Questions for Anderson Business Advisors

Anderson Business Advisors sells asset protection to real estate investors and business owners, at real volume, through workshops and memberships. If you are considering them, the more useful exercise is generally not to read reviews. It is to read what the company publishes about itself and ask what it means.

Below are the questions their own published claims raise. Nothing here says Anderson has done anything wrong, and nothing here says any of their statements are false. These are questions with good answers available, and if the answers are good they should be easy to give. That is rather the point. A provider's willingness to answer plainly is itself information.

Which company am I actually hiring?

The brand appears under more than one name. "Anderson Advisors" and "Anderson Business Advisors" are generally used interchangeably, including in the company's own search listings. The team page has an "Anderson Global Leadership Team" alongside a "U.S. Leadership Team." All three founders are described there as founders of or attorneys with Anderson Law Group, which that page presents as a distinct entity from Anderson Business Advisors.

There is also the name. No founder is named Anderson. The only Anderson we can find anywhere on the team page is John Anderson, listed under "Team of Professionals" as a Sr Estate Planning Attorney. He is not a founder, and not on any of the three leadership tiers. That is not a criticism of him or of anyone. Plenty of firms carry a name with no living namesake. It is worth a sentence only because a customer may reasonably assume the name on the door belongs to someone answerable for the work, and here the site does not say who that is.

Ownership is worth knowing too. In March 2023, an affiliate of the private-equity firm Sun Capital Partners completed a majority investment in Anderson Business Advisors. Management and employees retained what the announcement calls "a significant minority stake." Sun Capital describes what it bought as "a provider of corporate services, including entity formation and incorporation, registered agent, and tax and bookkeeping services." Legal services are not in that description.

That detail also explains the two-entity structure, and explains it innocently. In nearly every state a non-lawyer cannot hold an ownership interest in a law firm. Washington is where the team page places Anderson Law Group and the Tacoma office Clint Coons manages, and RPC 5.4(d) puts it plainly. A lawyer "shall not practice with or in the form of a professional corporation or association authorized to practice law for a profit, if: (1) a nonlawyer owns any interest therein …" The omitted words are a narrow exception for a deceased lawyer's estate. A private-equity-backed consulting company alongside a separately owned law firm is the ordinary way that constraint is met. It is also why the distinction is not a technicality for a buyer. The entity that took the investment is, by operation of that rule, not the law firm.

Sun Capital's own portfolio page lists the holding as Anderson Global, a Grand Cayman entity, and marks it "actively seeking add-on acquisitions." That generally matches the "Anderson Global Leadership Team" on the team page. A Cayman holding company is ordinary private-equity structuring and is usually nothing to read into by itself. Two things may still follow that a buyer cares about. The parent of the business you are contracting with sits offshore, which is at least worth noting from a firm that sells offshore planning. And a company actively acquiring others may not be the same company in three years, so it is generally worth asking who would hold your engagement if it changes hands again.

The contrast with Sun Capital's other legal holding is instructive. It also owns Fletchers Solicitors, a law firm in England, where the Legal Services Act 2007 generally permits non-lawyer ownership of law firms. U.S. states generally do not. That is why the same investor can own an English law firm outright while, here, owning a consulting company that sits alongside a separately owned one.

There is nothing improper about operating through multiple entities - most firms of any size do. The question is simply which one you are contracting with.

• Which legal entity will my engagement agreement name?
• If the advice is wrong, which entity is answerable, and what insurance stands behind it?
• Is that entity a law firm?

That last one is the biggest question on this page, and it deserves its own section.

Am I retaining a law firm, or buying from a consulting company?

The company's own description of itself moves between categories, and the two categories carry very different consequences for a buyer.

On Clint Coons's bio page: "As one of the founders of Anderson Law Group, Clint has grown his legal and tax firm to over 400 employees." On the team page, all three founders carry "Esq." after their names, are labelled "Attorney," and are described as founders of or attorneys with Anderson Law Group. But on the careers page, the company is "the nation's premier planning and consulting firm providing high-quality services for asset protection, estate planning, and tax advising."

Then there is the contract. Section 3 of the published Terms & Conditions, headed COMPANY DUTIES, says this:

Company is not in the business of providing Legal Services (such as litigation, arbitration, mediation, representation in business and real estate transactions or hearings of any type).

