Practice area
Data coverage · Q3 goalThe great
wealth transfer
is underway.
$84 trillion in generational wealth moves over the next two decades. Estate planning, trust administration, and elder law firms are sitting at the center of it, and most still market like it's 1998. Firmatics is building the data layer for the category's decade.
US market
$10B
Data coverage
Shipping 2027
$10B
US estate/trust legal services
25,000+
Estate/elder law attorneys
60%
of Americans have no will
$84T
Wealth transfer through 2045
The market
Professional referrals.
Trust compounding.
Content authority.
Estate planning is the only major legal vertical where most clients don't search in the moment of need. They ask their financial advisor. Their CPA. Their friend at church. A lawyer they heard speak at the Rotary.
The firms that win estate aren't running PPC campaigns. They're building 15-year content authority, 30-year financial-advisor relationships, and being the name that gets passed around. Marketing here looks nothing like PI.
What makes it different
Estate planning isn't purchased with urgency. It sits on the to-do list for years. Marketing has to stay present across that long consideration window.
Financial advisors, CPAs, insurance agents, and prior clients drive the overwhelming majority of high-value estate cases.
Trust & Will, LegalZoom, and financial-advisor will-writing tools are eating the simple end. Retained practice has to move upmarket.
The firms with the best podcasts, books, and SEO content own the category. Nothing compounds like authority in estate.
Where the money goes
$300M a year,
spent building
trust slowly.
Estate planning marketing is the opposite of PI, tiny paid spend, massive referral-advisory investment, and long-cycle content authority that compounds for decades.
2026 Estate & Trust channel mix · industry estimate
Sources: SEMrush · Firmatics industry estimates. Firm-level coverage shipping 2027.
National authority firm
$1–3M
National estate firms running podcasts, books, seminars, and FA-advisory programs. Trust is the product; marketing builds it.
Regional firm
$75K–400K
Multi-office regional estate firms with systematic FA-advisory programs and local seminars.
Boutique / Solo
$5K–40K
Most estate firms. Referral-dominant. Paid spend is minimal. Relationship depth matters more than budget.
What estate firms face
The problems specific
to estate marketing.
Your FA network is your pipeline, and unmeasurable.
70% of your business comes from financial advisor referrals. You have no system tracking which FAs are referring, at what rate, or why. The entire pipeline lives on relationships you can't audit.
Trust & Will is eating the simple end.
$200 online wills take simple clients off the market. You can't price-compete. You have to reposition upmarket, which means repositioning your marketing.
Multi-year content compounding is painful.
Content authority is the moat, but it takes 3-5 years of consistent publishing. Most firms can't sustain the investment without seeing monthly ROI. The firms that do win the decade.
Your client base is dying.
An estate client is transactional with long churn, they die, estates close, heirs go elsewhere. Continuous new-client acquisition is existential. Most firms think of estate as "retention" but it's actually relentless acquisition.
Fee-based vs. hourly is shifting economics.
Modern estate firms are moving to flat-fee packages. Marketing the package vs. marketing the hourly lawyer requires completely different positioning. Most firms haven't made the shift.
Seminars used to work. Now they don't.
The 90s-era retirement-center seminar playbook is fading. Digital content, podcasts, and virtual events haven't fully replaced it. The firms that figure out the next-gen version own the 2030s.
Data layer · Estate & Trust
The dataset
we're building.
FIRM PROFILES
202725,000+ estate firms
Every estate/trust/elder law firm profiled with practice mix, fee model (hourly vs flat), seminar cadence, and Marketing Firm Score.
FA NETWORK MAP
2027Financial-advisor advisory graph
Public FA-firm advisorys (co-branded content, referral agreements, co-sponsored events) resolved to firm. The invisible pipeline mapped.
CONTENT AUTHORITY
2027Content + podcast scoring
Domain authority, published books, podcast reach, speaking engagements. Who owns category content in your DMA and nationally.
SEMINAR INTEL
2027Event + seminar tracking
Who's running what in-person and virtual events, with what frequency, at what venues. The competitive event calendar.
PROBATE INTEL
2027Probate court volumes
Public probate filings resolved to firm, who's handling volume, what estate values, what contested-estate signals.
VENDOR INDEX
2027Estate-firm vendor directory
Document assembly software, probate-admin SaaS, elder-care referral networks, estate-planning CRMs. Verified pricing and reviews.
Our most valuable asset is a relationship chart with 400 financial advisors. It took fifteen years to build. Nobody sold a product that could help me systematize it. Until now.
In practice
How estate firms
will use it.
Systematize your FA pipeline
Identify FAs who refer, and FAs who could. Build a real pipeline view instead of managing it in your head.
Audit content authority
See domain authority, published content, and content reach vs. your top 5 competitors. Know where the whitespace is.
Reposition against DIY tools
Benchmark what upmarket estate firms do differently in positioning, fee models, and FA-advisory programs.
Plan a seminar strategy
See what events competitors run, where, at what cadence, then plan a calendar that doesn't compete head-on.
Map probate filings
See which firms handle probate volume in your county, and where your estate-planning pipeline naturally extends.
Design a flat-fee package
See how competitors price flat-fee estate packages and the positioning that makes them convert.
Launch a podcast or book
See which estate firms have published books, podcasts, and long-form content, and which ones actually drive business.
Recruit an associate
The attorney directory filters by estate specialty (trusts, elder law, tax, special needs) and firm tenure.
Evaluate acquisition targets
Estate firms trade on client list quality, FA relationships, and content authority. See the real assets before bidding.
Estate by firm size
Different stages.
Different playbooks.
1–5 LAWYERS
Solo & Boutique
Local FA relationships, community presence, trust-building.
Explore →
6–20 LAWYERS
Growing
Regional FA program, flat-fee packages, podcast.
Explore →
20–50 LAWYERS
Scale
Multi-location, national content authority, books.
Explore →
50+ LAWYERS
Enterprise / PE
Category-defining estate platform, RIA + CPA advisorys.
Explore →
How to engage
Start with Community.
RECOMMENDED
Community
$2,000/mo · no lock-in
Monthly strategy session with a senior legal marketing operator, estate operator peers, FA-advisory playbooks, early access to the dataset.
Explore
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Market Intelligence
Custom · invite-only
Estate dataset launches 2027. Reserve a seat for early access.
Reserve access
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Strategic Advisory
Custom · waitlist
Estate-specialized advisor joins the bench as engagements open.
Join waitlist
FAQ
Common questions about estate.
Do you cover elder law and Medicaid planning?
How do you source FA advisory data?
When does data coverage ship?
What is a Marketing Firm Score?
Early access
Be first when it ships.
Estate coverage ships 2027. Early-access firms shape roadmap, get the dataset before public release, and receive a pre-publication State of Estate & Trust report.