Legal AI can help you stay on top of legislative changes, speed up redlines, and get valuable insights on complex issues

“Change is the only constant” is an apt description for attorneys with trusts and estates practices. State and federal laws and regulations, from probate laws to tax codes and beyond, are continually changed and updated. As a practitioner in this area, you need to stay on top of these shifts, and ensure the estate planning documents you prepare for clients comply with updated laws. 

Generative AI engineered for the practice of law, like CoCounsel, is well-suited for use by estate planning attorneys because it streamlines several critical and time-consuming tasks, such as reviewing complex new legislation, conducting legal research, and redlining estate planning documents. Here are just a few ways you can take advantage of CoCounsel in your estate planning practice.

Redline and update contracts in minutes

One of CoCounsel’s most useful skills for estate planning attorneys is Contract Policy Compliance. This skill is helpful when there’s been a change of the law, perhaps the tax code or state probate laws, and can help you more efficiently update estate planning documents to comply with new laws. 

For instance, in most jurisdictions, it’s left to the testator to decide whether a bond will be required from an executor or administrator. But let’s say your state’s law has changed and everyone is now required to post bond when serving as an executor or administrator.  

Simply upload contracts that must comply with the new law, such as wills, trusts, or other estate planning vehicles. Then enter the policy or policies—the new or different changes to the law—you’d like to check for compliance or noncompliance with (up to 100 documents and 30 policies, in Word, PDF, and text format).

CoCounsel will analyze your contracts for compliance, extract noncompliant clauses, and provide an answer detailing how the original clauses differ from the polices (changes to the law).

But the analysis doesn’t stop there—CoCounsel is smart enough to not only identify differences but to revise clauses, suggesting redline edits to bring all non-compliant clauses into compliance. It also provides a revised version of the clause with all redlines incorporated, so you can simply copy and paste the compliant language into your contracts, or download the entire revised document, saving you hours of painstaking, tedious review.

Identify key contract clauses with ease

The Extract Contract Data skill is ideal when you need a thorough, word-by-word review of a client’s estate planning documents to find specific information. It works with documents that contain clauses, such as contracts, wills, and trusts, and can even review every contract in a set and answer any questions about the contracts. 

For example, when a client passes away, the first thing an estate planning attorney often needs to do is contact the trustee or executor, and perhaps beneficiaries.

Instead of digging through lengthy wills and trusts to locate this information, you can upload as many as 100 documents to CoCounsel and then enter your questions, such as “Who is the executor?”

Running Extract Contract Datal will produce a chart with each question and a short answer. You can click the short answer to get a more detailed answer and analysis, the extracted contract language containing the answer, and a link to the relevant page of the contract.

Efficiently search databases

CoCounsel’s Search a Database helps you find the “needle in the haystack.” First, create your own database tailored to your needs. This could be a database for documents associated with one particular client, or a database of wills, trusts, or advance healthcare directives. 

Search a Database is invaluable when you’re dealing with a collection of documents, such as hundreds of contract templates, but don’t have time to read through each one. Or, perhaps you need to locate forms or the types of terms you’ve used in a will or trust in the past in order to draft a new document.

For example, let’s say you need to draft a pet trust. Select a database you’ve created, perhaps with various trusts you’ve drafted from templates, and ask CoCounsel what language you need to create a pet trust. 

CoCounsel will tell you specific language needed to establish a trust for a pet, with references to documents from your database and specific clauses within those documents. It will list relevant documents that contain these answers from the database you searched—perhaps a Revocable Living Trust Pet Clause and Model Will Clauses Providing for Care of Pet—with links to the documents.

Summarize dense legislation or lengthy contracts

The Summarize skill provides a condensed overview of critical information in plain language. Upload an array of information, such as complex legislation and lengthy contracts. 

As an estate planning practitioner, you know that new legislation is frequent. Perhaps there has been an update to probate laws in your jurisdiction. Upload the new legislation to CoCounsel to get a summary tailored to your needs, with options for a brief summary (a high-level overview in 1 to 3 paragraphs), detailed summary (multi-page summary including all important information), or comprehensive summary (page-by-page summary, recommended for statutes and contracts).

Once you have your summary, you can use follow-up skills such as Review Documents to ask questions about your document.

Simplify and streamline legal research

As an estate planning practitioner, you’re often confronted with unique facts or client needs.  CoCounsel’s Legal Research Memo quickly conducts thorough research on complex issues, helping you more accurately and efficiently advise clients.

Let’s say you’re a California-based attorney who needs to know whether a stepchild can be considered a child of the decedent for purposes of intestate succession. When entering your query into CoCounsel, use everyday language—as if you’re speaking to a colleague—and include all relevant information, such as jurisdiction and background facts. You can also use filters for your legal research, such as dates or unpublished opinions.

CoCounsel generates a short memo of the law on a particular legal issue with a short answer to your question, an analysis expanding on the answer with references to cases, and a list of relevant authority with links, such as cases, statutes, and regulations. CoCounsel also ranks the authority in order of relevance. The results can be downloaded or easily copied and pasted. 

Trusts and estates law requires practitioners to stay up to date with ever-changing laws and regulations. With the help of CoCounsel, you can streamline critical tasks such as reviewing new legislation, conducting legal research, and revising documents, so you not only save time, but can improve work product, tackle more in less time, and better advise your clients.