Eido M. Walny, Atty, AEP®, EPLS
Walny Legal Group LLC
Milwaukee, WI

I hope this edition of the NAEPC Journal finds you and your family happy, healthy, and enjoying the holiday season. This is a busy time for estate planners, but with the Corporate Transparency Act taking effect soon, and estate tax changes on the horizon, we will no doubt look back at this period as the good ole times.

I am Eido Walny, the editor-in-chief of the NAEPC Journal.  I am extremely pleased to present to you the December edition of the Journal.  I think you will quite like this latest edition.

It has been a little over 2 years since I took over the Journal. For decades, the Journal had been run as an aggregator of articles. A little bit from here and a little bit from there, and -poof- the NAEPC Journal was pushed out.  But in my view, that incarnation of the Journal was not contributing thought leadership or substantive content to the estate planning profession. A change was needed.

I fermented a plan: The Journal should be completely redeveloped. We would shift from being aggregators to being leaders in thought leadership and content publication. Only original content should be published. We would develop a useful author’s guide, which had never been done before. We would seek to give new authors a venue in which to publish and work with emerging authors to give them an outlet. The Journal committee would be reorganized to be modeled after other academic journals. Essentially, we would reinvent the NAEPC Journal.

In just 2 years, we have come a long way. This latest issue is a testament to that work. The articles are excellent and all original. The pipeline of articles is filling such that we can set and stick with deadlines, a surprisingly novel concept.  We are getting to the point where we have enough articles in the works to think about adding editions or themes to the Journal. And the committee is working together in ways we never did before. Most importantly, readership is up dramatically (which is ultimately the most important thing, after all).

But our work is not done. The Journal can be even better. And it will be better.

If you are an author or aspire to be an author, consider the NAEPC Journal for publication.  It does not matter whether you have a polished article, a rough draft, or a glimmer of an idea, our staff is here to support you.  We can provide a home for your writing, help you edit, or connect you with experienced authors who can help show you the ropes.

I want to thank those who contributed to this Journal. I want to thank my staff, without whom this would not have been possible. And I want to thank the readers. I have heard positive input from you, and I really appreciate it.

I hope you enjoy this edition of the NAEPC Journal.  Happy holidays.