The COVID-19 crisis delivered upheaval to most professions, and estate planning attorneys were not immune. In March 2020, Governor Andrew Cuomo issued a number of executive orders, which, among other things, required those who were not considered “essential” to work remotely rather than from their offices. There were also restrictions on meetings and gatherings that, combined with the additional vulnerability of the senior population, necessitated a suspension of the usual face-to-face meetings with estate planning clients.

To overcome this, estate planning attorneys quickly flocked to a number of videoconferencing software solutions to allow them to interact with their clients without meeting in person, such as FaceTime, Zoom, GoToMeeting, and WebEx. Remote meetings have now become second nature to many attorneys who may have never considered meeting clients remotely in ordinary times.