AI in Will-writing: the hype, the potential and the reality

When we first wrote about AI in Will-writing in 2023, the question was whether tools like ChatGPT would revolutionise the process. Three years on, AI is embedded in how much of the industry works - including ours - and the answer has become clearer: yes, AI is transformative, but not where most people expected.

The hype

The pitch is unchanged: AI makes Wills faster, cheaper and more accessible. The concerns are also unchanged: personalisation, data security, liability - and the awkward fact that Will drafting rests on precedent wording refined through case law, which is precisely where generative text is least trustworthy. An unregulated market sets a low bar, but "cheaper than bad" is not a quality standard.

The reality: advice is the product

A Will cannot be distilled to fifteen questions. Our process involves several hundred data points precisely because the risk lives in the specifics: how the property is owned, who counts as "my children", what an old trust already controls. The adviser's skill is taking an emotionally sensitive subject and translating a family's real situation into structures that work. AI does not replace that; it removes the drudgery around it.

Where AI genuinely delivers

The unglamorous middle: preparing and checking documentation, transcribing and summarising advice calls, spotting inconsistencies between what a client said and what a document does, and dissolving the 19th-century paperwork that still surrounds death. Used this way, AI raises quality and frees qualified people to spend more time advising. That is where we deploy it.

The constant

None of this changes the first rule of Will-writing: have one, and have it built by someone qualified. Fewer than 1 in 5 UK Will-writers hold a professional-standard qualification. Every Kinherit plan is built by a STEP-qualified estate planner - with technology behind them, not instead of them.

Key takeaways

• AI's real value in Will-writing is process quality, not document generation
• Precedent drafting and personal advice remain stubbornly human
• Qualification still filters the market: look for STEP

Richard Thomson is co-founder and Chairman of Kinherit.