Digital Assets, The Truth About Trusts, and Writing Your Own Niche with Demetre Vasilounis

Welcome to Studying Law Around the World. I'm Claudio Claus. In each episode, I talk with lawyers, law students, and professors from different parts of the world to talk about legal education, careers, and what the profession looks like in real life. We talk about the hard parts, the surprises, and the decisions that shaped their paths. Whether you're planning to study abroad, thinking about working in another legal system, or just curious about how law works around the world, this podcast is for you. Today I'm joined by Dimitri Vassilounis, a trust and estates lawyer, a recognized leader in family wealth and succession planning. Dimitri advises high net worth and ultra high net worth individuals and families on estate, trust, tax, business succession, and family governance matters with a particular focus on the rapidly evolving area of digital assets. He's a frequent speaker, writer, and advocate on issues at the intersection of wealth planning, technology, and the law. Dimitri, thank you so much for making the time to come to the podcast today. Thank you for having me. I've been looking forward to it. Absolutely. And to start us off, I'd love for you to introduce yourself and share a little bit about your journey into trust and estate law. Yeah, it's been a, it definitely has been a journey and I know we were sort of briefly talking about it before jumping on the podcast, but I'll sort of start from the beginning just to be thorough, I guess. So when I applied to law school, I mean, I did an undergrad degree in professional writing. I've always enjoyed writing. I've always enjoyed, uh, you know, different types of writing, fiction, nonfiction, et cetera. So I thought going into law would allow me to sort of leverage my enjoyment for writing into a sort of like stable career path. My parents also heavily encouraged me to go to law school. They're very entrepreneurial. They wanted me to sort of start my own office. My dad, you know, has a restaurant. My mom had her own medical practice. So They wanted me to do that. When I went to law school, I didn't, you know, although that was sort of, you know, perhaps in my mind, I didn't exactly know what I wanted to do. Certainly I didn't anticipate going into trusts and estates. Certainly I didn't anticipate going into tax, which is a huge part of what we do. And I'm happy to sort of speak about that a little later. But certainly I didn't really contemplate that being the case. One of the good things about working in the, in the big firms in your summer and your articling is that you get to try a whole bunch of different things. So although I sort of went into it thinking, you know, technology law, corporate law, like that sort of stuff, I tried many different things in my summer. The one thing I had not tried in my summer was trust and estates. In my mind, I always thought, oh, lawyers, they do wills, of course, right? So that's got to be something that I try. Like I kind of underestimated, you know, what exactly a trust and estates practice was about. But between doing my summer job and sort of doing my articling job, I, you know, the firm asked us about any feedback that we had or anything we wanted to make sure that we sort of tried or did during articling. So prior to me starting, I just told them like, hey, you know, estates, like I'd like to try that a little bit because I felt like that was the one thing I didn't try when I was summering. What they ended up doing was they gave me a 1-month rotation in a trust and estates practice. It's funny because my mentors at the time were saying, you know, if you're interested in IT, like why are you doing a whole month rotation in estates? You should cancel that, right? But thankfully the student coordinator at the time, she was super supportive. She said, She told me not to cancel it. It would send the wrong message. Just do the rotation. And if I really wanted to do IT work, I could sort of take on that work while, while in this rotation, right? So it was a little flexible in that regard. So my, my situation was a little unique in the sense that, you know, I, I do feel that many people who sort of work in the big firms, like they sort of, you know, by the end of their summer, they know what they want to focus on and they sort of spend their whole articling term focusing on that particular thing. I didn't, I didn't end up doing any trust and estates work until maybe just under halfway. through articling, right? So I didn't know whether or not I was going to enjoy it, but I, it really clicked for me. It clicked for me in a few ways. First of all, I really liked the people in the group. We had an amazing trust and estates group, still continue to have an amazing trust and estates group at Baskin. I found that the area, this area of law was more personal. You were dealing with individual clients. You're not just dealing with big corporations. Many of our clients are business owners, especially in the high net worth, ultra high net worth space. So certainly you have to have a foundational understanding of corporate law to be able to do a high net worth, ultra high net worth trust and estates practice, but The reality is you're really dealing with individuals. You're dealing with family dynamics. You're visiting people