How A Law School Elder Law Clinic Trains Practice Ready Attorneys (Plus other good stuff)

We talk with Rima Nathan of Florida State University’s Claude Pepper Elder Law Clinic about training law students to serve older adults with skill, care, and clear ethics. We dig into financial exploitation, crypto scams, and dementia related capacity so we protect clients without rushing to guardianship.

• running an elder law clinic that functions like legal aid for adults 60 and older 
• preparing young attorneys for client meetings involving incapacity, family conflict, and professional responsibility 
• avoiding over attachment while centering dignity, autonomy, and informed choice 
• teaching difficult end of life conversations through reflection and practical tools 
• spotting elder financial exploitation including romance scams and deceptive contracts 
• responding to crypto and cryptocurrency ATM scams with legal pressure and investigation 
• using Florida’s financial exploitation injunction to freeze assets quickly 
• drafting powers of attorney with protections that support fast intervention 
• resisting automatic guardianship after a dementia diagnosis by focusing on context and capacity 
• collaborating with social work, criminology, and aging policy professionals for holistic support 
• listening better to build plans based on values, not templates 
• making time for pro bono work to keep families and courts out of crisis

For more resources, training, and coaching, visit theelderlawcoach.com.

Check out our new website www.TheElderLawCoach.com.

Transcript

Welcome And Host Introduction

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to the Elder Law Coach Podcast, where attorneys learn to confidently handle Elder Law, Medicaid planning, special needs planning, and estate planning matters. Your host is Todd Watley, certified Elder Law Attorney, former president of the National Elder Law Foundation, and founder of the Elder Law Coach. Drawing on more than two decades of experience, Todd shares practical insights to help you grow your practice, serve more families, and become a trusted Elder Law authority in your community. And now here's

Meet Rima Nathan And The Clinic

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Todd.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Hi there. Thanks for joining me. I am Todd Watley, the Elder Law Coach, and today I am super excited. I have a guest. It's it's not just me talking today. I mean her name is Reman Nathan. Good morning, Rima. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Good morning. How are you, Todd?

SPEAKER_02 0:44

Good. So tell us what your job is. I think it's very interesting and kind of something that I want to do if I could afford it. So tell me what your job is.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Yeah, so I am, I am very blessed to have this job every day. I remind myself of that. But um, so I am a clinical professor at Florida State University down in Tallahassee, Florida, the capital of Florida. So I run an elder law clinic, the Claude Pepper Elder Law Clinic here at FSU. So I like to say my job is it's kind of two things at the same time. Half of my job is being an elder law attorney and running what basically serves as a legal aid firm on FSU's law school campus that specifically helps people 60 and older and who are considered low income with just a plethora of different legal issues focused on elder law most of the time. And then the other half of my job is teaching the law students how to do that kind of practice. So they enroll in it, it's a clinic on the law school campus. So students enroll in it just like they would enroll in any other class. But it kind of acts more like an internship because I get to teach them elder law and then they get to get their uh their grade for the course based off of the work they're doing in the elder law clinic. So they get direct client engagement. We go out into the community and we try to do a lot of community education because so much of this field I think is um preventative, what we need to be doing to help folks know what they don't know yet. So they don't have to go pay an attorney thousands of dollars later on for something that could have been avoided.

SPEAKER_02 2:11

Nice.

Training Students For Older Clients

SPEAKER_02 2:12

So you're working with since I'm 60, I can call them kids, you know, early 20s, mid-20s. So how do you prepare a 23, 24-year-old to work with someone who's 60, 70, 80 years old, possibly has dementia and has some real issues going on?

