We became the lawyers our own families did not have.

Shadi’s parents arrived in this country with a one-year-old and two thousand dollars, and no English. Patrick’s mother never had the education she made sure he got. Estate planning is where both of us decided to be useful.

Start with a conversation Read first, call later

Patrick P. Phancao, smiling, in a navy suit and open white shirt, photographed against a sandstone wall. — Patrick P. PhancaoFounding partner. Admitted to the California Bar in 2001.

Shadi Ala’i Shaffer, smiling, in a navy jacket, photographed against a pale wall. — Shadi Ala’i ShafferFounding partner. Admitted to the California Bar in 2002.

“I was an advocate early on for my family. My parents just didn’t know the law because they weren’t educated in it. I found that estate planning would be a place where I could be more proactive.”
Shadi Ala’i Shaffer, Attorney Journal Orange County, Volume 143, 2018

“Coming from an immigrant family, my Mother told me on numerous occasions that money had nothing to do with it. Rather, the privilege of going to school and being in an environment where knowledge was encouraged was something she had envied throughout her life. She never had that opportunity, and my being able to experience it enabled her to live her dreams through me.”
Patrick Phancao, JD, “Promotion of Family Values Through a Trust,” The WealthCounsel Quarterly

Phancao & Shaffer, LLP
Asset Protection & Elder Law Center
Estate planning, asset protection, elder law, probate
Costa Mesa and Laguna Beach
Since 2004

The story of the firm

Patrick Phancao and Shadi Ala’i Shaffer have practiced law together since 2004. He was admitted in 2001, she in 2002. They met as undergraduates at UC Santa Barbara and were friends for two decades before the firm existed. On her own professional profile she still calls him “my best friend of over 30 years, Patrick P. Phancao.” He is godfather to her sons. Her firstborn calls him Uncle Patrick and has surfed with him on local and destination trips for years. They take holidays as one family.

“When we started the firm in 2004, times were tough. I mean, really tough. We’re talking about working for being broke kind of tough. As my partner would often remind me ‘I’d rather be broke and at home, then broke and go to work every day.’ Unfortunately, that’s how it felt for both of us. Every. Single. Day. This went on for years.”
From the firm’s own newsletter, February 2019

The work divides the way their interests do. Patrick takes the structures: businesses, holdings, advanced tax, and the arrangements that decide what a family owns and how exposed it is. He is also the one who handles the questions about nursing homes, Medi-Cal and the family house. Shadi takes the plans and the people: trusts, probate, and the long conversations that have to happen before any of it is written down.

Between them the practice covers the whole of a family’s life. That was the intention from the beginning, and she has already written it down better than we could:

“Together, we set out to create a law firm built on lifelong relationships, where we could support our clients through every stage of their lives.”
Shadi Ala’i Shaffer, her own Justia profile

What a family needs at forty-five is not what it needs at seventy-five, and neither is what the children will need on the day they get the call. The firm was built to be there for all three.

Between them they have also spent more than a decade explaining this work to people who are not lawyers: a newsletter, a radio show, a book, and a video library of 119 answers. Most of that library is Patrick’s. He is the one on camera for asset protection, Medi-Cal, the business questions and the nursing-home questions, and he has been answering them since 2012.

Patrick P. Phancao, photographed in 2024.

Patrick P. Phancao

Founding partner. The structures: businesses, holdings, advanced tax, and the questions about nursing homes, Medi-Cal and the family house.

