexis Martin Neely
• When Remarriage Muddies the Waters: QDRO's & Surviving Spouse Protection - Daniel N. Janich
• Grandma's Dating! Romance and the Revocable Living Trust - Darlynn Morgan
  
• Keeping the Money in the Family -  Priya Royal
• Intestacy -  Kenneth Vercammen
• Joint Trust Disadvantages - Dana Zivkovich Johnson
• Choosing a Guardian for Your Children - Kimbro Legal Services, LLC
• Estate Planning in the Face of Divorce: An Ounce of Prevention .... - Gary B. Freidman
• The Importance of Having a Power of Attorney Document - Patricia Bloom-McDonald
• Problems With Typical Revocable Living Trusts and Financial Durable Powers Of Attorney – And the New 70 -  Michael J. Young
• Bottom Fishing in Probate: What to do When the Claims Outweight the Assets - R. Scott Gardner
  
• Income Only Trust - Jacoby, Brimo, Hurd & Chase

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If you are a lawyer or firm with documents to contribute, jump onto JD Supra and share your work now. 

So many of our contributors have interesting and distinguished histories. Here are just a few of them:

J. Hue Henry - "Some highlights of Mr. Henry's appellate practice include a case of first impression establishing a client's right to access his attorney's files, and other cases of first impression recognizing torts in Georgia for embracery (jury tampering) and breach of hospital bylaws. The appellate decisions resolving those issues are posted on this site [JD Supra]."

Thomas H. Clarke, Jr., Senior Partner at Ropers Majeski Kohn & Bentley - who previously served as Principal Consultant (Chief of Staff) to the Assembly Committee on Criminal Justice and worked for President Carter in the Executive Office of the President, Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).

Michael Hamden - former executive director of North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services and co-editor, The Law & Policy of Sentencing & Corrections (7th ed. WestLaw American Case Law Series, 2005).

Gary B. Freidman, partner at  Greenfield Stein & Senior, LLP - former appellate law assistant to the Justices of the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court, Second Judicial Department.

G. William Hubbard of Hubbard Business Counsel - formerly an infantry officer in the U.S. Army in Berlin and, after law school, as a Staff Judge Advocate in Augsburg, Germany, where he prosecuted more than 100 courts-martial and managed the law office. Author and co-author of numerous publications in his field of practice, as business legal counsel to primarily closely held corporations.

Kristen Patty - legal ghost writer who clerked for for the Hon. James A. Pusateri of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Kansas in Topeka.

Jay Bernstein of Kirsch, Gelband, & Stone - former legal clerk for the Ministry of Justice, State of Israel, in Jerusalem, and original founding member of the NJ Mass Disaster Legal Response Program, which has served families of the 9/11 Terror attack, and hurricane and flood victims in the region, giving free legal aid and services.

Jimmy L. Verner, partner at Verner & Brumley - former law clerk to the Honorable William C. Keady, Chief Judge, United States District Court, Northern District of Mississippi.

Stephen J. Hyland -  appointed by Governor Jon Corzine to the New Jersey Civil Union Review Commission, for which he is the Secretary. He was also appointed by the New Jersey Supreme Court to serve a two-year term on the Family Practice Committee of the Administrative Office of the Courts. In December 2007, Mr. Hyland was honored with a Distinguished Legislative Services Award by the New Jersey State Bar Association Board of Trustees.

David Newdorf of the San Francisco City Attorney's Office - earlier in his career took a one-year hiatus  to clerk for Judge Charles A. Legge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

Michael W. Dolan - former law clerk to Judge Catherine B. Kelly, District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

We are pleased to announce (for those of you who may have missed it) that The New York Times covered JD Supra and our contributors in an article entitled "Lawyers Open Their File Cabinets for a Web Resource" in the Business section of yesterday's paper.

The article featured a great picture of JD Supra contributor Mitchell Matorin, as well as comments about the site and its benefits from Mitchell, Marc Stern, and Elena Garella. It brought lots of new visitors to the site, many of whom joined our growing community of contributors, sharing court filings, decisions, and articles on diverse subjects of use to all of us. (Keep an eye out for an upcoming roundup of new contributors and documents). 

