There are speakers advertising programs who have no experience at all as estate planners. There is no law that prevents someone from calling themselves an estate planner, even if they have no qualifications or experience. Seven years of experience offers some measure of the person's expertise and is typical of members in the local estate planning councils. Make sure that estate planning, wills, trusts and estate administration is the attorney's only area of practice. You simply cannot do divorce work, traffic tickets and other matters and be a full-time estate planning expert.
Estate planning is a complicated and sophisticated area of legal practice.
Determine if the attorney is a member of the Denver Estate Planning Council, Rocky Mountain Estate Planning Council and the Colorado Bar Association Probate and Trust Law Council. The estate planning councils require that the members be voted in by other experts in estate planning. There are other fancy sounding organizations out there which are worthless to your protection because anyone can join by signing up to market the organization's materials. If other speakers are involved, then check out their qualifications also. Many of these programs also involve someone's latest idea for selling you stocks, bonds, mutual funds or insurance.