in their homes. That's a, that's a, that's a huge part of what we do. Getting documents signed. Still in Ontario, you need to get documents, wills and powers of attorney physically signed with a wet signature. You can do remote signing, but you still need the physical paper. So that was a part of it. And I like the fact that it was very academic and common law oriented, right? So even to this day in what I currently do, I still go back to the fundamental common law principles of like, What is a trustee? What are the obligations of a trustee, right? What are the requirements for a trust? Whether, what are the requirements for a gift? So you're definitely going back to those common law fundamentals. And I find that you, you, you tend to have a number of interesting problems in trusts and estates. Layer on the tax piece as well, right? And you get, you know, all the time we're challenged and we have interesting situations where we don't exactly know what the outcome is going to be. And we have to sort of do our research and, and do a risk analysis for the client. So I thought that was very interesting. Tying it back to the beginning and my interest in writing, writing and speaking, and again, sort of academia for lack of a better term, is a very big part of what we do in trust and estates. And because I enjoy writing, I really sort of vibe with that. When I was at Baskin, I was contributing to the All About Estates blog. So it's a blog sort of aimed at practitioners and different firms and institutions contribute to it. So I was writing for that and I really, really enjoyed that process because it allowed me to be a little more creative and write about interesting things, write about digital assets, which, you know, as you highlighted, I enjoy writing about, but other things like writing about Pokémon cards, writing about my favorite bands, writing about Animal Crossing, right? Like, you know, things like that. So I tried to connect all these things to trust in the state as best I could. And I'm very grateful for the fact that I think both, you know, Fasken and just the broader estates community, I think is very supportive of that creativity. So I, yeah, there are just, there are many, you know, things that sort of stood out to me with a trust and estates practice. And I, you know, 7 years later, I'm still very much happy in this area of law. I don't think I'd choose any other area, to be honest with you. That's amazing. I appreciate you going into detail really, because as a podcast, you know, focused on young lawyers, lawyers who are beginning their careers, I think it really means a lot to get the chance to hear a little bit of a broader view of what a practice area looks like. It doesn't look like only, you know, staying in your room drafting all day. It could look like that, but it's awesome that you made a practice that, you know, involves all these different aspects of it. And I understand your work then spans, you know, estate planning, tax, governance, even I'm guessing some cross-border matters as well. And how do these different areas come together in your day-to-day practice? Can you give us maybe an example? Yeah, it totally depends on the client and what their assets are at the end of the day. I do feel that there's no such thing as a straightforward estate plan. Some plans are different than others. Some plans are definitely more complicated than others, but that is for sure. But in terms of everything coming together, I mean, one thing I'll say when I sort of went into estate planning was how significant the tax piece was, right? And I feel like that's something that maybe some people, maybe especially some younger lawyers don't know. So when I'm speaking with younger lawyers who are looking to get into trust and estate, I always tell them you have to be comfortable with tax and you have to understand tax, right? I think there are many practitioners out there who do wills in addition to a bunch of other things, right? And, and I think that it's very easy, you know, to like, wills seem like straightforward documents, right, that can be completed relatively easily for clients. And I think for a number of clients, maybe simple wills and powers of attorney sort of make sense for them. But I do strongly feel that if you are going to be a trust and estates lawyer, you really have to first of all specialize in the practice and sort of focus on that because there is so much to learn. And Going back to tax, tax is a huge part of that. So in my practice, I don't just do wills and powers of attorney for clients. I do the estate plan, right? And the estate plan involves walking through the client, explaining what's going to happen on death and taxation is going to happen on death, explaining that if they're setting up trusts in their will, how are those trusts going to be taxed, for example? And then we get into, you know, how are those trusts also going to be managed? Who are the trustees going to be? How are the trustees going to be picked? Who are the executors? And then you look at the assets and say, well, are there cross-border considerations, right? Is there a beneficiary who lives somewhere else other than Canada? Is there like real estate in the US or in Europe or whatever, right? And, and so it all sort of comes piece by piece. So you have to be good at project managing as well. I'm