AI and Estate Lawyers

Does the old adage “you get what you pay for” apply to AI agents (LLMs) replacing lawyers? Better yet, what value does a human lawyer bring to the estate planning process, when LLMs now may be used to produce form wills or trusts? What is the crime of “unauthorized practice of law” in this context?

First question last. “Northouse” is a case that defines what is the “unauthorized practice of law” in the context of estate planning. [ STATE of Indiana ex rel. INDIANA STATE BAR ASSOCIATION, Relator, v. Gary L. NORTHOUSE and Michael E. Ramer, Respondents.] https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/in-supreme-court/1217371.html You can read that if you like, but I will say it like this. It’s always been ok to sell pre-printed forms for leases or wills or trusts- but what is prohibited to people who do not have a current law license, is to presume to sell or give legal advice about how to fill out or use those forms. (Other things too beyond scope of our topic too, which we won’t discuss, like appearing for another person in court.) Hence, either an office supply store, or an internet vendor of wills or trusts let’s say, can offer various forms for money, but their checkout staff or phone operators can’t help you sort out a matter that requires legal knowledge and judgment such as “who can be an executor? or who should be my executor?” However clear that may be or not, the concept took us past the days of forms at the stationary store, past the internet version (document compilation outfits like legalzoom) but then LLMs arrived near the end of 2022. The Turing test was bypassed and forgotten, and the age of the thinking talking machine had begun in earnest.

So do LLMs offer legal advice? It sure seemed like they did at first, but then apparently the ownerships’ compliance departments realized the issue was worth considering, and they recently in 2025 modified their terms of use to hedge the risk of being charged with this. They have little disclaimers, etc. It’s all very clever ways to get around the UPL issue, it seems. I am not sure all that cunning is enough to address the issue long term but it’s enough for now, for our purpose here. Caveat emptor is an old rule which may apply here as much as the first adage above quoted.

So what does value a real live human lawyer offer in the estate planning process? 3 things a chatbot can’t provide, and I will spell them out here, and they’re going to stick for years after AIs get even smarter. To wit: 1. A will requires verbal publication by the person who’s making it in front of real live valid witnesses at the very same time. Not signed alone, not witnessed later, no fake names, nor a hundred other fails which have been seen– particularly with “preprinted forms” such as above mentioned. Hal 9000 may have been smart in the movie 2001 but he wasn’t a lawful witness. 2. Advice. Only a licensed lawyer may lawfully provide legal advice not LLMs. And there are a lot of questions of particular judgment based on local law and fact of your own private situation, which will just be too subtle for an AI anyways, however smart they may be, they don’t embody wisdom based on experience. Moreover, you have “confidentiality” with a lawyer, but the average terms of use for LLMs actually waives it. 3. Relationship: a real live human estate planning lawyer is helping people migrate assets from parents to children and so forth, day in day out, years, decades. He or she has been responsible for results the entire time. An LLM has just scraped a bunch of books about it. You can sue a lawyer for malpractice if the conduct falls below the standard of care and it harms you, but you can’t sue an AI or an LLM for bad advice, it’s verboten “read the Terms of Use.” etc. An AI doesn’t know or care who you are, really, do they? What is acquaintance with a machine? Moreover they serve their ownership first and foremost, which changes those Terms of Use all the time, to limit liability for bad advice and hallucinations and so forth. Whereas, a lawyer’s terms of use may just consist of a verbal agreement with you that’s short and simple, or a couple page contract, based on a set of ethical rules set by state Supreme Courts that slowly regulate the practice of law at a snail’s pace across decades. The lawyer is a person and the AI is electrical impulses zapping across circuits. One is capable of genuine human relationship and the other is a phantom. Which will you trust with the job of getting your money to your heirs? Considering that once you pass– you won’t be around to fix it if the job was done poorly. Choose carefully.