Junior Estate Planning Attorney - Legacy Integration

Acorn Financial Services; Reston (VA); Hybrid; USD 85,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work

Medical benefits

Professional development

Job summary

Acorn Financial Services seeks a Junior Estate Planning Attorney to integrate essential legal architecture into clients' wealth plans, ensuring assets are protected and transferred efficiently across generations. You will collaborate with financial advisors and CPAs to build unified strategies that align with client goals.

You will draft and review Wills, Trusts, POAs, Health Care Proxies, and Deeds, while coordinating with the broader advisory team to optimize outcomes and maintain compliance.

Qualifications

• Strong technical precision in complex legal documents.
• Ability to collaborate with financial advisors, CPAs, and client services teams.
• Commitment to client confidentiality and fiduciary duty.

Responsibilities

• Draft, review, and revise Wills, Trusts, POAs, Health Care Proxies, and Deeds.
• Meet with clients to assess legacy goals and gather data.
• Assist with trust funding and ensure beneficiary updates align across accounts.
• Support probate administration and represent clients in routine court proceedings.
• Participate in joint meetings with tax strategists and investment advisors to mitigate tax liabilities.

Skills

Attention to detail

Collaboration

Integrity

Client-focused

Execution

Job description

The Mission

The vast majority of financial lives are broken into isolated silos. A CPA handles the tax returns, an investment advisor manages the brokerage accounts, and an external attorney drafts an often-outdated will, with none of them communicating to form a cohesive strategy. This fragmentation creates dangerous gaps and tax inefficiencies. At Acorn Financial Services, we are eliminating these silos. We serve as a single, proactive team built on a foundation of holistic stewardship. As our Junior Estate Planning Attorney, your mission is to integrate essential legal architecture into our clients' overarching wealth plans, ensuring their assets are protected, efficiently transferred, and legally sound across generations.

Who You Are

• You build with the long game in mind. You understand that an estate plan is not a transactional, single-use document. It is a living, breathing architecture that must compound in value and adapt as a client's wealth, tax landscape, and family dynamics evolve over decades.
• You hold an uncompromising standard of technical precision. In the legal realm, excellence is not optional. You sweat the meticulous details in complex legal documentation because you inherently understand that minor drafting errors can trigger major tax liabilities or disastrous legacy implications for the families we serve.
• You value collaboration over ego. You are not looking to operate in a solitary legal vacuum where you bill hours in isolation. You thrive in environments where you must coordinate directly with financial advisors, CPAs, and client services teams to build a unified, impenetrable strategy.
• You possess unimpeachable character. Estate planning requires managing deeply personal family matters, inheritance dynamics, and asset protection strategies. You handle client confidentiality and your fiduciary duty with absolute integrity, embodying sincere candor in all client interactions.
• You thrive in disciplined execution. Big ideas matter, but execution wins. You know the probate procedures, court filings, and trust mechanics inside and out, and you bring relentless structure and accountability to case management.

What You Will Do

• Draft, meticulously review, and revise core legal instruments, including standard and complex Wills, Revocable and Irrevocable Trusts, Powers of Attorney (POA), Health Care Proxies, and Deeds.
• Meet directly with clients to assess their legacy goals, gather pertinent family and financial data, and explain intricate estate planning options in a highly practical, understandable manner.
• Actively assist with the crucial step of trust funding, ensuring that beneficiary updates are perfectly aligned across all investment and brokerage accounts managed by the broader Acorn advisory team.
• Support probate administration processes and represent clients in routine court proceedings when necessary, ensuring all legal deadlines and compliance requirements are strictly met.
• Participate in joint client meetings with Acorn tax strategists and investment advisors to ensure your drafted legal strategies actively mitigate tax liabilities and support the holistic wealth plan.

How We Measure Success (Outcomes)

• Maintain a strictly defined turnaround time for initial document drafts while sustaining a near-zero error rate regarding legal formatting, statutory compliance, and typographical precision.
• Successfully integrate comprehensive legal plans with the internal wealth advisory teams for a targeted percentage (e.g., 85%+) of your assigned client base within the first 180 days.
• Achieve top-tier client feedback scores regarding your ability to simplify complex legal concepts and establish deep, trusting relationships.

What We Offer

You will step into a highly collaborative culture of growth where you work alongside senior architects of wealth. We have stripped away the siloed, toxic billing pressures typical of traditional law firms; our focus is entirely on client outcomes and holistic financial well-being. We provide comprehensive medical, dental, and vision benefits, hybrid work flexibility, and robust professional development support tailored to advance your legal expertise.