a little neurotic when it comes to my approach to estate planning because I do detailed emails, I do detailed memos, and maybe, you know, that might be something I need to work on a little bit because I know some clients, some clients like the detail and some clients just want you to sort of like like hit the key things, right? But I do find that there are many moving parts to an estate plan. So to sort of answer your question again, it depends as is the case for many things in law, trust law fundamentals, taxation on death, taxation of trusts, governance of trusts and cross-border. Like there are certainly a number of files that I've worked on where we have clients that, that who have estate plans that touch on all of those things. So I think the point I'm trying to make at the end of the day is that if you're looking to get into this area, you have to think, you have to consider the fact that you're not just doing spitting out wills and powers of attorney. And certainly, I hope you're not spitting out trusts, that's for sure, because those are complicated. But I do think, I do think you have to sit down and think about the client estate plan, right? Especially again, on the taxation side, are there opportunities for life insurance? Are there opportunities for tax savings, right? Are there gifts that the client wants to make today, for example, to potentially reduce like what's going to be subject to probate tax, for example? Or do they want to set up an alter ego trust as an alternative? There, there are many different vehicles and options for clients. It's hard to have a sort of thorough understanding of the different options available if you're not really engrossing yourself in it. It seems like the area of state law, laws and states, and tax law are some of the areas that have the most commonly widespread opportunities for further education and certifications, right? So I see the CRA has some opportunities for further study, and also there is designation and certification called STEP. I'd love to ask a little bit more about the organization itself later when I talk about your volunteer work and that, but Can you tell us just briefly about how, how one would go about, you know, studying more? I understand there are exams, there's study pieces. Can you, can you just walk us through that a little bit? 100%. Yeah. So the designation you're talking about, yes, it's facilitated by STEP. So STEP is the Society of Trust and Estates Practitioners. The actual designation is called the TEP, the Trust and Estate Practitioner designation. So, I mean, there are different ways to get your TEP. There is like a sort of like essay route, for example, or if you have like a number of years of experience, right, you can sort of apply that way. I think you're asking from the perspective of newer folks who are looking to get into this area. So typically for newer folks, you, you know, you do 4 exams, right? First, you learn about the fundamentals of trust law, like what is a trust? What are trustees? What are their obligations? That sort of thing. Second is taxation of trusts. And that was extremely helpful for me and sort of my learning and the materials that I got from STEP, I still refer back to for particular issues. The third is will and estate administration. So if somebody passes away, you know, what do you do? Sort of thing. And then the fourth is estate trust and estate planning. And that's where it gets a little more complicated. Uh, you know, there's a, you talk about estate freezes, which are a particular like corporate tax deferral type of transaction. Uh, you talk about planning with life insurance as well, and taxation of life insurance can be a little bit complicated as well. So like the TEP, I would say is the fundamental one. I think another, another common thing that practitioners in our space will do, so they'll do some type of tax-intensive For example, the OBA, I think it's the OBA, does tax law for lawyers, right? So it's like a 1-week intensive program that, that I know a number of folks have done. I have not done it yet, but I'm hoping to in the future. What I'm actually signing up for is because I don't have an accounting background or tax background, I'm going to sign up for the in-depth tax course provided by CPA Canada, right? So that's an intensive, like, 3-year, like, lots of study course. I have some friends who are doing it right now and they're sort of warning me. But that, I, again, going back to the tax side of things, that's, that's a, that's knowledge that can really help. I'm sure, I'm sure what I'm going to learn at CPA in Depth is going to be above and beyond what I need to know for a, for a, again, a typical quote unquote estate planning client. I think when you do these certifications and designations, the expectation isn't that you're going to memorize every single little detail and know every single little thing. I think these, these designations, certain, they more so help you identify issues and know where to look. and know what to drill down further into, right? So TEP is really good. The CPA in Depth. Otherwise, continuing professional development is just a huge part of what we do. So STEP does a lot of CPDs. The Ontario Bar Association puts on a lot of CPDs. The Law Society of Ontario puts out like really good CPD programming as well. The Law Society used to