Travis Smith

Travis Charles Smith has been a practicing attorney in Oklahoma City since 2009. Travis currently practices in the areas of estate planning, family wealth planning, and as a personal advisor for families, business owners and real estate investors.

Originally, Travis focused the first decade of his career handling personal injury cases. Travis is a very experienced trial lawyer. His accomplishments include a $1 Million Jury Verdict and millions in Settlements for his clients.

Here is his transformation story from a trial lawyer to becoming a personal family lawyer for his clients.

My Transformation Story (from litigation to estate planning)

I began my career as a trial lawyer. I was a young man with a lot of energy and grit. And I wanted to go into “battle” for my clients.  I actually looked forward to the “fight” that litigation offered. Well, over the course of 15 years, I’ve participated in many courtroom “battles.” And what I’ve learned is that even when you “win” in court, it’s always too little, too late, and only comes after you’ve spent (or lost) a lot of money and endured a lot of stress.

As I transitioned over the years to practicing in real estate, I began to see that many clients ended up in court simply because they didn’t have a personal legal advisor in their corner helping them do the things that would prevent a lawsuit. And then two probate cases were referred to me that really impacted me.

Both of these cases involved women with husbands who died without any type of estate plan. In the first case, the wife’s car was repossessed just weeks after her husband’s unexpected death, and before we had time to get the wife in front a judge to appoint her over the estate. Then, I was referred a second probate case, which involved a young mother with young children, who could not access her deceased husband’s business accounts where most of their money was held.

Both of these cases were a wakeup call to me personally (I didn’t have an estate plan at the time and my wife was a stay-at-home mother to our four children).

As I began practicing probate and estate planning, other lawyers and paralegals in my network would come to me. A lawyer I knew was having trouble dealing with his late mother’s assets. Even though she had an estate plan, her vehicles and other assets were not placed into her trust – an extremely common and unacceptable reality of typical estate planning in the current legal industry.

I’ve since discovered that many estate plans are destined to fail simply because of how rushed and “transactional” the process is due to nature of how most law offices operate. I knew, however, that most people could avoid these pitfalls – including having to go to court altogether – by having a Personal Family Lawyer available to properly design and implement these estate plans. Because I can tell you this: if you have to go to a courthouse to solve your problem, you are using the slowest and least predictable way to solve any type of business or financial problem.

My mission is keep families out of court, and out of conflict. And I do that by listening to my clients, designing estate plans that actually work and won’t fail your family when they need it. And I provide ongoing legal counseling.  I also do the same for business owners and real estate investors.

I spent the first decade of my career deep in lawsuits, fighting for my clients, and I’ve seen the strain it puts on families. My practice now is all about preventing problems and bringing certainty of outcome to the client. When you hire me to prepare your estate plan you will have a plan that will work, and won’t fail your family when you need it.