Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jenna Glassock. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Jenna, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What was one of the most important lessons you learned in school? Why did that lesson stick with you?
Growing up, I was a pretty high-achieving kid, and a lot of my self-worth stemmed from being considered “smart.” I was regularly praised for learning things and completing my work quickly. What I never really learned was how to fail. I still remember the answers I missed on tests in elementary school and the times I didn’t get an A in a class. Failures, however small, felt catastrophic. History was my weakest subject in school, and rather than push through – even though it was a subject I considered interesting – I stopped taking history classes as soon as I was able.
I was really good at studying but really bad at pushing through stumbles or failures. This approach served me through high school, college, law school, and a job at a top law firm. But it would have been disastrous for me when I started my law firm because all entrepreneurial ventures are new and hard and riddled with failures, big and small. It is far easier to back up and quit than to push through and succeed.
Fortunately for me, when I left the law firm where I worked, I got my MBA before starting my law firm. One of the key lessons in my entrepreneurship classes was the importance of failure. We learned about starting small to try to work out some early failures on a smaller scale. We learned about A/B testing different ideas and iterating as you go. We learned about finding the beauty in failure since you leave the failure knowing more than you did before it. These lessons were invaluable to me in becoming an entrepreneur and helped me see the stumbling blocks and challenges not as experiences to avoid but as lessons to learn and grow from. The importance of failure is a lesson I keep with me when things get hard and try to pass on to my children now, when they are young, so they can become more adventurous and resilient at a younger age than I did.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am one of the founding partners of Laurel Trust Law LLP, a boutique law firm providing estate planning, trust administration, and probate representation services. After law school, I started my legal career doing complex commercial litigation at a big law firm. In my first year at the law firm, my mom passed away after a three-year struggle with lung cancer.
Due to a difficult relationship with my then-stepfather, the post-death legal process was horrible. Even though we were not actually fighting about any of the steps that needed to be taken, it took eight years in probate court to close up her estate, which came at a high cost, both financially and emotionally. During this time, I realized I wanted to spend my life doing something more entrepreneurial than working at a large law firm, and I went back to school to get my MBA. Upon graduating – and while still dealing with the probate court process – I realized that I had become passionate about helping others avoid the difficult experience I was having with my mom’s estate.
We founded Laurel Trust Law not just to help our clients avoid difficult legal experiences after loved ones pass away, but also to make the experience of putting together an estate plan as painless and simple as possible. The most frequent comment we get when clients sign their estate plans is that the process was way more pleasant than they were anticipating. I am so proud of the law firm we have built and the clients we have been able to assist, and I feel so grateful that I get to do this work every day.
Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?
By far the most effective strategy for growing our clientele has been to do an amazing job for our existing clients. Estate planning is not a topic that people discuss regularly with other people, but we’ve been fortunate to receive most of our referrals from existing clients. We try to make the process as seamless and painless for clients as possible, which I believe leads them to tell friends and colleagues about their experience. Our whole team’s natural inclination is to try to be helpful, so that has become a key characteristic of our firm – to be as helpful as possible to our clients. We approach the client relationship with empathy; we know that discussing money and family and death is often neither easy nor pleasant. We do our best to ease our clients’ concerns and provide the best possible service to them.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
The summer after my first year of law school, I had an internship at a law firm in Los Angeles. Our intern class had about 10 people in it, and I could tell immediately that Kelly and I had very similar personalities and were going to be good friends. We became close over that summer and then went our separate ways to our second year of law school. When my mom’s health took a turn for the worse, I was incredibly fortunate that UCLA was willing to work with me so that I could transfer schools in the middle of the semester to be closer to my mom. When I got there, Kelly was the only person I knew and was amazingly helpful to me as I made a huge life adjustment. Our friendship stayed strong through law school and studying for the California bar exam together. When we started studying the Wills and Trusts section of the bar, we realized that we both really loved the underlying material, and we joked about ditching our law firm job offers to start our own Trusts and Estates law firm. About five years later, I was starting my first firm – Glassock Law – and Kelly joined me soon thereafter, and we rebranded to Laurel Trust Law. I am so lucky that we chose that same firm for a summer job, and I couldn’t have asked for a more amazing partner!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ltlfirm.com
- Instagram: #ltlfirm
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ltlfirm
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/jennaglassock
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/laurel-trust-law-los-angeles-4