As the Times article noted, JD Supra:

• helps people who want more background on a legal issue, or who would like to find and contact lawyers with expertise in a particular area;
  
• provides a resource of lawyers (who can search the database for work by other legal professionals involved in similar cases).

And, not surprisingly, yesterday many more visitors searched the JD Supra documents and profiles for information about the law and the people behind it. Not surprisingly, the contributors who have shared the most documents received the most exposure.

We are keenly aware that JD Supra is only as good as the lawyers who participate and the content they share. The many visitors who emailed us over the past 48 hours, clearly found the site useful and the content compelling.

For example, a company seeking a class action firm to file suit relating to the mortgage crises wrote:

"Thanks for setting up this service. It will certainly help all who need access to legal expertise and opinions"

Another, who was seeking an attorney for advice on changing his estate plan wrote:

"I want to find an attorney with a specialty in estate planning, but one I can first research on your database. Thank you."

And yet another wrote:

"This is very close to the best thing that can be done for the public and for clients and lawyers in the US."

So, from the entire team at JD Supra, please accept our most sincere THANK YOU to all of you who have crafted such professional profiles and shared your high quality work!

Here's a roundup of some of the newest members of the legal community to join JD Supra. We're proud to say that they create a wonderfully diverse group:

Electronic Privacy Information Center - a public interest research center in Washington, D.C., established in 1994 to focus attention on emerging civil liberties issues and to protect privacy, the First Amendment, and constitutional values and to promote the Public Voice in decisions concerning the future of the Internet.

Immigration Legal Counsel, LLC - the firm's president, Sonia Munoz, is a multi-lingual attorney admitted to the Florida Bar with experience in litigation and legal counsel, research and writing in both the private sector and the judicial system. Ms. Munoz has worked as a political analyst with top secret clearance from the CIA; resided and worked in the European Union and for the International Court of The Hague; co-authored a bench book regarding International law and its application and effects on domestic hearings. Barred in several courts.

Hodes, Pessin & Katz, P.A. - with offices in Towson, Columbia, Bel Air, Bethesda and Cambridge, Maryland, HPK’s attorneys are experienced in more than twenty practice areas including corporate law, litigation, environmental, insurance and wealth preservation, to employment, elder law, real estate, white collar criminal defense, and intellectual property and patent law.

Kimbro Legal Services, LLC - a completely virtual law office powered by Virtual Law Office Technology (VLOTECH). The technology is a secure, hosted, software as a service (SaaS) application. Focuses on estate planning, small business assistance and some family law services. Principal: Stephanie Kimbro.

 Melody A. Kramer - Ms. Kramer began her career as Deputy Public Defender in rural Columbus, Nebraska, but soon returned to Lincoln to open her own law firm specializing in criminal defense, juvenile law, and general civil litigation. Never deterred by seeming impossibilities, Ms. Kramer has taken on challenging, sometimes seemingly unwinable cases, with a marked level of success. (Co-founder of the National Association of Freelance Legal Professionals.)

Amal Law Group,  LLC - an Illinois-based law firm law founded (and run) by six Muslim women with diverse ethnic backgrounds including African American, Arab, South Asian and European American. Areas of practice include civil rights,commercial law & contracts , family law, immigration law, real estate, estate planning, and more.


To our latest and members and all of you we say, again: thank you for participating!

Marc Stern recently wrote that JD Supra takes lawyer marketing into the 21st century. Well, there's no question that our contributors live and work in the here-and-now. Just look at these smart (one might even say hip) profile portraits for proof of that:







Not your grandfather's legal directory.

[From top left to bottom right, these JD Supra members are: Scott Riddle, Ekaterina Schoenefeld, Connie Crosby, Dan Canon, Faith L. Charles, Robert Chilvers, Janet H. Moore, and Lisa Solomon.]