The History of WealthCounsel

Bill Conway	Ed Dean	Stan Miller	Peter Parenti	Tom Ray
Roberta Trudeau	Carl Waldman	Dennis Brislawn	Lew Dymond	Scott Schrader

The story of WealthCounsel begins with a small group of practicing attorneys working together as colleagues – not as competitors – who created the most cutting-edge document creation system in the estate planning field. They believed that no matter how much expertise and professional knowledge one has in his or her field, financial success ultimately depends upon how efficiently, quickly, and accurately the practitioner can produce quality legal documents.

Recognizing that there was no document creating system commercially available to meet their needs, these nine attorneys – who became the founders of WealthCounsel – created an open architecture system using two commercially available software applications: HotDocs for the document assembly engine, and Microsoft Word for word processing.

The WealthDocx suite of software is the result of that collaboration. As WealthCounsel membership continues to grow, new members contribute their expertise for the benefit of their colleagues – one of the unique characteristics that sets WealthCounsel apart from its competitors.

The original partners were William A. Conway, W. Edward Dean, Stan Miller, Peter J. Parenti, Thomas J. Ray, Jr., Merek Rubin, Roberta J. Trudeau, Carl Waldman and Jeffrey Zabner.

These individuals came together as friends and colleagues and the initial partnership was called The Jackson Group - with articles of incorporation filed in the State of Arkansas in July, 1997. Their initial purpose was to collaborate on large estates of $25 million and up, with each attorney providing their area of expertise both in legal-technical knowledge and legal documents they had drafted. Roberta Trudeau was the only non-attorney and provided marketing and management leadership. Each attorney partner continued their separate practices full-time as estate planning specialists while Roberta worked full-time for the new company as Executive Director.

In 1998, the partners formed the National Study Group – an educational forum for advanced practitioners to learn from leading experts in various areas of trusts and estates law. Also in 1998, C. Dennis Brislawn became the 10th principal. Eventually, the group added additional CLE courses taught by the principals of The Jackson Group. This expanded their initial audience of 50 National Study Group members to several hundred attorney colleagues including Lewis W. Dymond.

1999-2000 was a critical transition period for The Jackson Group when it changed its focus and name to WealthCounsel, LLC. During that period, two partners – Merek Rubin and Jeffrey Zabner left the partnership to focus full-time on their practices.

The principals of WealthCounsel recognized a need within their own practices for a comprehensive automated drafting system that was constantly updated to reflect changes in the law and advanced planning strategies. Scott Schrader, the lead force and architect of the Revocable Living Trust System, became the ninth full partner in 2001. 

Lewis W. Dymond, an attorney who had attended WealthCounsel events, urged the company to create such a system. Having a strong technology background, Lew Dymond joined the WealthCounsel family to create the first formal version of WealthDocx.  Lew served as CEO from 2000 to 2006 and became a partner in 2005.