Meet attorney Dena Klotz, Senior Counsel and Managing Attorney at Lagerlof, LLP in Encino. She’s not a typical trust and estate attorney. Her skills in law, therapy, and real estate make her quite unique.
Her giant smile and warm demeanor are the first things you notice about Dena Klotz. She is quick to put people at ease, and you may soon feel the need to welcome her into your closest friend groups. As Senior Counsel and Managing Attorney at Lagerlof, LLP in Encino, she specializes in estate planning, trust administration, and probate cases. But her degrees in law, marriage and family therapy—topped off with a broker’s license in real estate—make her uniquely qualified to assist her clients in all their estate matters.
Dena graduated from UCLA, then attended Pepperdine University, School of Law. She began her legal career practicing estate planning. In time, Dena took a break from practicing law to prioritize her family and raise her three children.
Her personal experiences of parenting, marriage, and familial issues led her to a journey of self-discovery and curiosity motivating her to earn a master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy. Dena worked as a therapist, specializing in conflict resolution and communication within families and couples.
Passionate about helping people and utilizing her diverse skills, Dena has since returned to practicing law. Her relatability allows her to connect with clients on a personal level, understanding their unique circumstances while assisting them in creating estate plans to protect and pass down their family wealth. Her vast skills also help clients navigate trust administration following the passing of a loved one.
Jerri Hemsworth recently caught up with Dena to talk about life, love, and being an attorney who loves connecting with clients and friends.
So, you’re with Lagerlof which is a law firm. Tell us about what you do. And tell us about Lagerlof.
Lagerlof is the largest and oldest law firm in Pasadena. And what’s interesting is it’s kind of going through a rebranding. I don’t remember exactly the year, but around 2020, a bunch of smaller firms merged into Lagerlof. So now, there’s this infusion of younger attorneys.
We have about 100 people at the firm, about 50 attorneys and 50 staff. We’re a full-service law firm. We do estate planning and trust administration, which is what I do. We also have real estate, corporate, public agency, litigation, bankruptcy, elder law, and employment law departments.
What’s it like?
I think Lagerlof is a special place. I’m really happy to be there. One of the firms that merged in had a managing partner that would make breakfast for the firm every Friday. So now that they’ve merged in, every Friday morning, he still comes to the office with a couple support staff. They don’t bring in breakfast. He literally makes everything! Every Friday, for whoever wants a fresh cooked breakfast or just to hang out together and connect. I think that whole feeling kind of permeates through the law firm. Yeah…I’m really happy to be there.
You mentioned you’re not at the Pasadena office often. Why is that?
Correct. One of the things Lagerlof has been looking to do is to expand. So prior to me coming on, they had a Seattle office. And they opened an Encino office. They hired me to run, manage and grow the Encino office.
We’re growing in a really healthy way. I personally work in the Encino office. And in our office, there is myself, another attorney, and support staff. However, I do everything with the Pasadena office. They like to say it’s like I’m down the hall, not down the freeway.
Your area of practice is estate planning, correct?
Correct. I don’t do any litigation. I’m purely transactional. I create a lot of estate plans. The other thing that I do a lot of is trust administration. You know, a lot of attorneys do estate planning and will dabble in a trust administration when a client dies. My practice is just as heavy in trust administration as it is on the estate planning side. I do think it’s something that stands out because I correct a lot of mistakes that people do. And a lot of people do nothing when there is a first death of a couple. They’re just not aware that something needs to be done, right. So, I do a lot on the trust administration side, which I really enjoy.
What is it about trust administration that you enjoy so much?
I really enjoy it because there’s a lot of interaction with the clients. I enjoy that part of my practice. And with 50% of my practice being estate planning, it’s a nice balance. Plus, I’m also managing the office, and I’m out here doing business development. In Pasadena, it’s a very well-known firm, but now we’re spreading the word about Lagerlof to a wider area.
How does it feel for you to have been asked to head up the Encino office and grow it? It’s got to be a little bit scary.
Interesting question. It actually brings tears to my eyes; I have a very interesting history. I had a career. Then I took a break from my career to stay home and raise my kids. I went back to school and had another career, and now I have come back to practicing law. I always thought that my full-time job was being a mom. I was blown away to have somebody come in and say, “We’re going to trust you to do this, you’re exactly who we’re looking for.” Because of all these things, including the fact that I was a stay-at-home mom, I think that’s part of the overall package.
