Celebrating our 10-year anniversary
This year, Hope Wood JD celebrates a decade of legal practice in Iowa. The firm’s focus on guiding families through the estate-planning and probate process has resulted in more than 1,500 satisfied clients.
Over the past 10 years, Hope Wood JD has served Iowans both virtually and face to face. In most situations, they wish they were somewhere else.
That’s not because Hope is unrelatable or difficult to work with. (In fact, reviews confirm the opposite: she’s helpful, attentive, and kind.) It’s because her clients are facing some of life’s most stressful and sorrowful moments, dealing with the death of a loved one or planning for their own eventual passing.
“I'm helping people through a part of their life that everyone has to go through,” Hope explains. “So I try to keep it as stress-free as possible.
A new beginning
Hope’s first day of law school
In the popular imagination, lawyers aren’t often associated with empathy and compassion. Negative stereotypes overlook the many competent and caring attorneys, those like Hope, who entered law school with the goal of helping others. She wanted to solve the problems people didn’t have the expertise to handle on their own.
After a career in health and fitness, Hope enrolled at Drake University Law School in 2009. In the midst of the Great Recession, the customary clerkships for law students dried up, leaving Hope and her classmates without the connections required for a job offer after graduation. If Hope wanted a job without relocating her family, she’d have to make one herself.
In 2013, she launched her own private practice, Hope Wood JD. The Des Moines metro area was saturated with law firms, and finding clients was difficult at first. Hope accepted most cases that came her way, practicing in several different areas, including creditor law and family law. To gain experience, she drafted documents for family law firms as a freelance attorney. As a one-woman firm, she handled all the legal cases on her own and completed administrative tasks herself, including marketing, accounting, and operations.
“At the beginning,” Hope recalls, “everything felt hard.”
Pandemic perspectives
Hope’s graduation from law school
Over the next several years, Hope’s business grew slowly and steadily. Then the pandemic hit in 2020. Suddenly, new clients came pouring in, asking her to draw up last wills and testaments, revocable trusts, power of attorney documents, and living wills.
During the pandemic, many Iowans had the time to check items off their to-do lists that they had put off for years. The pandemic also made people contemplate their own mortality, ponder complicated questions, and reflect on looming uncertainties. Hope was ready to help, without people having to leave their homes. She was able to adapt to virtual meetings and signings because she had already been offering an easy, painless estate-planning process for seven years.
“I realized that I was providing a service that wasn’t available elsewhere,” Hope says about her Will in a Day® program.
Will in a Day® is a comprehensive estate-planning package that provides a last will and testament, an asset-transfer plan, power of attorney documents, a living will — all for a flat fee. The process takes just 90 minutes from start to finish. Clients are drawn to the Will in a Day® package because most law firms don’t share their prices in advance or even respond to all the calls and emails they get about estate planning. Will in a Day® is different.
“Most of my clients are people who have never hired an attorney before,” says Hope. “They don’t know who to go to, how much time it takes, or how much it costs.”
To combat the uncertainty surrounding the cost and process of estate planning, Hope addresses common questions on her website. She thinks people have a right to know what to expect, what they’ll pay, and how long the process will take — before they decide to hire her or not.
The full legal team at Hope Wood JD
Going big on small estates
As word spread about Will in a Day®, more and more clients sought out the firm. During the pandemic, the demand for estate planning tripled, and Hope decided to focus her practice exclusively on estate planning and probate. To support the increase in clients, she formed a team — hiring a legal assistant in 2021 and another in 2022. This year, recognizing the continued growth of the firm, she hired her first associate attorney, Michelle Christen, JD.
“This is growth I wasn’t planning or expecting,” Hope says. “But it’s been a blessing. I enjoy the opportunity to come to an office and work with the team.”
Keeping in touch
As her business grows, Hope is staying true to her roots as a small, welcoming firm. Unlike many other private firms, her team responds to every inquiry, whether it’s a case they can help with or not. All messages get returned, and all emails get replies. If the case is outside their scope of work, the team offers a list of referrals.
“If they’re contacting an attorney, it’s because they need an attorney,” Hope says. She thinks it’s a disservice to make them wait for a response that never comes.
“I try to put myself in their shoes.”
Hope’s natural empathy also guides her approach to probate cases, which she tries to open and close as fast as possible. Although there are waiting periods and statutory deadlines to follow, Hope and her team work ahead, rather than waiting for a court deadline.
Hope knows that heirs of an estate are waiting on their inheritances. They’re weary of the legal sticking points that can arise during probate. By closing the estate fast, she ushers them toward what is often a final milestone in the grieving process, giving families closure and peace of mind after their loved ones’ passing.
Organic growth
Hope and team at the 2023 Iowa State Bar Association Annual Meeting
Hope is proud to see her firm reach its 10-year anniversary. Only 50% of new businesses make it five years, and just 30% last a decade.
“I never really thought about not being successful with this. I just thought the numbers were wrong” Hope says with a laugh. “It’s really rewarding to be here. The growth really happened organically.”
Part of that growth is due to the rave reviews — more than 200 five-star ratings on Google — from Hope’s clients.
“It means a great deal to me,” Hope says, especially since Google requires people to put their name on the review. “I know it’s difficult for people to put themselves out there. I am so proud when people share that they’ve gotten their estate-planning done. It’s so important, but it’s hard for people to talk about.”
Finding balance
Hope is no stranger to difficult conversations. She is open about her focus on mental health and well-being, as well as work-life balance, something that can be tricky for attorneys. She has given several presentations for colleagues on mental and physical well-being.
In her free time, Hope enjoys mentoring students, parents, and professionals. She loves spending time outdoors and being active. And she taps into her creative side with a scrapbooking hobby.
Somehow, Hope still has time for pro bono work. She has received awards from the Iowa State Bar Association and the American Bar Association for her service.
Hope is committed to her family, her mental health, and her public service efforts, even as her business continues to grow. She believes in slow growth and insists that the business grow responsibly, balancing the firm’s capacity with the needs of her clients, so many of whom are at a vulnerable time in their lives.
“Everyone will go through something like this at some point in their lives,” Hope says. “I want to be my client’s guide on that journey, so it can be as stress-free as possible.”
It is time to celebrate Hope Wood JD. In the last ten years, more than 1,500 clients have been served by Hope.
Thursday, September 21
4 - 7 p.m.
Windsor Heights Community Center
6900 School Street Windsor Heights, IA 50324
Hope and her legal team are ready to solve your problems with honesty, integrity, and transparency.