have a CS designation in estates, Certified Specialist. I don't think they have that anymore. I think they've— FASDALCA Certified Specialist designation now. But then otherwise, like less on the legal side and more on like the wealth management side, you do see advisors with a number of different letters beside their names. As you get more senior, one that I'd sort of be interested in doing in the future is the FEA, the Family Enterprise Advisor designation. So that is for like the family business, family governance, dealing with family dynamics, that sort of thing. I think it's the funny thing is I think it's a little more on the the softer side. So something like CPA in depth is obviously very technical. The FEA, I think, is a little more the soft skills and sort of learning how to deal with families and manage families. But that's one that sort of, as you get more senior, that could be a designation that you go for. Some folks in my space, they might have like financial planning designations, for example, because it does help from an estate planning perspective, like your CFP. Some folks, there's one more that, like CAELU, Or CLU, the Certified Licensed Underwriter. Some folks may have that particularly on the insurance side as well. And I'm sure there are others that I'm missing, right? There are the formal designations, but then there's also just the wealth, no pun intended, of different programming available for folks who want to, who are interested in learning more about trusts, estates, and tax. So a number of different resources out there for sure. Incredible. And something that I also thought I'd ask you is you mentioned, you know, working with high net worth and ultra high net worth families. Are there a few maybe misconceptions or things that people might come into this field thinking about specifically serving this community or this type of planning work? Yeah, it's interesting when you ask that. I feel like the first thing that comes to mind for me at least is I've spoken sort of at length during this podcast about how important tax is, right? And it's important because not because you can do all these crazy like tax trips and tax loopholes. And like, I think that's what even like my non-law friends, I think that's what they think I do. It's actually the opposite. Canadian tax law has become so strict. Trusts are actually like, they're very situational. The taxation of trusts has evolved quite a bit. And we had a huge rules change in 2016 to many different types of trusts, right? So I think more of my time is sort of like spent advising clients on the risks of trusts rather than saying that trusts are amazing and they're going to help you save so much tax and whatever. And it's funny because even like, particularly when I was at Baskin, I was dealing with a lot of like startup founders as well who were just starting up their business. And I had people saying to me, oh, like I need to have a trust. I've got to have that. to set up. And it's like, not, it's not like the US, for example, where trusts are more common. In Canada, they're not, they're actually not like, they're very specific. You have to have very specific reasons to use them. Right. So I think that's a misconception that like everybody has a trust and that again, you can do all these crazy like tax loopholes. I feel like in Canada, when it comes to the taxation of high net worth and ultra high net worth individuals, a lot of our time is spent focusing on deferring tax rather than outright eliminating it because we don't have a lot of opportunities to outright eliminate tax, certainly on the federal side. On the provincial probate side, there are a lot of, yes, there are a number of strategies you can employ to reduce probate fees, but probate fees are like, you know, they're what, they're usually like 1.5% of the value in Ontario, at least 1.5% of the value of the assets above $50K. Could be material, I should say, for a larger estate. For a smaller estate, probably not as big of a deal. Whereas, you know, federal taxes like you know, just by way of example, we have a deemed disposition on death, right? So when you die in Canada, you are deemed to have disposed of all of your assets at fair market value and reacquired them. So any gains that you have are going to be taxed in your, in the terminal year of your life, right? Your terminal tax return, right? So it's not an issue for your, for your like house, for example, because if it's your principal residence, you get the principal residence exemption. But as I mentioned, a lot of our clients are business owners and they have very significant tax liabilities that could arise on death, right? Because if they started the business at zero, right, and now it's like a $100 million business or whatever, there could be significant capital gains. So a lot of our time is spent like learning, you know, figuring out how to defer that tax as much as we can, right? As opposed to, again, helping folks with these tax loopholes. I mean, I don't know, I feel like a lot of, you know, the trust and estates community is rather small as well. And I feel like, you know, we care about our reputation. Right? We want to do good work. We want to advise our clients sort of properly. It's not often you see the sort of like crazy aggressive tax planning, right? I myself, I'm a very risk-averse