OCEN - Bio

Darlynn Morgan
Attorney
Morgan Law Group

After graduating in the top 15% of my class from Loyola Law School, I started my legal career in business litigation –it was fast-paced, exciting, and very competitive. And it was thrilling to go to court and argue a case and win for your client! My husband owned his own business, we had a new home in Newport Coast, and my life was pretty perfect. But in May, 2000, things changed drastically when my 36 year old husband was diagnosed with cancer. I was stopped in my tracks and we found ourselves in some very difficult times.

Of course one of the first things we had to do was to get in to see an estate planning attorney. As a young couple, we hadn’t thought it was a priority, and although it was on our list of things “to-do,” we had never gotten around to doing our planning. So, in the midst of our crisis, we were spending time in an attorney’s office and having some very difficult discussions. I quickly realized the importance of being prepared for the unexpected circumstances that life may bring before there is a crisis– that would have been a lot easier.

And since we went to a traditional estate planning law firm, we had a very traditional experience: we went it, sat in front of a lawyer who used a lot of legalese, and then sent us on our way with some form documents that really weren’t a fit for our family. About a week later, we contacted the attorney with a question and a small change and two weeks after that we got a big, surprise bill in the mail. We never heard from the attorney again, because the typical experience does not include any follow up or guidance from the attorney. I never did have the peace of mind that things were properly taken care of. And I certainly didn’t feel a comfort level with the attorney to be able to turn to him for future guidance.

Fast forward a few years. My perspective on life and my career had changed. I decided that my life was too short to spend it working with people who are fighting, stuck in a dispute, and all too unhappy about the mounds of attorney fees that are piling up trying to work things out in the court system. Instead, I felt a special call to carefully guide families through their estate planning and help them make some very important legal decisions that will have a profound impact on them and their loved ones. And I knew that I wanted to provide my clients with a much more satisfying experience than the traditional estate planning law firm.

And so, drawing from both my personal experience and all of my prior legal training and law firm experience, in July 2005 I founded Morgan Law Group to focus on serving people who want to make certain that their plan will work when their family needs it most and appreciate knowing we will be there to advise their family when they can’t be. People who realize that things are going to change throughout their lifetime and want a trusted advisor to guide them through those changes. People who are busy, love their kids, and want to leave the world a better place.

Today, I take on a limited number of clients so that each family we work with is taken care of in a thorough and personalized manner.