The parenthetical matters and we have kept it, because it narrows what the sentence disclaims. The listed examples are courtroom and transactional representation, not the whole practice of law. Read strictly, that clause is generally not a statement that nobody at Anderson practices law. The very next sentence makes the point itself:

In the event that any portion of the Services are interpreted as or considered to be Legal Services, Company retains the right to facilitate the use of attorneys to complete said work and Client agrees to work with the said attorneys.

So the contract contemplates that some of what you buy might be legal services, and provides for attorneys to be brought in when it is. A later section, covering tax packages, puts it without qualification: "Legal Services: Company is not engaging in legal services."

None of this is hidden. It sits on a public page, in an agreement customers accept. And there is nothing improper about a consulting company that routes legal work to an affiliated law firm. That arrangement is common and lawful. But it does mean a buyer reading the marketing and a buyer reading the contract may come away with two different ideas of what they are hiring, and only one of those documents governs.

This is not semantics. Three things typically turn on it, and they are hard to get back later.

• Privilege. Whether what you say is protected from discovery.
• Regulation. Whether the work is subject to bar oversight and a disciplinary process.
• Recourse. Whether a mistake is legal malpractice, with malpractice coverage behind it, or a consumer dispute with a consulting company.

So there is a question worth putting in writing before paying. Which entity is my engagement with, is that entity a law firm, and does the agreement I am signing disclaim legal services? If the legal work sits with Anderson Law Group, ask to see that engagement letter specifically, not the one for the consulting company.

Is the person I am talking to an attorney?

Related, and more urgent than it sounds. A strategy call means describing your assets, your exposure, and sometimes pending litigation.

Attorney-client privilege generally attaches to communications with a lawyer for the purpose of legal advice. A conversation with a salesperson or a non-attorney advisor usually is not privileged - which means it can be discoverable later, by the exact creditor you are planning against.

This connects directly to the contract question above. An agreement stating that the company "is not in the business of providing Legal Services" is not the document you want standing between you and a privilege claim, whoever happens to be on the call.

Ask before the call rather than after. Is the person I am speaking with an attorney, is the engagement with a law firm, and is this conversation privileged? If the answer to any of those is no, you should generally know it before you describe anything.

What do the numbers represent?

The homepage runs a band headed "FAST FACTS" with four figures: 157K Satisfied Clients Served, 277K Businesses Created, $150M In Client Tax Savings, and $1B In Assets Protected.

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The about page describes the same client base differently, as a "national firm trusted by tens of thousands of clients."

"Tens of thousands" and "157K" are not the same claim, and 157,000 is not a number most readers would generally describe as tens of thousands. The two may be counting different things, and probably are. But a reader usually cannot tell which, and the site does not say.

The $1B figure raises a separate arithmetic question. Divided across 157,000 clients, it comes to roughly $6,400 of assets protected per client. There are ordinary explanations - most clients may buy tax or entity services rather than asset protection, and the figure may count only a defined subset. That is exactly why it is worth asking:

• What does "$1B In Assets Protected" count, and over what period? Assets titled into structures the firm formed? Client-reported net worth? Something else?
• Is "157K Satisfied Clients Served" current clients, all clients ever, or everyone who has purchased anything? And how does it square with "tens of thousands"?
• What makes a client "satisfied" for counting purposes?

Then the people. The team page closes with this line, directly beneath the staff grid:

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The grid immediately above it names 35: three founders, two on the Global Leadership Team, eight on the U.S. Leadership Team, and 22 under "Team of Professionals."

Staffing more people than you publish is normal and not a criticism. Two narrower things are worth noting, because they bear on the advice you would be buying:

• Nineteen of the 22 "Professionals" carry an attorney title - Senior Attorney, Estate Planning Attorney, Supervising Attorney and so on. So the site does name attorneys. What it does not give for any of them is a biography, a bar admission, or a state.
• No one on the eight-person U.S. Leadership Team holds a legal title. They are sales, marketing, customer service, workforce management, talent, tax operations and chief of staff. That is generally a sensible leadership team for a consulting business. It may be worth knowing when the question on the table is whether you are hiring a law firm.

A number used to persuade should be a number someone can explain, and a person advising you should be a person you can look up. We take the same view of our own published pricing and our own case-law review, including the decisions that went badly.