SPEAKER_00 2:32

It's a great question. And I I pitched this to the students why that why it's a good reason to take this course because it is just uh it's ethics 101 in so many ways because of that. You know, I say this will help you figure out those rules of professional responsibility when you're dealing with clients with some cognitive impairment or when you have clients who have some family conflicts that you're not quite sure where your role in that should be. Maybe we need to take a step back. Um, so I I really love um working with the students. A lot of times they come in already interested because they had some kind of family experience that was related. And I know we were talking earlier about how people like to enter the field of elder law maybe as a second career legal career because they had some kind of family experience. But these students are always telling, they're like, Oh yeah, well, my my mom took care of my grandma. She lived in our house, she meant a lot to me. Um, and they just want to make sure that they graduate law school. Some of them want to go into elder law and they already know that. Some of them, I've had students who they're like, I'm doing IP law, I'm doing like property law, but they still love having this nugget of information because they know that it's gonna be helpful for either their families or their future estate planning practice too.

SPEAKER_02 3:44

Okay, nice.

Empathy Boundaries And Client Dignity

SPEAKER_02 3:45

What's one of the biggest mistakes that you see students when working with older people?

SPEAKER_00 3:50

I I think my biggest mistake that I've seen so far, and this is true of young students and and myself and people, attorneys of all ages, but I think sometimes it is really easy to get um to to kind of emotionally connect yourself to a client a little too much. Um and not that we don't like we want to have empathy, obviously, right? We want to be sympathetic for the turmoils that our clients are going through. But sometimes I see the students connect to it a little too much, maybe start seeing some of their own family member in their client or something like that. And that kind of is gonna influence, it's gonna make your ethical questions a lot trickier for sorting through. And I think it makes things a little more confusing for figuring out how to best represent a client because maybe now you're pulling in some of your own emotional baggage that you might have as then influencing, like, oh, this client should do this, or we should advise them in this way instead of that way. And I think it's really important to make sure we're kind of we're we have empathy for our clients, but we're checking that at the door because the number one thing that I tell my students, the number one thing we're trying to do for our clients is to maintain their dignity for as long as possible. So we want to we want to give them information, but we don't necessarily want to give them influence. You know, we want to empower them to make their best decisions and empower their families to kind of relieve some of the stress so that they can figure out what they actually want to do um in these really stressful, oftentimes emergency situations.

SPEAKER_02 5:10

Sure. And I'm sure they work with clients for the longest period, what six months maybe or one semester?

SPEAKER_00 5:16

Yeah, typically our cases last about one semester.

SPEAKER_02 5:20

What I hate about Elder Law is you get super nice clients, they come in and they die, you know. Just you get so emotionally attached. I'm I'm tearing up right now just thinking about it sometimes because you just get these people in and you just love them and you've helped them through a very difficult time and they love you back. And then they stink and die. And it's just like, oh my God, you know, this is the I think Edo is the best job in the world, but it is tough sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

But that's why it's I mean, we've had clients who have connected with our students and then they've they've come back to their graduation, you know, they're and they always say, Well, when you're out there, when you're a real attorney, I'm gonna come hire you, you know, because they've built this trusting relationship. Um I think it's great for the students because when you're in law school, you know, you you feel like you don't know anything yet, you know, and so getting to that connection and ownership over a case uh that where the students get to feel like, oh, I made a difference for this person and they haven't even passed the bar exam yet. I think that's really influential for how they go about their future legal careers. And I'm always trying to convince them to have a heart for pro bono work in the future too. Like even if this isn't your practice area, and you can you can see a minimal amount of your time made such a huge difference to this one client. Maybe, maybe all you did was just draft a super simple will, but that's all that they needed, you know, and and you just made a world of difference to them, and they're gonna be so grateful.

SPEAKER_02 6:47

Nice. Okay.

Hard Talks About Death And Incapacity

SPEAKER_02 6:48

Is there anything you do to teach these kids how to have difficult conversations? I mean, you're talking about life-changing death and dying and incapacity. How do you prepare them for that?

