The Monthly Tax and Asset Protection
Newsletter of Klueger & Stein, LLP

September 2008

Sharing Our Secrets

Over the past few years we have managed to build our law firm into the largest asset protection practice on the West Coast. What is the secret of our success? There is no secret. It has been built on three simple tenets:

1. Less is more — We have considerably narrowed our practice over the past few years to focus primarily on asset protection planning, high-end tax planning and structuring complex and esoteric business transactions. That has allowed us to focus our marketing energies with very good results.
   
   
2. Premium services — We take incredibly good care of our clients. That means representing clients when other lawyers say "no" and holding their hand through the hard times. We never charge clients for phone calls or meetings and take the time to explain everything to them and put them at ease. This holds true whether the client is worth several billion or a few hundred thousand. In some cases we will even work with celebrity clients. Not to mention that we are really, really good at what we do.
   
   
3. Little things — We send thank you gifts to referral sources and clients. A box of really nice wine for the lawyer or accountant. A spa treatment for the stressed out client. Speaking of spas, we have found a great little spa on Melrose that sells us gift certificates at a good discount. Clients are very happy with the spa treatment and we are very happy with the price. (If you are interested, its BelloViso Spa – 818-231-2098). People tend to remember these little gestures a lot better than the fact that we saved their assets from a creditor.

An Update on Swiss Banks

Last week Jacob Stein was in Zurich to tend to nervous Swiss bankers (following the UBS debacle). He is happy to report that following their initial overreaction (at first a lot of the private banks we deal with decided to turn away US clients), the banks have gone back to normal. Apparently, they remembered that being Swiss bankers they do like money… a lot. And US clients mean lots of money. The only real change implemented by the private banks is that they will all now collect forms W-9 from US clients. This makes life more difficult for tax cheats, but does not impact our clients who use these banks for asset protection.