A few weeks ago, a gentleman called me out of the blue and said he wanted me to value four family limited partnerships that had been part of his father’s estate. He had received a quote of $20,000 from his father’s lawyer and wanted to know if I could do the work for less money. He began to complain that the estate had already paid about $20,000 to value the underlying real estate in the FLPs, each of which contained apartment complexes in the same city with the same management.
After studying the documents, I came up with a lower fee and had him sign the engagement letter. A week later, he called me very apologetically to say that his attorney, a partner with a 1,000 lawyer international firm, insisted on using a valuation firm that he had used for many other engagements and that he felt would be better to have in their corner in case of an audit.