SPEAKER_00 6:59

Yeah, that that is difficult. And I I start off the first two weeks of class, we do a lot of reflection just on our own personal thoughts of you know, our own end of life. And and some students like that conversation more than others, you know. Um it always seems rewarding because the students you know, when you're 22 years old, it it's hard to have a concept of, oh, if I'm ever have to be on life support, or if if I'm in a coma or something like that, you know, it's it's we're very far away from those questions. But I think it they always also provide really interesting moral and legal and ethical quandaries, you know, and and law students love sorting through those, you know. But this was an issue that it's it's so fragile sometimes to talk about death and end of life and and chronic illness and all of these things. And because I was worried about I actually went and got trained online through the University of Vermont through their end of life doula certification.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

Oh, wow. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

Because I wanted to have more resources to just approach those conversations. Um and and that really I think helped a lot. I think having conversations about not just like elder law and estate planning, but also like just, you know, the bigger pictures of life. Like, what what do we want our meaning out of life to be when we're law students? That might mean something different than it means to like our grandparents and stuff. And so we try to have those big life questions up front in the clinic so we can we can kind of have a concept of how the gravity of these conversations and this kind of work for our clients so that when you go meet with clients, we have a little more of the law students have a little more of a concept of, oh, this is like this is a life-changing question for them. Like their family members are passing, their children are grown, like all of these things are are can be earth-shattering for folks. And so we try to connect with that a little bit in ourselves first before we go start telling other people how to make decisions about their life, you know.

SPEAKER_02 8:49

Yeah, that's true. I I find, you know, when you're less than 30, you've probably not seen anyone pass away, to be honest. And so many times when I'm in the office and we're going through the living well, you know, do I want CPR? Do I want a respirator? Do I want you know, and people, you know, when you're that age, see and above typically, you you're like, remember that's what they did for dad. And remember they kept dad on the ventilator way too long, and I don't want that to have, you know, they've personally been through this with someone else, and it's very vivid to them. Where when you're 25, you're like, yeah, I don't uh that wouldn't be good, but I you know, I've never seen that. And so

Elder Financial Exploitation In Real Life

SPEAKER_02 9:31

okay. Let's jump into what I see as a huge issue nowadays that I see probably every week is elder exploitation.

SPEAKER_03 9:42

Mm-hmm.

unknown 9:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:43

So I know this is a big thing with you. I've I've read the story on you, and I I know this is something that should be important to every attorney everywhere, but particularly in elder law, we see this all the time. I've got situations right now where I did a POA for someone, and the daughter that we kind of kicked out of, you know, kicked off the gravy train, she went and did another POA.

SPEAKER_03 10:09

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:10

Draining mom's bank account and and just you know, causing all kinds of problems. Many times it's family, but a lot of times it's not family. Talk to us about that. What have you seen and what are your solutions here?

SPEAKER_00 10:22

Yeah, yeah. So I I funny enough, you one of your first podcast episodes, I think it's called Who is the Client?

SPEAKER_03 10:28

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

And I have the students listen to that first because it helps them conceptualize, like if a family if we get an intake call and it's like a disgruntled sibling who wants to sign that second PO POA, right? We have to teach the students how to step back and consider, like, okay, this person who called us is very upset and it would be nice to help them, but who is the person who's really at risk here? And so who is the client that we're trying to serve? And are we gonna if if we can talk to them directly, um, maybe we can have a conversation, right? So that's like a level level one is I think trying to teach the students how to really parse through who the client is and who we're trying to assist and and what confidentiality means in those contexts. But then the so so those are the the we know who the scammers are kind of, and I think kind of more complex than that what we see in in Florida a lot is businesses that are the scammers or people who are not family members coming in. Uh, and a lot of times when we've seen those in our clinic, most often it's it's not necessarily something that that our clients didn't know was happening, but it's like it's a contract that they did sign, they just didn't realize what the scope of that contract was, or they didn't realize what was actually gonna happen to them. And all the lawyers know once you sign a contract, it's really hard to undo them, right? So we can't just say, oh yeah, well, you know, you were you were a little nervous about signing it, so let's go get it undone. Like a judge isn't gonna do that, right?

