Practical General: always shop around for a lawyer. Use google to find specialists in the relevant field, the more familiar he is with what you need done the more effective (including cost-effective) he will be in doing it.
Practical Specific: this area of law is likely unsettled and whatever is worked out beyond a garden variety will is likely to not have much practical effect on your remains getting where they need to be in a timely manner. To ensure expeditious handling of your remains you probably should make sure that you maintain close connections with reliable people who are well apprised of your wishes (and that those wishes are clearly documented, this is a simple matter of creating a will that a trust and estates lawyer should be able to advise you of cheaply).
Theoretical: Does one increase one's chances of reanimation more by signing up and planning for cryonization or by allocating an equivalent amount of resources to bringing about AGI?
I have just received a message from my lawyer, regarding the preparations of my cryo-based will, power of attorney, and related papers. The most significant quote reads as follows:
Due to the complex nature of your wishes and the undeveloped area of the law surrounding cryogenics and the transportation of a human body out of the country, your file has required and will require further extensive time and research to prepare and draft the necessary documents to ensure that your wishes are correctly stated and that they will be carried out upon your death. As such, in order to complete any further work on your behalf we will require a retainer from you in the amount of $2,500.00. Please contact our office to arrange the payment of the retainer. This can be paid by cheque, cash, credit or debit. Upon receipt of this retainer we will proceed to draft the documents in a manner that best ensures that your wishes regarding cryogenics are carried out.
This is somewhat more than I was hoping, and expecting, to pay. While I do have a line of credit which I can use to pay the immediate cost, I do not have sufficient income to pay off that cost any time soon, and I am thus debating whether or not to pay it.
One option that occurs to me is that if my law-firm is able to nail down a set of documents to maximize the odds of a Canadian cryonicist's will being properly carried out, then that would be to the benefit of a number of cryonicists, here and otherwise; perhaps even enough so that it could be in the interests of cryonicists here to help cover the legal fees, instead of having to hire new lawyers to separately re-develop the same paperwork. (It would be reasonably trivial for me to provide proof of my lawyer's existence and the retainer request.)
I'm also open to any other ideas that anyone here could suggest.