The firm has a team model for client service. Each client is served by three members led by a client advisor. The teams, composed to fit each client relationship, bring expertise in financial planning, asset allocation, estate planning, fiduciary services, multigenerational wealth, investment manager selection and family business succession. If expertise is needed that goes beyond the skills of the team members, the firm will call in either internal experts or outsiders who specialize in the area needed. This model has evolved since the merger of the two companies.

Kristi Mathisen, hired in 2006 from the Bader Martin accounting firm to oversee Laird Norton Tyee's tax and financial planning operation, says her first acquaintance with the firm was as one of those outside consultants. She says she was always struck by the depth of the firm's in-house expertise and yet it still had a willingness and initiative to look outside for help.

"They kept the advisors they worked with on track, so that if a client really wanted to accomplish something, they helped facilitate it," Mathisen says. "Other firms say they do that, but they don't call in third-party advisors."

Now that she's on staff, Mathisen says the firm no longer has to reinvent the wheel over and over again every time a client wants to initiate a novel strategy. She also helps the internal advisors better understand the tax consequences of what a client wants to do, so when they speak to a third party, such as the client's accountant, they can better explain what the client is trying to achieve.

While the wealth management sector has become more competitive, Laird Norton Tyee differentiates itself by being a planning firm first and an asset manager second, according to Robert Moser, the firm's new president, who says independent planning was in the firm's DNA from the beginning. The firm helps clients decipher their goals and then finds investment strategies to achieve those goals, rather than the other way around, he explains. The firm stresses that it doesn't sell products but offers services: including financial and tax planning, generational transfer and trust administration and investment stewardship.

"At its core, it's a planning firm that helps families come up with strategies to achieve their goals, dreams and targets," Moser says. "It's hard for me to call Merrill Lynch a planning firm."

The firm's investment offerings and allocations tend to vary with the age of the client. Tyee's clients were on average younger than the trust company's clients, and the services appealing to them at first were deferred compensation analysis and education savings plans. They were not as interested in estate planning and legacy planning offerings.

A lot of the firm's clients say philanthropy is as much a part of their strategic goals as asset appreciation-a radical change from 20 years ago-and philanthropy is one of Laird Norton's core competencies. "They pay as much attention to a client's philanthropic goals as they do to managing the financial resources," says Molly Stearns, a senior vice president of The Seattle Foundation, one of the nation's largest community foundations. "In our estimation, that is not the norm."
Stearns says the firm has often pulled her into client presentations on philanthropic giving. While other firms offer such a service, she doesn't believe they have as complete a Rolodex of outside experts to tap.

Philanthropy is often considered the pursuit of people who have already retired or sent their kids to college, who wait become interested in things like family foundations, donor-advised funds, CLATs, etc. But Laird Norton says that it also has seen quite a few very active young philanthropic families as well, and the age lines aren't as neatly drawn.

Given its genesis as a family business, the firm has insight into the peculiarities of the family wealth business, a job where emotions can run high, and officers can make decisions based on childhood grievances rather than finances. "Having been deeply rooted in the Laird Norton family, there's a confidence the client can have that they've been through all of these conversations before," says Peter Evans, the former president of the Laird Norton Co.'s family office.
Moser says that's what makes the firm a particularly good choice for first- and second- generation wealth creators. "We've worked with families that have been extraordinarily successful over many generations, and we can look at what made those families successful and apply some of those skills to the new wealth creators," he says.