SPEAKER_03 11:53

Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

But I like to think that Florida, um, we're actually we're doing pretty good with some of the laws that we've been able to pass in the past few years pertaining to financial exploitation. There are, of course, I think most states have laws that kind of there's an increased penalty if you're an elderly or disabled person, right? So we kind of can play with some of those and we kind of use our criminal and civil laws together, perhaps when we're writing a demand letter to a company that's that scammed one of our clients, um, and kind of bring that extra pressure of potential criminal liability if they don't stop harassing our client or stop knocking on their door or stop sending them this bill that is not a real bill or that doesn't have an accounting. We've leveraged the media with some of this too, sometimes and said, Oh, like so many of these are like, you know, the solar power installation companies, the pest control companies. And we've kind of said, Oh, we'd really, you know, we could we could write a story about about this experience our client is happening is having with you. And sometimes that can be pretty

Crypto ATM Scams And New Regulation

SPEAKER_00 12:52

effective. But more recently, the the um the cybercrimes and the cryptocurrency stuff has become such a huge issue. And this year in Florida, we just we passed one bill, our state legislature that's going to kind of regulate those cryptocurrency. They call them cryptocurrency ATMs, but they aren't aren't actually ATMs. They're just cryptocurrency machines at like those gas stations and stuff. Um, and there are some really alarming statistics that I think um that some different groups put together about like it was into the 90s, like 90% of the and above of the transactions on those machines are scams. And and a majority of those transactions are transactions done by people 60 and older. These those machines are they're really just a tool for financial exploitation of our elderly folks. Um we really need to be regulated. We're if we're gonna have those, they need to be regulated just like our our Bank of America ATMs are regulated, you know?

SPEAKER_03 13:46

Yeah, interesting.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

So, and and our I our state attorney general is also doing a lot to kind of investigate where this crypto, like when someone is scammed and cryptocurrency is at play, there's some really great investigation that they're doing that's kind of uncovering where that money is actually coming from and where it's going. And then they've been able to recover cases for an individual that then they find out it's linked to like hundreds of other cases too. So then hopefully we can recover things for one person and then that leads to recovering things for more folks. So I'm proud of what we've done so far in Florida, but there's definitely a lot more to do.

Warning Signs And Shame In Consults

SPEAKER_02 14:20

Yeah. So what are some warning signs that we as elder law attorneys should be looking for?

SPEAKER_00 14:27

Yeah, I think what what I talked about with the students is uh just an extreme level of like nervousness or shame is always kind of something that you want to explore more. Um, because I think so many times our our clients feel it even if this did happen to them, even if it was a small, smaller amount of money, they just feel embarrassed that they happened, right? And so we work really hard to create an environment where they're willing to share that, you know. Try to try to poke at some of those questions, even if we are in just a traditional estate planning meeting, we we're like, oh, so like have you been on any vacations this year, or what kind of because one time we had a client a client who said, Oh yeah, I got a free cruise this year. I'm so excited to go on that vacation, right? And and um it was not a free cruise. So we try to kind of let those kind of conversations be more on the front. Um and a lot of my students um have started to share their own experiences of financial exploitation off the bat. Like I had a one student who got scammed by a it was Valentine's Day and he was buying flowers for his girlfriend and and realized that the link he clicked on was not actually a flower company. And he shares that like off the bat with some of his clients as a joke so that he can kind of hopefully make his clients feel a little more comfortable and be like, oh well, you know, that was silly, wasn't it? You know, and then hopefully if somebody has experienced something like that, they're a little more comfortable sharing it with us.