State Bar of California:: license 213247, active. Admitted May 31, 2001.
Other admissions:: (BAR ADMISSIONS, CONFIRM WITH CLIENT: California confirmed for both founders; Patrick's Florida and D.C. admissions are unconfirmed and his own page contradicts itself)

He grew up in France. In the firm’s own newsletter, November 2025, on his hometown:

“As a youth, going to a PSG football (that’s right people, not soccer ) game could be an exhilarating, yet frightening experience because of the crowd and the metro ride back!”
Patrick, in the firm’s newsletter, November 2025

And on arriving into an American high school:

“Add the fact that English was not my first language and the educational system was vastly different than my European upbringing, this caused a lot of turmoil growing up.”
Patrick, in the firm’s newsletter, April 2019

In an article he wrote for a national trade publication, he opens with a statistic about heirs spending their inheritance, and then admits he is one of them. An uncle had left him a small sum for college, and a photo album:

“Though he wasn’t a man of large means, when he passed away, he was kind enough to leave me a small sum for my college education, and a small picture album of the two of us when I was a toddler. As you would imagine, I spent that money in less than six months, but I have that album with me to this day. The simple notes he took of our time together continues to strike a chord with me each time I read them. Some things do last a life time.”
Patrick Phancao, JD, “Promotion of Family Values Through a Trust,” The WealthCounsel Quarterly

The same article ends with the sentence this practice is built on:

“True lasting Attorney-Client relationships only last to the extent they trust you with their family members.”
Patrick Phancao, The WealthCounsel Quarterly

And the part he tells against himself:

“my business partner literally had to force me to do my own Revocable Living Trust. If we were going to do it for a living, it would appear a bit hypocritical not to have my own. However, back then, estate planning didn’t seem... ‘sexy’ enough to be quite frank. I was single with no kids. Well, not much has changed on that end”
Patrick, in the firm’s newsletter, June 2018

His own note on what he is for, from the same publication that printed his essay:

“Mr. Phancao takes great pride in putting his client’s ‘voice’ in their estate plan, creating a lifetime legacy for future generations that reach far beyond mere wealth.”
Author note, The WealthCounsel Quarterly

Shadi Ala’i Shaffer, photographed in 2024.

Shadi Ala’i Shaffer

Founding partner. The plans and the people: trusts, probate, trust administration, and the long conversations that have to happen before any of it is written down.

State Bar of California:: license 220773, active. Admitted November 12, 2002.
Languages:: English. Fluent in Farsi.

She was born in the Bronx to parents who had arrived in the country as a young married couple with a one-year-old son and two thousand dollars, and no English. She has lived in California since elementary school. The magazine version of that story is above. This is how she tells it herself:

“Oh wow. Well, I’m the first U.S. born child of immigrant parents. They were here very young, 18 and 21, with the one-year-old, no English, and I was born in Bronx, New York... When I was 13, a woman I knew said, you young lady need to put that mouth to use, and you should go be an attorney. It was the first time I ever even knew what an attorney was. So fast forward many, many years, and a lot of blood, sweat and tears, I’m not gonna lie.”
Shadi Ala’i Shaffer, speaking. Punctuation added to a spoken transcript; not a word changed.

She does not come from money, and she says so out loud:

“I don’t come from a family of money. I’m self-made, first in my family to go to college, first to go to law school. I get it, nobody wants to write that check. It’s not an easy check to write. However, I’m here to tell you that it is worth every penny.”
Shadi Ala’i Shaffer, from her own video, 2021

The name she gave her own estate planning CD, on the firm’s radio show:

“Don’t walk around legally naked.”
Shadi Ala’i Shaffer, Trust Talk Radio: “the title is, you know, why you need an estate plan. Don’t walk around legally naked. That’s what I call it.”

And why she does this work, with the attorney voice fully off:

“I love what I do and that’s why I do estate planning, but you know, I’m an attorney. The subject matter is not always the sexiest or the most exciting. It sometimes can be somber. It’s about death and passing away and planning and whatnot and for a lot of people, those aren’t necessarily exciting subjects and topics to listen to.”
Shadi Ala’i Shaffer, on air

One family, four stages

Most people find us at one point on this line, holding one problem. It helps to see the rest of it.

“We are not a trust Mill. We are attorneys that, once you become our trust client, we are with you for many years to come, and that is why our fee structure is very different. We’re not for everybody, but we offer that service.”
Shadi Ala’i Shaffer, speaking. Punctuation added; not a word changed.

While you are building

You are healthy, you are working, and you own things now that you did not own ten years ago.

