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The self help websites and software haven't exactly gone without controversy. Legalzoom has been challenged in several jurisdictions. As I understand it, the difference between Austin and a self help site is Austin would use a degree of judgment and discretion, whereas the self help sites do not. Giants like legalzoom have been able to defend themselves against the state bars, and in some cases I believe the reached rather large settlements, which would be hard to do for Austin, even though he is an international man of mystery...

"The litigant accepts responsibility for the document he or she submits to a court." I love your viewpoint. Sadly, it seems to me that no one is ever responsible for anything these days - the fault always lies with "someone else." I just wasn't raised that way...

Lol, Austin. I'm sitting here thinking that daily valuation is about the only service I've done. I had a few quarterly's back in the day, but we moved them to daily asap.

DST will sell you the same backbone that RKD, AXA, Mass/Hartford & others have purchased to run their platforms--Can you imagine "Austin Powers 401(k) Systems"? You would have some serious name recognition & the ad slogans just write themselves!

We definitely have instances in which we as attorneys draft a form QDRO, which a nonattorney employee of the employer or plan then provides to plan participants or their attorneys. I don't see the purely ministerial function of providing the sample QDRO as being the practice of law. But I would not want a nonattorney drafting the QDRO in the first instance, or providing the participant with legal advice concerning it.

Another overzealous Auditor, not too surprising but there's no failure. No way it's worth the expense of a VCP filing.

"On a payroll basis" is really loose. I would argue that all that means is that if the person contributed and was there for that payroll period, they get the match. There is nothing in the language that says precisely when or requires deposit on a payroll basis. The requirement to deposit by end of next quarter is just for safe harbor. 1.401(k)-3(c)(5)(ii). You're fine.

Got that right! I can't tell you how many times I've heard "the law says I can take a loan from my 401k, what do you mean THIS plan doesn't allow loans?" or my personal favorite "I just want to close out my 401k, it's my money"

When you're a small firm you have little choice but to have soup-to-nuts administrators. As you grow IMO it really makes more sense to consolidate certain services that are peripheral to the ongoing admin cycle. Functions such as trust accounting, loan and distribution processing, onboarding and plan documents are all tasks that lend themselves to being segregated. We evolved this way over 25 years. It is really difficult to find administrators who are experts at everything, and the really good ones are expensive. Training them to do documents, assemble pdf packages, deal with mundane tasks like withholding is not a good use of their time and about the most expensive way a firm can handle these functions. Creating separate functions creates a career path for new hires who find they like the business and want to learn more. As you get bigger it is more and more difficult to find well trained experienced administrators. Separating functions and creating processes improves the client experience and makes it more predictable regardless of who is handling the plan. I know firms where some administrators are still using the Datair DOS system and others are using the Win system. When a firm has multiple clients with an advisor or CPA this creates confusion when they see vastly different reports. Quality control. With separate functions the people in the separate departments can be really good at handling TA, loans, distributions or documents. This makes them faster and more accurate. Also a firm with separate silos very vulnerable when an administrator leaves, is on vacation, etc. Onboarding should absolutely be separated from regular admin in any firm that really wants to grow. Having a predictable, repeatable and scalable new business process is essential to create trust with referral sources and keep business development people focused on opportunities rather than getting involved in the minutiae of a takeover. And administrators with caseloads are on a treadmill with deadlines 2x per month and their own clients to whom they've made their own promises and commitments. Dropping new business on them disrupts them and they often get shuffled to the bottom of the pile. Renee Connor at PensionPro published a very good article on this a couple months ago. Just my opinion.