client, right? I want to make sure clients are fully informed of all the risks before they sort of proceed. It sort of goes back to tax, but I think the misconception is there's a lot of flexibility from a tax perspective, whereas from my perspective, at least, I don't think that's really the case with high net worth, ultra high net worth. I appreciate you bringing that up. And you had mentioned a few points before, right, about your involvement with both the, the STAP and the Ontario Bar Association. And I'm always curious about, you know, how participating in these communities have, you know, helped lawyers to both develop themselves and also build a community. So I'm curious to ask you, you know, how has being involved in this community shaped your, your perspective too as a lawyer and maybe even, you know, seeing the possibilities of where you could go with your career and all of that? Yeah, well, it's, it's interesting you said where you could go because literally I've gone to all over the world through particularly through, through STEP, but through other speaking opportunities as well. I've been very fortunate. I, I've spoken in London, UK. I've spoken in Rome, Italy. I've spoken in Geneva, Switzerland, spoken in Calgary. Okay. It's not as exotic, I guess, but you know what I mean? Like it's, I've had a lot of opportunities through STEP and through the OBA because I think building a network and profile building and building a community is super important. The trust and estates community, particularly on the high net worth and ultra high net worth side is not super large, but it does consist folks from many different, different disciplines, because remember, it's not just lawyers, right? It's accountants, it's investment and financial advisors, it's insurance planners. It's, it's sort of folks all adjacent, like all sort of in that wealth planning space. So getting to know folks, not just in the legal community, but the other sort of professional advisors helps from a profile building perspective. It helps from a referrals perspective for building up new business. If people know that you're knowledgeable on a certain topic, again, I find our, our community is very academic. They want to learn, right? So people are always reaching out to me. People are reaching out to me quite a bit for, you know, information on digital assets and crypto and how that factors into estate planning, because it's a topic that not a lot of people know about, right? And they want to learn more. So I do think that like getting your name out there only really helps you. The only drawback is like, you know, if you're working a private practice, which I'm no longer doing now, but if you're working private practice, You, you know, this is non-billable time, right? It's time that you're spending sort of improving yourself, meeting others, business development, continuing professional development, that sort of stuff. So I think that's the challenge in our world, right? It's sometimes it's difficult to find the balance between the billable, like getting the client work done and then doing all the other work that helps you build your practice, that helps you build your community, that helps you build your knowledge and expertise, right? So with the OBA and STEP, they, they have resources to help you with that. I'm also very, I'm also very happy to be involved in these organizations from a, like a, from a leadership perspective. So on the OBA, I'm currently the secretary of the Trust and Estate Section Executive. I will be the incoming vice chair as well for the 2026-2027 term. And that has been really interesting because we've been able to sort of deal with the municipalities on certain trust and estates issues from a tax perspective. We've been able to deal with the provincial Ministry of the Attorney General. On certain issues and advocate for our membership. Our membership is, of course, you know, lawyers like OBA members, right? So we've been able to advocate on their behalf on certain issues and advocate for some changes in legislation, which has been really interesting. On the STEP side, in contrast, what I really like about STEP is that I'm on a global committee, the Digital Assets Special Interest Group SIG Steering Committee. I'm currently the deputy chair. And the great thing is I think right now I'm the only Canadian person on the committee. Others are from other jurisdictions. So it's really interesting to learn about what's going on in other jurisdictions and sort of coming together to, again, produce good programming for our membership and not just programming, but resources as well. So STEP has a lot of great resources. They have guides for digital assets. They have a course for digital assets. So being involved with that stuff is, is really cool, right? To go back to the first question, like why trust in estates? I'm attracted to this area because of the community as well. Very nice people, very supportive people, especially not even just on the, on the planning side, but even on the estates litigation side, as you can imagine, estates litigation, very acrimonious files. Very like challenging family dynamics, right? People feel like they've been wronged, but the estates litigation bar is very collegial and they, they get along with each other quite well, even though they're all on opposite sides of