This is the stage almost everybody arrives in and the one nobody is in a hurry about. There is a house, probably a retirement account, maybe a business or a rental, and children who are either young enough to need a guardian named or old enough to inherit badly. Nothing is wrong. That is exactly what makes it easy to put off.

The work here is a living trust and the documents around it, so that nothing your family owns has to go through a court. Alongside it sits the question of exposure: what a lawsuit, a creditor, or a bad year could reach, and how to put it out of reach before anything happens rather than after.

What lives here: Estate Planning. Asset Protection. Advanced Tax Planning.

If you have been meaning to do this for a while, this is your stage, and you are in ordinary company.

Start with a conversation

Patrick walks this one with youOn camera, 2013, on the difference between a plan and a set of papers.

“Again, a lot of attorneys give you the fanciest binders with the best legal drafted documents, and they leave the client to do the actual funding or transfer of the asset. Well, I can tell you, when that takes place, you’ve just spent a hefty amount of money on very fancy pieces of paper, but you will not have provided the protection that you were seeking for.”
Patrick Phancao, 2013. Punctuation added; not a word changed.

While you are caring

Something has changed with a parent, a spouse, or a child, and the questions got harder.

A diagnosis lands, or a parent stops being able to manage on their own, and suddenly there is a category of question nobody prepared you for. What long-term care costs and who pays for it. What Medi-Cal means for the house. What happens to a disabled child’s benefits if you leave them money the wrong way.

This is its own body of law, and it runs on deadlines and eligibility rules rather than on documents.

What lives here: Elder Law and Medi-Cal Planning. Special Needs Planning.

If you are the one making the phone calls for somebody else now, this is your stage.

Talk to someone who knows these rules

Patrick walks this one with youThe nursing-home, Medi-Cal and elder-law questions are his half of the practice.

“Come talk to me. It’s not a scary experience, and we’ll go over a detailed plan of what you should anticipate as you age gracefully.”

“There is often a sense of guilt... If you don’t mind my sharing my personal experience, I’ve went through something very similar, and I understand the exhaustion that comes along with it.”
Patrick Phancao, from his own videos. Punctuation added; not a word changed.

When someone dies

The paperwork does not wait for you to be ready, and some of it is on a clock.

Somebody has died. There are notices that must go out by law, accounts nobody can touch, a house in one person’s name, and a court process that may or may not be avoidable depending on what was set up years ago.

If there is a trust, the work is administering it, which is a set of duties with real legal exposure for whoever agreed to be trustee. If there is not, the work is probate, which is slower and public and is the thing stage one exists to prevent.

You do not need to understand any of that before you call.

What lives here: California Probate. Trust Administration.

If somebody has just died and you do not know what you are supposed to do first, start here, and start today. Some of these deadlines are short.

Call us today Start here

Shadi walks this one with youProbate and trust administration are hers. This is what she said first to a caller whose father had died.

“Well Rudy, first and foremost, I’m sorry to hear about your dad’s passing.”

“So these are really tough subjects. And I know it’s not easy to talk about.”
Shadi Ala’i Shaffer, on air

When it begins again

The people who inherited are now the people with houses and children of their own.

This is the stage nobody plans for and the one that says the most about a firm. The children who sat in on the meetings become clients. The trustee who was walked through their duties calls back years later about their own family. The plan gets restated because a marriage happened, or did not last, or a grandchild arrived.

We know what this looks like because it is a large part of the practice:

“Attorney Shaffer has been our estate planning attorney for over 15 years and has helped us restate our living trust twice. She has guided us based on our evolving needs and is always dedicated to the best work.”
Erin L. C., client

Bring us up to date

Shadi, on why it happensThree generations, stated as a fact about her own practice.

“This is why we have clients whose children become our clients, and then their children become our clients...”
Shadi Ala’i Shaffer, speaking. Punctuation added; not a word changed.

Lifetime guidance

Everything after the signing is already included in the fee. Her own name for it is lifetime guidance.

