In a conversation with Arthur Rothrock on The Litigator’s Path, Baker explains why he chose the partner track over solo practice, how he markets a niche litigation practice through estate planning referral networks and an outside marketing consultant, what role empathy plays in managing clients navigating grief and decades-old family conflict, and where he sees AI fitting into trust and estate caseloads right now. The thread running through all of it: trust and estate litigation demands both technical range – corporate governance, tax, real property – and a willingness to treat clients as people first, because the emotional stakes in these cases are unlike anything in commercial litigation.
How Matthew Baker Markets a Niche Trust and Estate Litigation Practice Through Referral Networks
For most probate litigation attorneys, the phone doesn’t ring because a potential client searched "trust contest lawyer near me." Baker puts it simply: "You have to go to where the clients are." In his experience, that means estate planning attorneys – the lawyers who drafted the plans that eventually end up in dispute.
But showing up at bar association meetings isn’t enough. Baker describes a two-step filter that estate planners apply before sending a referral: they need to trust that you’ll do competent work, and they need to actually like you. He frames it less as networking strategy and more as sustained relationship-building – demonstrating capability in the field, then proving you’ll treat the referring attorney’s client with care during what is almost always a painful chapter of their life.
Beyond his firm’s internal marketing team (he works directly with about three people on that side), Baker also retains an outside marketing consultant, Lana Manganiello, independently of the firm. What drew him to that arrangement was her emphasis on daily, incremental marketing habits rather than the boom-and-bust cycle most litigators fall into – weeks of heavy case work followed by a flurry of catch-up posts and outreach. Baker recognizes the pattern in himself and in the profession broadly: when ex partes land and trial prep ramps up, marketing is the first thing that disappears. Manganiello’s structured daily check-in system gave him a way to keep it consistent even during heavy caseloads. He has also increased his investment in thought leadership writing and follow-up outreach – the quieter, off-platform work that compounds over time.
Why Baker Represents Both Trustees and Beneficiaries – and How It Shapes His Client Management
Baker estimates his caseload splits roughly 50-50 between trustee and beneficiary representations, with the balance shifting back and forth year to year. He considers that dual perspective a practical advantage, particularly when managing client expectations.
When representing a beneficiary who doesn’t understand why a trustee is dragging their feet or following certain procedures – especially a corporate trustee – Baker can explain the mechanics from the other side. That explanation often keeps emotions from escalating into something that derails settlement discussions. "I think it’s so easy for people, in our kinds of cases, to take things personally," he says. The goal is to defuse that instinct before it calcifies.
This emotional layer is something Baker identifies as a core difference between trust and estate litigation and the business and real estate litigation he practiced earlier in his career. Commercial clients, he notes, tended to treat lawsuits transactionally – litigation was a cost of doing business. Trust and estate clients are grieving. They’re processing the death of a parent or spouse while simultaneously confronting family dynamics that may have been suppressed for decades. Baker sees the counseling function – making clients feel heard and guiding them toward resolution rather than prolonged conflict – as central to doing the job well, not an add-on. "I don’t think people want to be in this position forever," he says.
How Baker Uses Mediation to Resolve Trust Disputes Before Trial
Baker views mediation as one of the most effective tools in trust and estate cases, in part because it gives clients something the court system often cannot: time and attention. He points to the reality of probate court calendars – judges carry enormous caseloads and simply don’t have the bandwidth for extended argument on every probate dispute. A mediator, by contrast, will read the briefs, listen to both sides, and create space for the kind of airing of grievances that clients in these cases desperately need.
Rather than imposing a preferred mediation style, Baker says he lets mediators run their own process. He uses a range of mediators with different approaches and treats that variety as a feature, not a problem. His role, as he describes it, is to prepare the client and the brief, then give the mediator room to work.
On the question of in-person versus remote proceedings more broadly, Baker falls on the in-person side for anything that matters to case strategy. He still appears in person for important hearings, noting that judges in LA and Orange County tend to call on the attorney who showed up first – and that there’s a dynamic to being physically present that Zoom flattens. For depositions, he wants to be in the room with the witness: "There’s something to being in the room and having to look somebody in the eye." For routine status conferences, though, he’s happy to save the client money with a remote appearance.