different, again, acrimonious disputes. So I think despite the fact that this can be an emotional area, our bar is very collegial, which is just another great reason to join. And a lot of your public work also connects with law that connects law with culture, education, and communities. You did mention a little bit about, you know, the interest areas that you had and how you connected that with fields and states. You mentioned writing about Pokémon cards and things like that. And I also saw you, you were in community spaces like Anime North and Japanese Canadian Cultural Center. How did these interests also influence your legal practice and client work, if at all? Yeah, so maybe I'll start with the Japanese Canadian Cultural Center because the funny thing is I actually started volunteering there because I realized I needed volunteer experience for law school. For my law school applications, right? And I've always like, I just grew up liking Nintendo and liking anime. And I had been to the center once before for an event and I thought it was a really nice space. So I started volunteering there. I've been a volunteer there for 13 years now. And I, now I'm on the board of directors, which is super awesome. So at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Center in particular, I'm sort of helping on the estate side. It is a charity. And of course I do have some knowledge and background in charities because that's a That, that can be a material part of an estate plan. So, you know, helping out when we have donors and helping give education presentations to our, to our, you know, our membership, right? Something in the works right now on that front. Anime North is just for fun. Anime North is the largest not-for-profit fan-run convention, anime convention in Canada, I think. And I've been going, I've been going to that convention for like, I think it's been like 14 years or something like that. And I just like doing the panels. So every year we do a panel called Anime and the Law, and it's me and 2 other lawyers. One of them is actually a colleague of mine at RBC. But we, we, we just apply the law to different legal issues, right? So I've done like this year I did Animal Crossing and real estate law. Last year or a couple of years ago, I did family law and Spy x Family. I just try to make it fun. And every year that particular panel is always very well attended because I think fans, first of all, we try to make it funny, of course, and entertaining. So we are putting on a show a little bit. But also I think fans, I think like non-lawyers are very much interested in learning about the law. Right. And I'll tell you a story. It wasn't, I sort of joined a little later. Like I wasn't there from the beginning for that panel, but the other 2 lawyers who do it, they first did it in like 2019. And there was a, there was a person who attended their panel who was like an undergrad student. Right. And she, she went through undergrad, she went through law school, she attended the panel every year, and now she's a practicing lawyer. And we actually asked her to join us next year. We'll see if that materializes and that happens. I talked about the blog posts that I've done for the All About Estates blog as well. And like, I just feel like you have to make it fun and you have to make it interesting. And I think you do your best work when you're genuinely interested in your work and what you want to do, right? Even on the tax side, again, sorry to belabor the tax point, but I was very intimidated at first about, like, about tax and sort of before I, you know, before I even went into this, I probably couldn't adequately describe the difference between income and capital, right? But now, like, I actually really enjoy tax. And when I have a tax issue or tax problem, I really want to like know the answer and I really want to make sure I understand what the, what the problem is, what the issue is, what the authorities have said on this, what the great practitioners have said on this. So while tax can seem intimidating, the good thing about it is that there's always resources out there. There's always someone out there who's wrote, written an article or has tried to explain something or has tried to look into something, which is great. And I find it interesting, right? So at the end of the day, you have to be interested in what you, what you're doing. I, I actually, I'm probably a person who prefers research more than I do like drafting, not that I don't enjoy drafting, but I just love like learning and getting paid to learn. And if I can do that while also learning about things that I like or connecting things that I like, I like writing, don't get me wrong. I like writing like articles and I like doing presentations. But yeah, you just, you have to make it fun. You have to make it interesting. So I've really tried to do that throughout my career and I, I think it's worked out for me. So I am very grateful for that. I love that. I really appreciate that. One of the amazing things of hosting this podcast is getting to talk with so many lawyers who enjoy their work. You know, when, when you see a lot of negativity out out there talking about how lawyers are miserable and that this profession is so hard, which it is true, right, in many ways. But also there's quite a few professionals that found a way to make the practice