We strive to provide quality legal services at cost-effective prices that are in the best interests of our clients, not just their focus only on their legal interests to the detriment of those that matter more. Every client is very important to us, and we are committed to serving only those clients that we can actually help and who fit within our values of mutual respect, mutual support and within our goals of problem-prevention and problem-solution. If the intent of the client is not positive and progressive, we are not the right firm. If the intent of the client is to be as uncivil, adversarial and confrontational as possible just for the sake of fighting, we are the wrong firm. Our primary goal is to help our clients, and negative intent and toxic behaviors prevent us from doing our best for them.

We are committed to providing value and we are entitled to reasonable compensation for such value . Because so much has been invested directly and indirectly in education and experience in not just the law, but in business, in accounting and tax issues, in elder law professional education, in litigation alternatives and in a library on-line and in-house that is very comprehensive and detailed in the areas of practice, we are entitled to being reasonably compensated for our services. Providing value is equally important. An attorney or a firm cannot control the judges on the bench, the court system, the changes in tax laws, the lack of government assistance dollars, or even how or why the problems arose for our clients if they hire us after they have such problems. We have to take what we get and try to make the best of it, even if it is a lose-lose situation in court.

However, we can do our best and encourage more preventive and proactive measures so that a client is not forced in a "Catch 22" situation where it costs as much to litigate as there is in controversy! When someone else has the control, whether the courts, a jury, an arbitrator or the government, there is not a level of great certainty in the outcome. Providing value when a client is in crisis mode is not as pleasant a preventive a crises, but there is still great value because the crisis must be managed well, there is no other option. Providing value before there is a crisis is by far more pleasant and rewarding to us and to our clients. 

Therefore, we believe that planning skills, and therefore the educational and professional bases for creating more global and strategic plans, provide a wonderful value to our clients. In large firms you will often find a lawyer with a tax degree or one that has extensive, but narrow, expertise in certain elder care matters such as medicaid planning. You may also find one with extensive business education and expertise. There may be someone who has years and years of mediation or arbitration training and experience, and he or she may even have performed professional training services. e believe that it is difficult to find an attorney who has a background and level of competency in all of these areas so as to help those families who have a disabled child, a family business, need wealth protection planning, and who want to do all of this in an environment of cooperative facilitation and with one attorney!

We function as a team with our clients and their other advisors, as well as in house. While we are small, with only three of us (one attorney, one office & financial manager, and three part-time independent contractors) in the office, we are mutually supportive and respectful of each other. Each in-house team member has an invaluable role to play, and our clients also are part of that team for their particular matters. In fact, if a client is working against us and our efforts, we will let them know that we are not the right firm for them and ask them to seek legal help elsewhere. 

Those who work at the firm have made a deliberate decision not to focus primarily on how much money we can bring in, but on being surrounded by people (clients, other attorneys, etc.) who will embrace and be a part of our commitment to a balanced, positive, conflict-management oriented firm.We believe that this is the way for the firm to practice law and that the rewards are not just focused on the pecuniary. 

We aim to generate communication and trust among our clients by providing quality legal services and information protection. We have limited our areas of practice (to those that are listed on the home page) because we do not want to be spread too thin tso as to become ineffective. Jeanne Hall attended graduate business, accounting and tax school so that she would have the foundation to provide these detailed, but global services. She expanded her skills and knowledge with extensive training and experience, as well as becoming a professional trainer, for creative alternatives to managing conflict, both preventive and solution-oriented.

To stay up with tax and elder law, you almost have to do your homework daily. For business and construction, there are new applicable cases every month and new statutes (or changes to statutes) several times a year. Even the procedural rules and professional standards for mediators, arbitrators and other neutral professionals change frequently. This requires extensive mandatory and voluntary continuing professional education. That is why we Lexis/Nexis and our in house tax, elder law, business law, and construction law library, which allows us to get answers to even some of the most complex matters in a short period of time. We believe that competency as an attorney in any area of the law requires the ability (online and in house resources) and research skills to get answers to legal questions very quickly. For us, this requires that we are not able to type well and know how to research effectively and quickly on the internet, but have a broad base of knowledge in indirectly-related areas of the law so as to recognize red flags. In this day and age, it is hard for any licensed professional of a learned profession to be effective and competent without these 21st century skills and we enhance these every month with intentional in-house updates and training if necessary.   