SPEAKER_02 15:52

Yeah. The one that's getting me right now, I've I've got two different clients that you know, this lady's pushing 80. I mean, she's late 70s, and not to be ugly, but she looks, I mean, she looks rough, okay? And the star from Chicago Fire, you know, this guy is suddenly in love with her and wants to marry her, and she is firmly, she believes he truly wants to marry her. And I'm like, but he keeps asking for money. I'm like, this guy has tons of money. Why well, you know, they've they've tied up his bank accounts, and he can't get access to money. He almost had her fly to Chicago. He was going to quote, rent a room and propose to her in this room, and he needed, you know, $3,500 to rent the room. He would pay her back once she got there, and just she was hook line and sinker, man. She just she said, Yeah, he loves me. And I'm like, ma'am, why? He just broke up with I think Lady Gaga or something. We go from Lady Gaga to you. I mean, not to be ugly, but I'm just saying this just I wouldn't want to follow Lady Gaga. But I mean, she I there is nothing that I or her son could do. She will sit in my office and say, Yeah, you're probably right. And then the son says, once she walks out the door, she's like, No, I'm going to see. It's like, oh my God.

Freezing Assets With An Exploitation Injunction

SPEAKER_00 17:16

That reminds me of another another thing that we recently, well, it's not recent anymore, but it's still it's still a a new-ish statute. Um, but it's called the financial exploitation injunction in Florida that we developed.

SPEAKER_03 17:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:29

It serves as, you know, it's an injunction, but you can bring it for an elderly or vulnerable adult, and it allows, if the injunction gets granted, it allows a full freezing of the assets. The judge can say, this bank account is closed now until we figure out who these people influencing this person are and what's going on. And they can allow for like minimal distributions if there's like a house payment that needs to be made or something like that. But that financial freeze is so crucial and and it's been so effective for helping some of our seniors who they still, you know, the these things happen fast and money just gets transferred out of accounts like within hours. Um, and so that injunction has been a real great tool. And you don't have to be the the victim in order to bring that injunction, which is slightly different from like say a domestic violence. Interesting. You can be you can be a guardian and bring that injunction, but you can also be someone who's petitioning for guardianship. So maybe you're trying to you realize, you know, something's going on with mom. This is really scary. We need to protect her assets. Mom doesn't believe that, you know, she she thinks he is in love with her and they're gonna get married. And you can file um this injunction at the same time you're petitioning for an emergency temporary guardianship and just instantly frees that account. Um, so that as the guardianship gets sorted out, or maybe we don't need a guardianship in the long run, maybe we can sort things out in another way. But that um that injunction is a really great tool to use initially to protect folks. And we've started putting into our durable powers of attorney, we've put um a superpower in there that just permits the agent to file that injunction on the principal behalf. But it and it for those the exact those the those exact examples you're talking about, um it's really hard to the line between like autonomy and paternalism and protecting folks that um that perhaps aren't convinced that they need to be protected is really really scary sometimes.

SPEAKER_02 19:19

It's hard. Yeah. My power of attorney has the ability to close bank accounts, to gift money, and so sometimes, worst case scenario, it's like just just go grab the money and put it somewhere else, just so she she can't have access to it. But an injunction would be nice. I mean, a court-ordered injunction would be nice.

Dementia Capacity Without Rushing Guardianship

SPEAKER_02 19:41

Um I can't let you go without us talking about one of my favorite topics, and I know you may not want to go into depth. Let's talk about the issue. Well, 1.14 has gone through some reiterations. The most recent one just goes even further to say we as attorneys have to help clients do the best they can, okay, and not just throw people into guardianship court. You know, guardianship court takes away the clients' rights. We as America do we go way to the other side to protect criminals, juries beyond a reasonable doubt, you know, free attorneys, Miranda rights, everything, the right to remain silent, to to help make sure people don't lose rights. But what I see is once you've been diagnosed with dementia, it's like, okay, you're gone. Okay, you're you're out. And it just wears me out. And I do have a very recent podcast that that should be up sometime soon about that. How do you work with clients, students, and clients? It's like, oh, she she she doesn't she doesn't remember what she ate for breakfast, so therefore she can't sign documents.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

Yeah, yeah. And we have a lot of people um call us. We have a connection with our local healthcare provider in a neurology office, so we'll get a lot of calls from the neurology office saying, Oh, well, they just got diagnosed with dementia, so now they need a guardianship, you know, and we try to say, hey, like we can help you, but we don't need to do that.