more interesting for their personal, or more aligned with their personal values and with the things that they enjoy. And I appreciate getting the chance to interview you and knowing that, you know, you're definitely one of those professionals that can genuinely say that they have fun at work and enjoy the work that they're doing. And to wrap up today's episode, I wanted to ask you, what kind of advice would you give to young lawyers or law who are interested in trusts and estates or building a career in private client work? Yeah. I mean, I think we've talked about a number of things that are useful for new lawyers, particularly for those maybe in law school. I would say, you know, take estates, take trusts, take tax. I should have mentioned as well, I didn't take any of those classes in law school either. I had the opportunity to take tax in my third year, but by that time I had my job at Baskin already and I was like, I want to chill during my third year. I don't want to ruin my semester with taking tax. And looking back, I wish I took it. So I think you have to be curious. You have to be willing to learn. You have to be willing to network. It is a very social practice as well. Some of my friends, both in law and outside of law, say, oh my God, I can't believe you like do all this networking. You meet up with all these people, but I don't know. I enjoy it. I like meeting people. I like learning. I like learning about people. I think you need to also have that genuine curiosity because to be a good private client advisor, you need to understand the client's family dynamics, their business, their goals, right? And you need to make sure that the client feels understood as well, right? And ultimately, this is going to inform the work that you do for them and the approach that you take and the risks that they have to consider. So I think like having that curiosity is important. Otherwise, if you're just starting out, like I do think it's super important. Like if you are interested in trust and estates, of course, try to work somewhere or get a job at a firm where you're dealing with trust and estates practitioners. Again, preferably someone who is, preferably someone who specializes in it. You need to know the different options that are available to you. So try obviously to get exposure there, but also just reaching out to people. I think this applies to law generally, but certainly it is the case in trust and estates. Don't be afraid to sort of cold reach out to people. And I always like, like you can reach out to me, you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm happy to talk. Clearly I've been doing a lot of talking today. Um, but I, I always try to make the time, uh, to speak with people and to try to, you know, connect them with, with, you know, who I think might be right for them. So doing that, don't be afraid. Don't be shy getting out there, getting your name out there. And even, you know, above all else, like let's say you're a new associate, for example, or newly licensed lawyer. Let's say you're a new call. I think one of the best things you can do is write an article, right? The, the OBA, our, the trust and estate section is always looking for new articles for the newsletter. Step is always looking for new articles for the newsletter, right? So write something. And I mean, I think what's worked for me is I've tried to write about something that nobody else has written about before, right? And I think if you like sit down and really think about it, you can definitely take that approach, right? So trying to write and get your name out there, that's like an amazing thing you can do. You don't have a ton of client work, you know, doing that is really helpful. Again, maybe, maybe just one more anecdote before I sort of wrap up, but that's exactly what I did when I first started at Baskin. When I first started, like I had some client work, but I also had some time to sort of build myself up. So literally the first thing I did was a 3-part blog series on digital assets and estate planning and the privacy law implications and also like the contract law implications, because if you sign up for like a Facebook or Google or whatever account, like you agree to a terms of service and those terms govern your account even on death. So I just wrote about that because I noticed like there wasn't really a lot out there on that. Right. And it was that blog series, like people read it. Right. And people reached out to me. And that's the other thing I'll say as well. If you are going to write, make sure that you're promoting what you're writing and make sure, you know, make sure that there's going to be an audience for it as well. You don't want to do all this work and then not have anyone see it. And that's what I really enjoyed about the All About Estates blog. Big, big plug for that blog today. It's very visible, right? If you search things, it'll, it'll pop up on Google, right? Like even if it's a particular topic, if somebody has written a blog post, it'll pop up. So I think there are a number of things that folks who are interested in this space can do and just, yeah, don't be shy. Don't be a stranger. Right? Don't, don't be afraid to reach out. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for making the time to come to the show, and thank you all for tuning into today's episode.