The AI Estate Planning Question Your Clients Are Already Asking [Ep. 139]

In one year, the share of Americans who trust AI more than an attorney for estate planning jumped from 20% to 30%, the biggest single-year shift Trust & Will has measured in six years of surveying. Among Gen Z, that number is 46%.In this episode, Michael Haslam and Brian Edwards break down what that shift actually looks like in their own practice: clients showing up more educated after researching with AI, clients arriving with long AI-generated lists of "suggestions" that take real time to sort through, and the rare but real case of someone trying to treat a fully AI-drafted document as finished. They lay out where AI genuinely helps, where it creates more work than it saves, and the one question that changes everything: have you asked your attorney if they've run your plan through AI themselves.Key Takeaways:The Trust Shift: AI trust for estate planning jumped from 20% to 30% in a single year. But only 5% of people say they'd use AI to create documents with zero attorney review.The "AI Slop" Problem: A long list of AI-generated suggestions often runs 80% irrelevant, and sorting the real recommendations from the noise costs real attorney time and client money.Ask Your Attorney First: A firm's AI is trained specifically on the law and prompted by someone who already knows what matters. That combination beats a client's own AI search almost every time.The Hard Line: Using AI to organize your thinking or draft a rough starting point is fine. Treating an AI-drafted document as finished, with no attorney ever reviewing it, is the one use that genuinely worries them.Michael Haslam and Brian Edwards are practicing attorneys at Voyant Legal in Utah. This episode is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Visit voyantlegal.com or call 801.951.0500.