What size clients do you typically work with?
You know, it’s funny that I get asked that a lot. In this area of law, attorneys identify themselves by the size of the estates their clients have. Some people say they work with estates worth a couple million dollars, and then some people say they work with $5 to 20 million estates. I have worked on estates as small as a half a million dollars, up to literally half a billion dollars. So, the range of clients that I’ve worked with is vast. For me, what I love about my profession is the relatability when working with my clients—the relationship. It’s not about the size of the estate. It’s about, “Do I really connect with this client? And can I help them?”
To answer your question, my favorite client is a youngish couple that has a house worth probably $5 million-ish, has their first child, or one or two kids, and who have never had an estate plan. I know that I’m teaching them the value of what they’re doing. They’re looking to me for guidance. I’m not someone just coming in to draft a trust for them. We actually have deep conversations. That’s probably my very, very favorite client.
What career did you have before law?
I got a master’s in marriage and family therapy. It fed my fascination with couples and relationships. I just find relationships in general fascinating.
I have a certification for a specific type of couples therapy called Imago, which is very communication based. I worked primarily with couples, which now works very well in my legal profession. It gives me a unique skill set. Estate planning often involves tricky conversations. So just having the ability to step back and not look at it just from an estate planning point of view, but to really dig in with them.
Also, during the time that I was staying home with my kids, my mom was in the real estate field. I thought that could be fun. Plus, my ex-husband and I would buy and sell a lot of houses for ourselves. We were moving a lot so I got my broker’s license and dabbled in it personally until I can’t remember what year that was. But at some point, for a while, I did work within the real estate field out in Calabasas.
A lot of attorneys can draft estate planning documents, you know. But the difference is what I bring to the table. I now realize what a special skill set I have.
You’ve mentioned mountain biking and biking, and that you like to be outdoors and physically active. Have you been that way since you were a kid?
I’ve always been physical. Older people will remember the Jane Fonda days. My mom used to go to Jane Fonda’s exercise class with Jane Fonda, and I would sit in the corner of the studio. I think that helped integrate the idea of exercise into my life. And so I’ve always exercise. Not outdoors, per se, but exercise has always been a part of my life.
It’s funny, right after law school, I just started practicing. I had just gotten married. I thought, “I need something active.” And I don’t know why, but I saw something about the California AIDS ride. I think it was the second AIDS ride they ever had that went from San Francisco to L.A. I impulsively thought, “I’m gonna do that!” I didn’t even own a bike. I hadn’t been on a bike since I was a kid. And you had to raise money. I think back then you had to raise $7,000. But that started my love of cycling, which I put on hold while my kids were young, because it can be such a dangerous sport.
I think for me, I’m sitting at a desk all day. So as soon as I’m out of away from my desk, I just want to be outside. I want to be at the beach. I want to be riding or hiking. I just want to be in nature with my phone off.
I also love to go out dancing. Yeah. Anytime Boogie Nights is playing at the Canyon Club, you’ll find me there with my sparkly dress and Converse shoes on the dance floor.
We’ve heard you have a group of friends you do game night with? What type of games?
I like intimate gatherings. So, I’ll have maybe 10 or 12 various friends over for dinner. They’re really fun. We play Scattegories, Pictionary, Tellestrations. Sometimes we play games that are kind of made up. And we pick different games, and different people just get to know each other. It’s great for connecting.
Also, because I’m single, I’ve met a lot of other women who are single. What’s interesting is most of them will tell me they don’t have any other single friends or don’t really have anything to. And I will often tell them to just come over and play. Then somebody new is integrated into the friend group, and they’ll maybe connect with one or two people. It’s not even meant to be a personal or professional networking, but it just kind natural.
I do want to say that in terms of Echelon, you guys have done such an amazing job of creating something that is a little different. My Calabasas Echelon group has spent the summer doing our meetings on boats in Westlake and tooling around. To your point, it’s networking. But there’s an informality to it. And we actually go much more to the backside of the card. It feels like this is much more personal. And now these are people that you really want to know and that you really want to do business with.
Dena Klotz is Senior Counsel and Managing Attorney at Lagerlof, LLP. She can be reached at (818) 804-4691, dklotz@lagerlof.com.
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