About one in six people in Tennessee is 65 or older today, and that number is only headed up. From Nashville and Memphis to Knoxville and Chattanooga, families are going to need attorneys who can walk them through TennCare, guardianship and long term care planning with real confidence, not attorneys who added elder law to their website without the training to back it up. The Elder Law Coach exists for the Tennessee attorneys who want that training. Todd Whatley delivers one on one elder law coaching by phone and video to lawyers across the state.
Elder law barely shows up in most law school curriculums, which leaves attorneys to learn TennCare eligibility, spend down planning and Medicaid asset protection trusts largely through trial and error. Elder law coaching gives Tennessee attorneys a shortcut past that trial and error stage.
Todd has spent more than 25 years building, running and eventually selling his own elder law practice, and his coaching leans on that history instead of theory pulled from a textbook. Attorneys practicing solo outside Nashville face many of the same questions as attorneys inside a larger Memphis firm: how do you guide a family through a long term care crisis with confidence, and build a practice that can support that work year after year?
Todd is a Certified Elder Law Attorney (CELA) who has built and sold four law practices across his career. He has personally sat with more than 15,000 clients, trained close to a dozen attorneys who went on to become CELAs themselves, and spoken at more than 100 events focused on elder law and practice growth.
In his words: “I’ve spent years honing my career as a nationally recognized elder law attorney, mentoring younger lawyers along the way. Now I want to bring that experience to attorneys across the country, including Tennessee, who want to grow a confident, thriving elder law practice.”
It is that combination, real legal depth plus real business experience, that separates coaching from a standard CLE course.
Coaching happens entirely by phone and video, so an attorney in Chattanooga or Knoxville gets the same access as someone whose office sits down the street from Todd’s.
Premium Coaching pairs a complete library of forms, slide decks and training content with two or more one on one calls each month, along with direct access to Todd’s cell phone. Elite Coaching adds weekly calls and scheduled in office visits, built for Tennessee attorneys ready to transform a practice that already exists rather than start from zero.
Training with Todd covers Medicaid planning, VA benefits, guardianship, trust work and the business side of running a firm built around aging clients. Tennessee runs its Medicaid program as TennCare through the Bureau of TennCare, and coaching includes help translating Todd’s core planning strategies into the rules Tennessee attorneys actually work under.
This is where Todd also functions as an elder law consultant for one off situations. Some attorneys call about a single complicated TennCare fact pattern. Others keep coaching going for years, treating every new case as a reason to check their thinking against his.
Legal skill alone will not build a practice. Todd also works as an attorney business coach, helping Tennessee attorneys with marketing, intake, staffing and the daily calls that decide whether a young elder law practice grows or stays stuck.
If you have been trying to figure out how to grow an elder law practice in Tennessee, this business side is exactly where most training programs stop short. Todd built and sold four practices of his own, so his advice comes from someone who lived through the growth, not someone who studied it from a distance. Attorneys after elder law business mastery coaching, not just legal instruction, tend to choose Elite Coaching, where Todd operates closer to an of counsel partner than a course instructor.
A CLE seminar teaches the law as it exists today. Elder law mentorship helps you apply that law again and again as your caseload and the rules both shift. That ongoing relationship is the real difference between coaching and a single weekend course.
Attorneys who work through Todd’s program leave better prepared for the Medicaid fact patterns that walk in their door, steadier with families in crisis, and clearer on how to build a practice that can carry that work for years.
No. Every session runs by phone or video, so Tennessee attorneys from Memphis to a small county practice can take part without traveling.
No. Premium Coaching suits attorneys transitioning into elder law for the first time, and Elite Coaching is built for established Tennessee practices ready to expand.
CLE courses teach you the law. Coaching applies it to real client situations and helps you build the business around it, with ongoing access to Todd rather than a single day of instruction.
Todd’s coaching rests on core Medicaid and elder law planning principles that apply nationwide, then helps you apply those principles to the rules specific to Tennessee, including how TennCare handles eligibility and long term care benefits.
If you are ready to move past wondering how to grow an elder law practice and start actually doing it, book a free consultation. Todd will walk through where your Tennessee practice stands now and which coaching level fits where you want it to go.
