Jul 19, 2021
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Look who I found in a dog fecal the other day: Giardia spp!
We did the fecal because the dog had acute onset of profuse, foul-smelling, liquid diarrhea. In addition to the giardia, there's also some motile rod-shaped and spirochete bacteria swimming around. These may or may not be contributing to the GI signs; some bacteria are normal inhabitants of the gut, others are pathogenic, and some can be both depending on strain or circumstances.
We treated with metronidazole and fenbendazole to kill the giardia, bland diet and maropitant to help with the diarrhea and GI discomfort, and probiotics to help reestablish the good GI flora that will also get killed by the antibiotic. The owner was also instructed in good hygiene and environmental disinfection practices to prevent re-infection and zoonotic transmission (the zoonotic risk is low given that different strains of Giardia typically infect dogs and people, but we don't know if there are any immune compromised people in the household, so better safe than sorry).
The clinical signs quickly resolved, and the fecal was negative on follow-up.
((Sorry for the jumpy video; I had a hard time keeping these squiggly little dudes in focus and the phone lined up with the lenses at the same time 😛))
Doc is away for the day, so you know what that means! *Finally* getting caught up on all the little-but-still-important stuff like making new puppy and kitten packets!
Best Educational Platforms for Teaching Clients About Estate Planning Basics
Digital education has become one of the most effective ways to help clients understand estate planning fundamentals. The best educational platforms simplify legal concepts, improve engagement, and make your advisory process more efficient.
In this article, you’ll learn which platforms stand out in 2025 for client education, how they enhance comprehension, and how you can integrate them seamlessly into your workflow. The focus is on practical, real-time solutions used by leading advisors to elevate client understanding and trust.
WealthCounsel Learning Center — Comprehensive Legal Curriculum for Clients
WealthCounsel’s Learning Center remains one of the most respected tools in 2025 for estate planning education. It’s designed for attorneys, advisors, and firms that want to provide clients with legally accurate, plain-language resources. The platform offers interactive videos, downloadable guides, and customizable white-label courses that make complex estate concepts approachable.
You can integrate WealthCounsel modules directly into your onboarding sequence, giving clients a foundation before strategy sessions. This pre-education model saves you hours of explanation while helping clients better understand core documents like wills, trusts, and powers of attorney.
The Learning Center also includes compliance-friendly templates and analytics dashboards, so you can monitor client progress and measure engagement over time—a data-driven way to demonstrate value and retention.
Coursera — Trusted University-Level Estate Planning Content
Coursera’s partnerships with top universities, including the University of Illinois and Duke University, have expanded to cover estate planning fundamentals for non-lawyers. In 2025, new micro-certificates in “Wealth Transfer and Tax Planning” and “Foundations of Estate Law” offer clients structured pathways to self-education.
By assigning Coursera courses, you can empower clients to explore estate concepts at their own pace. This frees up meeting time for in-depth, personalized planning. Coursera’s platform also supports mobile learning and progress tracking, which means your clients can learn efficiently between consultations.
For wealth managers or legal advisors serving high-net-worth individuals, Coursera adds credibility through its university affiliations—helping you align your brand with quality education.
Udemy — Accessible and Affordable Client Education
If you’re looking for budget-friendly options, Udemy’s growing library of estate planning courses remains a powerful resource. Updated in 2025 with more than 60 relevant modules, it offers everything from “Estate Planning for Beginners” to “Understanding Probate and Trust Administration.”
You can curate a list of specific courses tailored to your clients’ experience levels. Whether they’re just starting to explore estate planning or reviewing generational wealth strategies, Udemy provides bite-sized learning that works. Its affordability also makes it ideal for independent advisors or small practices seeking scalable education options.
Clients appreciate Udemy’s on-demand structure. Once you recommend a course, they can revisit lessons anytime—helping reinforce key topics like tax planning, fiduciary duties, and asset transfers long after the first session.
Lawline — Continuing Education for Legal-Minded Clients
Lawline is known for continuing legal education, but in 2025, its curated “Estate Planning Basics” collection gained traction among financial planners and paralegals who want clients to understand the legal logic behind their plans.
This platform’s main advantage is its focus on quality control and expert instructors. Each lesson is recorded by practicing attorneys and reviewed by subject-matter specialists, ensuring that what your clients learn aligns with real-world application.