Jeanne Hall's Mother, Pat Plowden, was a paralegal to several law firms in SC from the 1950's on and she did just about everything. We believe that the law has changed significantly and that, for a lawyer or law firm to be effective and competent in most if not all areas of the law, the lawyers must be able to perform the legal services required in this day and age: (1) draft their own documents; (2) immediate and effective research capabilities and resources; (3) a multi-issue approach to law which requires a broader base of minimally competent knowledge in many areas of the law; (4) resources, libraries and infrastructure to support the practice; and (5) a staff that is not only competent, but flexible, intelligent, educated, but are strong communicators, and able to handle multiple tasks.

We believe that Communication is the Key to over 90% of the problems that cause the need for legal services.If a client comes in with a problem or is in crisis mode, they have already lost to a certain extent. In this mode it is almost always a result of a failure to communicate and get information, and then act on it. You can see this in business ventures or construction projects where there are poorly-drafted contracts or no written contracts. You can see this in people who have immediate chronic care needs, but have not obtained the information for planning and acted on that information. You can see this in trusts, for which some people have literally paid thousands and thousands of dollars, when there was no need for one (they were sold on it with bad communication and information). You can see this in businesses where they think that they have limited liability protection because they filed a form recommended by a non-lawyer, when in fact the limited liability is at risk because they bought an online documents or do not ther required documentation in place. You see this where the children of a deceased parent fight over the estate.

All of this boils down to communication which requires the following: (1) accurate and complete information; (2) a workable understanding and knowledge of related issues; (3) clear, complete, concise and effective oral or written communications; (4) cooperative and active discussion of the primary and related issues (sometimes requiring facilitation or mediation); (5) the vesting of interests and involvement of all impacted people; (6) active listening; (7) nailing down all matters that have been determined; (8) confirming in permanent form all formal agreements; (9) establishing a plan of action for uncertainties; and (10) being flexible to evaluate and modify when required.

Therefore we believe that an effective lawyer providing tax and/or estate cannot just work with the CPA and run numbers, use the wealth protection tools provided in state and federal law (trusts, etc), use other tools for planning, and provide a product that you take home in a fancy book. We believe that this lawyer must be able to recognize red flags and have a competent level of knowledge of direct and indirect legal and non-legal issues that may be material in that particular client's situation. We believe that this lawyer must understand family dynamics, practical business matters, and have strong skills in facilitation and comprehensive (as well as the narrow) strategic planning and problem prevention. We believe that this lawyer needs to know, hopefully by some hand's on experience in the courts, how this might play out in a litigious setting. 

We believe the same is true for an attorney practicing elder care law. You cannot practice these areas of law in a vacuum. This is especially true of the elder care law attorney who has to deal with all kinds of family and emotional issues. A strong technical knowledge of medicaid, medicare and government assistance planning is required. Equally important, we believe, is to put it in a real-life  context (with tax tools, facilitation tools, family business planning tools, etc) and be able to practice outside of that narrow area of substantive law. We believe that you need to understand the courts and our system in North Carolina (and hopefully have actively participated in some litigation), in order to be more than just a technical elder care lawyer. As one of the leading elder care lawyers in the nation said to a group of which Jeanne Hall was a member, elder care should be practiced from a global perspective, and this requires much more education, experience and/or acquired expertise than the narrow area of planning usually associated with this type of practice.

The same is true with business and construction law, and more industry-focused types of business practice. Jeanne Hall believes that every attorney should be required to take graduate business education courses, because law school, while a wonderful and enlightening experience, does not necessarily teach practical business strategies or skills, common sense, problem-solving or planning skills. Lawyers learn to argue almost any legal issue from almost any legal perspective within the confounds of the law, and get really good at that by being positional, confrontive and adversarial. However, the law is changing and we believe that the professional requirements, as well as the requirements for competency, require more than just a great legal education and strong working knowledge of the law. The lawyer also needs to know how it plays out in the real world!

Law school teaches you to communicate with other law school students and professors about the law, and it hopefully helps you be able to advocate a position in practice (this appears to be changing rapidly in many schools). However, students come out thinking primarily in terms of the law and they try to fit the square peg of law into the circle of life. Strong and effective communication skills and knowledge are needed to address all of the issues that are in the best interests, which certainly exceed the very limited scope of issues that the law can address. We believe that these skills are required to practice effectively in this day and age. At Plowden Hall Law Firm, PLLC, we strive to maintain the level of knowledge and information current for each type of practice, we strive to communicate as effectively (but simply so that the information can be heard) with our clients, and we look at the bigger picture and do not narrow our scope so as to become what is the akin to an assembly line worker who only places widgets. Our clients deserve and need more and our goal is to become their law firm for life!