Why Matthew Baker Chose the Partner Track Over Solo Practice – and How He Runs His Cases Anyway
Baker never seriously considered hanging his own shingle. He wanted colleagues – specifically, partners with deep experience in trusts and estates litigation whom he could call for a gut check or to bounce a theory off of. At Saul Ewing, the trusts and estates department includes attorneys who have practiced in this space for decades, and Baker describes access to that bench as one of the primary reasons he stayed on the partner track.
But he’s clear that working within a large firm hasn’t meant surrendering control. Baker treats his career and his caseload as his own. He doesn’t wait for the firm’s marketing team to hand him a plan. He doesn’t defer case strategy decisions to a committee. "It’s my career and I treat it like my career," he says. He also values the firm’s depth when cases involve corporate governance, tax, or assessor’s office issues that fall outside his core expertise – he can walk down the hall rather than scramble for outside counsel. He’s candid about knowing his limits: "I like to be honest about what I don’t know."
His cases frequently involve business entities inside trusts – families with LLCs, corporations, and what he calls his favorite scenario: "the family that has like 50 single-purpose LLCs, each one owning a different piece of property." The intersection of corporate bylaws and trust terms creates real tension, and Baker sees attorneys who dabble in this area without full fluency as courting serious risk.
How Matthew Baker Uses AI for Document Review, Case Analysis, and Daily Practice
Baker uses AI every day. His personal toolkit includes ChatGPT and Gemini (he’s a long-time Pixel user), and at the firm level he works with both a proprietary AI tool and CoCounsel, Thomson Reuters’ AI-assisted legal research platform.
His most concrete use case: uploading large document productions – medical records in a trust contest, for example – and getting an outline of what’s in the production in hours instead of days or weeks. That early summary lets him run targeted searches in Relativity, loop in an expert sooner, and have a more informed initial conversation about the case without waiting for a full manual document review. Peter Bochnewich uses the same principle going the other direction: answering discovery substantively rather than hiding behind objections so the record is clean when it matters most at trial. He’s clear that none of this replaces expert analysis or attorney judgment – "I’m not suggesting that we’re abdicating anything solely to AI" – but the speed advantage in early case assessment is, in his view, undeniable.
Baker draws a parallel to the adoption curve of Westlaw and Lexis. He remembers a time when attorneys resisted Google searches on principle, and he sees the same dynamic playing out with AI tools now. His prediction is direct: AI in legal practice is here to stay, and "it’s only going to permeate more." He acknowledges that his enthusiasm isn’t universally shared at his firm, but frames the gap as temporary – the same way resistance to digital research tools eventually gave way to universal adoption. For litigators looking to get started, Baker’s advice is practical: the use cases vary so widely by practice area that the best approach is to experiment within your own workflow and learn the tool’s limitations firsthand. This is the kind of iterative adoption – figuring out where AI fits into a specific litigation workflow – that platforms like Legion are built to support.
What Litigators Can Take Away
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Build referral relationships where the clients already are – Baker’s primary source of new matters is estate planning attorneys, not online advertising, and he earns those referrals by demonstrating competence in the field and by being someone the referring attorney trusts to treat their client well during a difficult time.
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Treat marketing like a daily practice, not a project – Baker hired an outside marketing consultant, Lana Manganiello, specifically because her system emphasizes small daily marketing steps – follow-ups, thought leadership, outreach – rather than the sporadic bursts that most litigators default to when caseloads fluctuate.
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Use your experience on both sides of a dispute to manage client expectations – Baker’s 50-50 split between trustee and beneficiary representations gives him the ability to explain to each side why the other is behaving the way they are, a skill that keeps emotions from overwhelming case strategy.
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Show up in person when it counts – Baker appears in person for significant hearings, mediations, and depositions because judges tend to engage first with the attorney in the room, and witnesses respond differently when opposing counsel is sitting across the table rather than in a small box on a screen.
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Start using AI for document review even if you don’t trust it for everything yet – Baker uploads large medical record productions to CoCounsel and gets usable outlines in hours, which lets him engage experts earlier and run targeted searches instead of grinding through a full manual review before forming a case theory.
Listen to the Full Episode
Matthew Baker’s full conversation with Arthur Rothrock covers the emotional dynamics of trust litigation, the reality of probate court calendars, and why being likable matters as much as being skilled. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and learn more about Matt’s practice at Saul Ewing LLP. To see how Legion helps California litigators draft pleadings, discovery, and motions in minutes, visit legion.law.