Lawline also integrates discussion boards where advisors and clients can review legal updates. This interaction transforms client education into an ongoing conversation rather than a one-time assignment.
Thomson Reuters Practical Law — Precision-Focused Education for Professionals and Clients
Thomson Reuters’ Practical Law continues to be a leader in structured legal education, and in 2025, the company introduced a new client-facing feature: “Practical Law Client Education Portals.” These offer simplified modules on topics such as estate taxes, fiduciary responsibilities, and charitable trusts.
The portal allows you to select relevant learning materials from its attorney-reviewed library and share them directly with clients. Each module includes case studies, visual explainers, and practical checklists—turning learning into actionable understanding.
By using Practical Law as part of your estate planning process, you show clients that education is part of your professional standard, reinforcing both transparency and authority.
MyCEcourse — Visual, Interactive Estate Planning Training
MyCEcourse has positioned itself as one of the most engaging client education tools in 2025. Its platform uses video-first instruction, motion graphics, and scenario-based examples to simplify topics like probate, digital assets, and beneficiary updates.
Its “Estate Planning Essentials” course was updated this year with interactive simulations that walk learners through real-world decision-making steps—how to designate an executor, manage taxes, and fund a living trust.
For you as an advisor, MyCEcourse provides measurable results through completion tracking and assessment scores. Clients who complete the course often return with more specific questions and a clearer understanding of next steps.
Thinkific — Build Your Own Client Education Portal
Thinkific is a powerful option if you prefer to create your own client education platform. In 2025, many law firms and financial advisors use Thinkific to build branded micro-courses about estate planning tailored to their audiences.
You can upload your videos, documents, and quizzes, then organize them into custom modules. Whether you want to educate clients about “Trust Funding Procedures” or “Estate Planning for Business Owners,” Thinkific allows total control over branding and content delivery.
By building a proprietary course, you position your practice as both an advisor and an educator. Clients gain consistent messaging, and you gain intellectual property that differentiates your firm long-term.
LinkedIn Learning — Professional Estate Planning for Advisors and Clients
LinkedIn Learning remains a trusted educational source for professional development. In 2025, its top-rated courses—like “Foundations of Estate and Wealth Planning” and “Understanding Probate Administration”—have been restructured for interactive, modular learning.
The advantage of LinkedIn Learning is its seamless integration with professional profiles. When clients complete a module, it appears on their LinkedIn, reinforcing accountability and progress. This visibility adds motivational value while subtly elevating your own professional credibility when you recommend it.
You can also use LinkedIn Learning internally for team training, ensuring that every staff member speaks the same language when explaining estate-planning concepts to clients.
Benefits of Using Educational Platforms in Estate Planning Advisory
Incorporating digital education platforms into your practice doesn’t just serve your clients—it optimizes your entire workflow. When clients learn core concepts beforehand, your strategy sessions become more targeted and efficient. You save time, strengthen client confidence, and elevate trust.
These are measurable benefits advisors report after integrating platforms into their estate planning workflow:
Reduced meeting duration through pre-education.
Fewer document revisions due to better client comprehension.
Improved compliance accuracy.
Increased referral rates from educated clients.
The result is a smoother process where education becomes part of your service experience—not an afterthought.
How to Choose the Right Platform for Your Clients
Choosing the right educational platform depends on your client base, goals, and workflow. If your clients prefer academic credibility, Coursera or Thomson Reuters will fit best. If they need visual simplicity, MyCEcourse or Udemy may resonate.
Consider these decision points:
Audience type: Professionals, retirees, or families?
Level of detail required: Foundational or advanced?
Integration capability: Can it link to your CRM or advisory dashboard?
Cost structure: Subscription vs. one-time purchase.
Matching platform type to client readiness ensures higher engagement and measurable learning outcomes.
How to Integrate Client Education Into Your Workflow
The simplest integration method is onboarding automation. Send each client a curated list of courses immediately after signing. This sets expectations and encourages ownership.
During meetings, reference their course progress to reinforce accountability. After implementation, use brief quizzes or follow-up assignments to gauge comprehension.
By embedding education into your process, you build a client base that is informed, confident, and easier to manage—reducing misunderstandings and boosting long-term satisfaction.
What are the best online platforms for teaching estate planning basics?