What does "make your assets invisible" mean?

Invisibility is a running theme rather than a stray line. The homepage says "Make your assets invisible to predatory lawyers." The featured eBook is "How to make your assets invisible." The resources menu offers "3 steps to an invisible investor strategy," and there is a blog post called 3 Steps to Making Your Assets Invisible:

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The underlying idea is legitimate. Privacy structuring genuinely can make ownership harder to establish from a casual public-records search, and for many people that may deter a claim before it starts. That is a real benefit and can be worth paying for.

But "invisible" is generally doing more work than privacy can support. Once a court has jurisdiction over you, it can order you to disclose your assets under oath. At that point you disclose, or you are in contempt. Nothing about a structure makes property cease to exist. Any plan whose protection depends on a creditor never finding out is usually a plan that fails precisely when it is tested.

So the question is which one is being sold. Is it privacy from casual searching, or protection that survives a court order? Those are typically different products at different prices, and the distinction is the whole subject of how asset protection actually works.

What supports the claim about domestic trusts?

The site describes a domestic asset protection trust as providing exceptional protection where an independent trustee controls distributions. Independent-trustee drafting is generally better than a self-settled trust the grantor still controls, and that part is sound.

What deserves a citation is "exceptional," because three constraints apply regardless of how well the trust is drafted:

• A domestic trustee generally sits within a U.S. court's contempt power. Ordered to turn assets over, the trustee typically complies or faces sanctions. That is the structural difference from an offshore trustee, and drafting usually cannot close it.
• Fraudulent-transfer law can reach transfers made with intent to hinder or delay creditors, and may reach transfers made without reasonably equivalent value while insolvent, regardless of who the trustee is.
• Federal bankruptcy law can reach qualifying self-settled trusts on a ten-year lookback under 11 U.S.C. § 548(e).

There is also the conflict-of-laws problem. A domestic asset protection trust formed in a favourable state may not be honoured by the courts of a settlor's home state where doing so would offend that state's public policy.

So what authority supports the protection claim, and under what conditions does it fail? Timing, intent, existing claims and solvency can all matter, and a consumer is generally entitled to hear the limits alongside the benefits.

Does Anderson actually deliver offshore trusts?

The company publishes on them. There is a podcast episode, Offshore Trust Explained, that discusses Cook Islands and Nevis structures at length. Publishing about a structure and delivering it are different things, which generally makes this an operational question rather than a critical one.

• Is an offshore trust a service the firm regularly provides, or an occasional referral out?
• Which licensed offshore trustee company administers them? A specific name, not "our offshore partner."
• How many has the firm established in the last twelve months?

If it is a regularly delivered service, those are easy answers. If it is not, a prospective client should generally know that before choosing a provider for it. Not because there is anything wrong with referring work out, but because who administers your trust is most of what you are buying.

What does "featured in" mean?

The homepage carries a "Featured In" row including Forbes. That badge covers several very different things: editorial coverage a journalist decided to write, a quoted interview, a paid contributor column, or a press release carried by a syndication wire.

All four produce the same logo. Only some are third-party validation. Ask which it was, and ask for the link.

The point of asking

The tools Anderson sells - LLCs, land trusts, privacy structuring, domestic trusts - are legitimate and widely used. This is not a piece arguing otherwise.

The point is that when you buy a complex legal structure, four things should be written down before money changes hands:

1. What exactly am I buying?
2. Which entity am I buying it from?
3. Who is delivering the advice, and are they an attorney?
4. What protection do I have as a client if it is wrong?

Ask any provider those four questions. Ask us. A firm that answers them plainly and in writing is showing you how it will behave when something goes wrong, and a firm that will not is showing you the same thing.

If you believe you were sold planning that was misrepresented to you, you can tell us what you saw.

This article discusses publicly published marketing claims and contract terms as they appeared on andersonadvisors.com in September 2026; every quotation was checked against the live page on 17 September 2026, and a company is free to change its copy at any time. It does not allege that any statement is false or that any law was broken. Anderson Business Advisors is not affiliated with Blake Harris Law, and we compete with them. Note also that "the Anderson case" elsewhere on this site refers to FTC v. Affordable Media, an unrelated court decision.