“Because we’re about this lifelong relationship, so we built in all those services, and it’s in our fee... I’m kind of all in and all all out. I don’t do like piecemeal work... No, everyone in my all of our clients have that lifetime guidance.”
Shadi Ala’i Shaffer, on the record, 2024

What it covers, in her own description:

The planning itself, with the notary fees and the deed transfer filing fees
A meeting with the well spouse if the other becomes ill or develops Alzheimer’s
A meeting when the first spouse dies
A meeting when both have died
A meeting with the trustee

(LIFETIME GUIDANCE, CONFIRM WITH CLIENT THAT IT IS CURRENT AND MAY BE NAMED PUBLICLY)

We put your house in the trust ourselves.

The deed is signed at the same sitting as the plan, and the transfer is done by the firm. They decided to work that way from the start, and wrote down why:

“Going against ‘common’ practice in the legal profession, many attorneys had warned us that such practice would ‘eat into the profits’, be time consuming, and go unappreciated by clients. Well, over a decade into practice for ourselves, that is definitely a decision we have not regretted to date”
From the firm’s own newsletter, March 2017

Nothing gets signed on the first day.

The first meeting is a conversation about your family. We get to the paperwork later. Shadi, on air, telling the story against herself:

“I have to be honest with you, my staff was starting to worry and wonder. They were like, what’s going on with this Tom Gentleman and why is there no agreement and a retainer fee?”
Shadi Ala’i Shaffer, Trust Talk Radio, to a client

What clients say about the two of them

“I ended up even giving a deposit to a different law company and there was trouble getting the deposit back over time but I eventually got it back. But I found with them you were just a number but working with you and your firm, I felt like I was a person first.”
Tom Gates, client, on the firm’s radio show

“There were times when we first got together that we would talk for hours at times without even getting around to talking about the trust itself.”
Tom Gates, client

“My experience with Shadi and Patrick stem from a Ten year relationship. When it comes to estate planning and trusts they are my go to and only law firm.”
Karen I., client

“I walked into the offices of Phancao & Shaffer, LLP, anticipating the typical treatment we have all come to expect from law firms. I walked away with so much more! Patrick made me feel so comfortable from the beginning, explaining all the possible options (in simple terms!) available to my legal situation. Being a new mother and opening up my own medical practice, he laid out structures that would perfectly fit my needs... Now I know I have a Counselor for life!”
Mrs. Margarita I., M.D., client

“I felt like a friend and not just another client.”
William R., client, in a review addressed to Patrick

“At a time of tremendous stress and grief, Shadi guided me through the entire trust process with compassion and insight. Her ability to translate complex legal concepts into language that is comprehensible to the lay individual is nothing short of a gift!”
Lisa P., client

The testimonials or endorsements do not constitute a guarantee, warranty, or prediction regarding the outcome of your legal matter.

The firm

Two attorneys started this firm in 2004 and still run it. Patrick handles the structures. Shadi handles the plans and the people. Four attorneys and four staff work here now, and a good number of the families on the books have been on them for more than a decade.

A relationship meant to outlast any one lawyer needs a named successor. This firm has one.

Read first, call later

Plenty of the people who find this firm are not ready to talk to anybody yet. The founders have spent more than a decade making things for exactly those people.

Start with the library

119 videos, over 3,000 subscribersMost of them are Patrick’s: asset protection, Medi-Cal, the business questions and the nursing-home questions.
Watch
Protecting You and Yours90 issues of a printed newsletter, still arriving.
How to Prepare for Life’s UnknownThe book, by Patrick P. Phancao and Shadi Ala’i Shaffer.
Trust Talk RadioA radio show. Six episodes, including a client describing, on the record, why he chose this firm over one he had already paid.

You have probably been meaning to do this for a while. Most people who call us have.Start with a conversation. Nothing gets signed that day.

(714) 966-2646

The first meeting is a conversation about your family. We get to the paperwork later.

Costa Mesa3187 Red Hill Ave #115
Costa Mesa, CA 92626

Laguna Beach120 S Coast Hwy #100
Laguna Beach, CA 92651