SPEAKER_03 21:07

You know, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

And I think in our in our context in the clinic, too, because the folks that we're working with, they they're here because they can't afford an attorney in the first place. So they can't afford an attorney to do a power of attorney for them, let alone an attorney to file a whole guardianship case for them. And I talk about that with the students a lot too, because if someone comes to us, maybe they are, you know, they don't, if they don't remember what they had for breakfast that morning, but they know who their daughter is and they want their daughter to take care of things for them, but they have a, you know, maybe a diagnosis of gnosis of cognitive decline. I give the students the example of okay, say, say we were too nervous about contractual capacity in that situation, and we were like, actually, you really need a guardianship. We would send that person who has zero dollars already to. Go find a private attorney to pay probably at least $8,000 to initiate guardianship and keep it going. And who would get appointed? Probably the daughter who we were gonna appoint as agent already because they don't have anybody else in their life. So I try to with that rule, I think context is so important. And we can't just look at all of our clients as these like isolated ethical questions. We have to say who who is this client and where are they now in their span of life, but also who are their family members, who are their potential exploiters, and what should we actually be worried about for this client in order, as you said, to get them, if we want to get them the best care and the best services they need, I don't want to make them go through a guardianship to get the same result, right? Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 22:43

Thank you so much.

Accessibility And Team Based Elder Law

SPEAKER_00 22:45

Yeah. And I think this is something that I hope that, well, I know that private attorneys are aware of this too, but I think just seeing the legal aid lens of some of these issues and how overrun our our guardianship courts are and how overrun our legal aid centers are. And we really, this is like my the hill that I'm gonna tie on is we need to make this area of law more accessible to everyday people. We need to not be building bigger and bigger barriers to getting access to like real estate planning. We need to be making it into like probate processes. We need to be making it easier for folks to understand the law that surrounds how how do I die, how do I take care of myself and my family at the end of life? That should be something that is close to home for folks, not something that we need to go pay attorneys a bunch of bunch of money to do. We need to we need the attorneys with the expertise for when really bad litigation happens, right? We need to save our court systems for um for those really uh difficult legal questions. Um, but we overall need to make things more accessible for folks.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

Nice. Thank you. Thank you. Um preaching my song. So okay. Um, so let's talk about ancillary professionals. Or do you teach your your students to work with other professionals? Because this isn't just a one-person team. We need a number of people on this team. Talk about that for just a second, please.

SPEAKER_00 24:09

Yeah, and I I love that I'm at Florida State for that exact purpose because I get to work here at the at the Claude Pepper Elder Law Clinic. And we actually Claude Pepper, I don't know if you know Senator Claude Pepper, but he was one of the original advocates of of aging and and rights for seniors. Um he has a really amazing history um as a lawmaker in the United States. Okay. But so my clinic is based off of or was started from um a foundation connected to him. And they also have a few other pockets at other parts of FSU. So there's folks in sociology who study aging, and there's folks in political science who study aging policy, and there are folks in the criminology department who study financial exploitation from a criminology lens. And folks in social work who study gerontology. So at FSU, we try to collaborate with all of those different practitioners, and I have them come in as guest speakers in our class because I want the students to see the value of like that holistic approach to this practice area. So many of the issues that our clients have are beyond legal issues, right? Like they definitely need legal assistance, but they also need like a social worker, you know? And so and lawyers should, I think we get overwhelmed as lawyers if we try to take on all of those roles and put all of those hats on. And so working, having community connections and working with people who have expertise in these other areas of like whether it's social work or criminology or whatever, um, can really just enhance the services that you yourself can bring to your clients. Um, because we can't be experts in everything, right?

SPEAKER_02 25:40

Sure, sure. We can't. I mean, we have enough, you know, doing just this little laser phone thing. So good. Okay.

