Why Danielle started this firm

Danielle Little founded Little Estate Lawyers in Brisbane in October 2018. Before that, she spent over 11 years at a large multinational law firm, and the first part of her legal career in large practices generally. She learned a great deal and values the perspective these experiences gave her.

But a large firm runs on billable hours. Every lawyer carries a target, it’s measured, and it’s the number that progression is built on. Above that sit revenue targets for the team, the practice group and the firm. None of this is sinister. It’s simply how the model works.

The difficulty is what it does to advice. When there are two ways through a matter, and one takes forty hours and the other takes four, the pressure doesn’t sit neutrally between them. Most of the time what’s best for the client and what’s best for the firm are actually the same thing. When they aren’t, that’s a genuine fork in the road.

Danielle’s view is that succession law is there to do a fairly plain job. Give effect to what someone wanted. Make proper provision for the people they were responsible for. Settle the arguments that arise when those two pull against each other. Working to the spirit of that means asking what a matter actually needs, not what the firm wants.

That’s why she started the firm. So she could get on with actually resolving matters, instead of perpetually chasing billable targets.

How we work

So the first question in any matter is what outcome you actually need, and then what the most efficient and economical route to it looks like. Sometimes that’s a conversation and some direction. Sometimes it’s a letter. Sometimes it’s an application to the Court. What decides it is your situation, and not the billable hours attached to any of the options.

Occasionally the answer is that you don’t need us at all. Your matter might be one we can’t help with, or what you need is a different kind of professional. The most useful thing we can do in that scenario is tell you who to call. We’d rather have that conversation in the first hour than open a file.

Danielle’s original intention was to fix the fee on everything. Commercial reality got in the way, because administration and litigation are genuinely unpredictable and nobody can honestly quote a fixed price for work where the shape, size and variables are not known.

So the principle stayed and the scope narrowed. Where we can fix a fee, we do. Where we can’t, we give you the most accurate estimate our experience allows, and we’d rather have an uncomfortable conversation about cost at the start than send an uncomfortable invoice at the end.

How people find us

Most firms will tell you their clients come by word of mouth – we measured ours to be sure.

Since the beginning of 2022, more than 95% of our clients came to us because of a recommendation from someone in our professional network, our personal network, or from a past client.

Who sends people to us, and why

The largest single group referring to us are actually other lawyers.

Some of that is natural adjacency. A family lawyer working through a separation is looking at someone whose estate plan no longer matches their life, and often no longer matches their intentions either.

Some of it is scope. Plenty of good firms handle straightforward succession work and draw a line before the complex end, or they may do the planning but not the litigation.

And a great deal of referred work is conflict based. Succession law throws up conflicts constantly, because the parties involved are usually related to each other and cannot see the same lawyer. Each party involved in an estate needs independent legal advice for their specific circumstances.

When a lawyer is unable to act for someone, they’re not just referring that person to a different firm, they’re also selecting an opponent for themselves, and they’ll be dealing with the consequences of whoever they pick. Sending someone to us is a bet that we’ll be reasonable, that we’ll know the law in detail, and that the matter will be fairly resolved rather than unnecessarily escalated.

In estate disputes, the people who know a lawyer’s work best are usually the people opposing it. Both of the following recognitions come from that group.Danielle has been recommended in Doyle’s Guide for Wills & Estates Litigation in Queensland every year since 2023, and the firm every year since 2022. Those rankings are voted by the Queensland legal profession.

In April 2026, Danielle was named in the 2027 edition of The Best Lawyers in Australia for Trusts and Estates. Best Lawyers has published peer-reviewed rankings since 1983. The 2027 edition drew on evaluations from other practising lawyers and recognises the top 4.8% of the profession nationally.

Neither list can be bought, applied for, or lobbied. Both are decided by other lawyers.

Accountants and financial advisers refer a great deal of work to us, in both directions of the practice. They’re often among the first people a family calls after someone has passed away, and the family needs to know what to do next.

But their job is also helping people manage risk across their lives and their businesses, and an estate plan that doesn’t match the assets sitting under it is a sizeable hole in that picture. They often recognise the hole before their clients do.

Beyond that, we’re sent clients by financial institutions, aged care and health professionals, mediators, business advisers, and others who come across succession issues in the course of what they do.

And a good deal comes from people we’ve acted for before, who send us their families and their friends.

Why we think that should matter to you

A referral isn’t a review.

When another lawyer sends someone to us, or an accountant does, or a client we acted for four years ago sends their sister, they’re putting their own name behind it. They find out quickly if that was a mistake. And they only make it once.

That’s a harder test than any online rating, and we’ve been passing it for years.

We take it seriously, because it’s what the entire practice is built on.