WealthCounsel Learning Center
Coursera
Udemy
Lawline
Thomson Reuters Practical Law
MyCEcourse
Thinkific
LinkedIn Learning
Empower Clients Through Digital Learning
You elevate your service when you teach clients before they act. The right platform helps you create informed decision-makers who understand every document they sign. Choose tools that fit your brand, build consistent education into your workflow, and measure results to refine your process over time.
If you’d like ongoing insights about estate planning technology and education strategies, visit my Muckrack to explore more resources and expert posts tailored for forward-thinking advisors.
My local dog park is providing free Sophia Yin handouts to owners! This makes me very happy :)
Mastering Daily BA Challenges: Educating the Client About Expectations (and avoid Misconceptions!)
Usually we focus on educating ourselves as business analysts, learning all about the the client and their products and services etc, improving our requirements processes, and so on...but now let's take a few moments to talk about educating the client.
Just because a client has "been around forever" and has been through many projects, we shouldn't assume that they really understand what we business analysts do, or why we do it.
There's lots of possible reasons for this:
they never thought to ask
they were afraid to ask because they might "look stupid"
they think they already know
they've work with BAs who weren't as experienced or simply weren't very good at the job (it happens!)
Because of this, is should be a standard part of your process to explain to the client (and the rest of your team, as needed) exactly what will happen at each step of the process.
And then, as you move through the process remind them, gently, what will happen.
Why Should I Educate Clients?
The goal here is to remove obstacles, misconceptions, and incorrect expectations that limit our ability to successfully communicate and collaborate with the client.
It's that simple...and that difficult.
If you've been a business analyst for any period of time you've no doubt worked with a few clients that:
have no idea of what a business analyst does or,
don't understand how we do it or,
they think they have an idea of what we do but it's all wrong or,
that we are just notetakers (UGH!)
And that's just to name a few!
Best Practices For Working With Clients
Let's talk about some of the things you can do to educate/re-educate or simply help the client to collaborate with you...
First, being prepared - if there's already a statement of work in place make sure you read and understand it. If it's an industry specific type of project that you're not already familiar with, research and read up on it so you can speak the same language.
Next, use any preliminary meetings to begin to introduce your process, open the lines of communication, and set expectations for all.
Anticipate questions and have a standard set of answers prepared. These don't have to be on paper, just having them in the back of your mind is fine. Refer to related examples from previous projects...tell those stories to help everyone understand your answers (people ten to comprehend and remember the stories more than just a dry recitation of facts!).
As the project moves forward, always be listening for teachable moments where you can start to layer on the foundation you built in those early sessions. Reinforce those initial points and then layer on the details each step of the project require.
As you move along you'll start hearing about they like and don't like/understand, new "requirements" that no one mentioned before, and other (real or perceived) pain points. This is where you'll want to rephrase what they are saying, draw them out, and respond to let them know you hear them, understand, and can address their concerns. This will help the client to feel at ease and is an important step in continuing to build trust.
But it is critical to not blindly agree to everything just to make them feel better! it is our job as BAs to assess whether their requests and goals are realistic. Instead, assess all of that and work to identify what they need versus what they want. Then be very transparent as you communicate what the options are; explain and outline that process and do it in relatable language - this is not the time to throw a lot of business analysts technical terms at them.
Take the time to walk them through this - explain that "this is how I think it should work and is there anything you think we should add" which will get them engaged and make them feel included in the decision-making processes.
Ongoing Client Education Results in More Successful Projects
These types of always about engagement education and engagement education clarification help clients to see you as the professional you are, ensure their expectations are in-line with the project plan, and result in more successful projects.
Watch the video below for more information on this very important topic.
And, as always, please feel free to reach out with your questions, comments, and success stories!
“Why do some veterinary practices use the ‘open hospital’ concept that allows clients to stay with their pets and watch procedures?”
My clinic doesn’t really fit neatly in their high vs low categories, but we definitely fall toward the high side. Personally I prefer it to previous practices I’ve worked that were less open, since it really allows me to educate as we go along and makes me work on my communication skills, but I can see why this model wouldn’t work for all practices, especially emergency or ICU.
imnotyogi ha dicho: Dear jesus. People are really that dense or are they just trying to hide behind fake ignorance.
No, they're really that ignorant. There's a huge misconception (even among some older vets!) that if an animal isn't whining, yelping, etc. it isn't in pain. So much client education is teaching people the signs of pain in their animals, which can be blatant like limping, but can also be much more subtle, particularly in cats and prey species.