Listen Better And Commit To Pro Bono

SPEAKER_02 25:49

All right. I think final question, just kind of if if you could sit down with every attorney in America for five or ten minutes regarding working with older people, what what would you tell them?

SPEAKER_00 26:01

That's I think all I think the number one thing that we can do as attorneys is to learn to listen to our clients a little bit better. And I think we I think we always think we're listening well, you know, but I think especially when uh maybe you know, we've been doing this a long time, we start to see patterns and cases. We see the same family members come in with the same stresses, and we start to kind of pinpoint the issues and say, oh yes, this is this kind of case, you need this. Um and when we start to do that, it's great to have expertise, right? But sometimes we get too we can get too a little too cookie-cutter with each case. And I think we start to block out the unique issues that our clients might be trying to tell us. Um, and I think that's even more crucial in elder law because so many of our clients are already like really nervous to be there and they're scared about what's happening in their life. So they might already be unwilling to share um some of these scary details. And sometimes those details have really crucial pieces of information that can help us serve them even better and create an estate plan or a trust plan that's gonna really get it not just like, oh, how do we save all of your money, but how do you actually want the rest of your life to look? And who do you what do you want surrounding you in the last few years of your life? Where do you want to live and how can we set things up for those value-oriented things instead of just those financial oriented things? And we really have to listen in order to do that. Um, and I think it's we we just we need to check ourselves on that like constantly, you know, easy not to be like, oh yes, I know the answer to this. We're gonna go, we're gonna go forward with this kind of plan. But listening is just really crucially important. And then the other, the other thing though, if if I can say too, um, is just the value of pro bono work. It really just takes an hour to do to make like a lifetime of a difference for somebody. And our judges will appreciate you for doing that. Because if you can set something up that that makes sense, so then it doesn't get to court in in a in a mess, a handbasket full of like a bunch of mess, um, the our judges are gonna appreciate that, our court system is gonna appreciate that. Um, and I think that's something that as lawyers, we have an ethical duty to protect our courts and to make sure they're functioning well. Um, and all of us are are part of part of the team to make sure that's happening. And so doing pro bono work up well and effectively is is part of that, I think.

SPEAKER_02 28:18

Yeah, okay. I agree. You know, like that. I Northwest Arkansas is has a lot of money and uh a lot of things going on, but they and there there is a legal clinic, but I've seen some of the things they've done regarding elder law, and it's just it's honestly not that good. It's they're not elder law attorneys, they're there for like poor people, you know, not elderly poor people, and it it just drives me crazy. And one thing I've thought about doing, and I may pursue this as I get older and kind of on my way out is you know, try to do something with the clinic and you know uh duplicate what you're

Final Thoughts And Where To Learn More

SPEAKER_02 28:54

doing. So all right, Rima. Any final words you want to tell my folks?

SPEAKER_00 28:58

I'm just thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_02 29:00

You're welcome.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

I love your commission. I really think that this is the best area of law. I I did not know that it existed when I was in law school and learned about it later. And every day I'm just like, man, I really wish I knew that this was a thing that I could do. So I I really love that you're spreading that that message. Thank you. I think even and uh attorneys from all backgrounds can benefit from this, even if you know personal injured injury attorneys still need to know a little bit about elder law, you know. Oh, people have ricks. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 29:30

Yeah, cool.

SPEAKER_00 29:31

I think it's just really great. Um, and please continue to make podcasts because they they help my students and they're helping the next generation of attorneys.

SPEAKER_02 29:39

I am so honored. I did not know that my podcast was teaching FSU law students. So nice. Okay, wow, big old head today. All right, Rena, thank you so much, and and thank all of you for listening to the Elder Law Coach Podcast, and um, I will see you next time, okay?

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 29:59

Thanks for joining us on the Elder Law Coach Podcast. For more resources, training, and coaching, visit theelderlawcoach.com. I'm Todd Watley, and I'll see you next time as we continue helping attorneys build successful elder law practices and better serve the families who depend on them.