Client Intake and the Estate Planning Interview
The most information-intensive intake in civil practice — and the one that shapes everything that follows
Estate Planning Clients Come Before Anything Has Gone Wrong
In most areas of civil practice, clients come to an attorney because something has gone wrong. The estate planning client comes before anything has gone wrong — ideally. They are not in crisis. They may not have thought systematically about their assets, their family, or their wishes. The attorney's intake function includes not just gathering information but helping the client understand what information matters and why.
Estate planning clients are also confronting mortality in a direct way that other legal matters do not require. A client completing a will is acknowledging that they will die. A client completing a power of attorney is acknowledging that they may become incapacitated. The attorney who approaches these conversations with clinical efficiency misses something important about what the client needs from the experience.
AI tools belong in intake preparation, not the intake conversation itself. The questionnaires that prepare clients to think through their situations, the organizational frameworks that ensure every category of information is gathered, the intake summary that structures information for planning analysis — all of these can be developed more efficiently with AI assistance. The planning conversation requires the attorney.
The Family Inventory — What Must Be Captured
- Every person whose interests are relevant: client, spouse, all children (including stepchildren and children from prior relationships), grandchildren, parents, and any person the client wishes to include or exclude.
- Ages — particularly minor children (who need guardianship designations) and elderly parents (whose potential support needs may affect planning).
- Citizenship and residency status — non-citizen spouses require specific planning under the marital deduction rules.
- Beneficiaries with special needs — who require planning that preserves government benefit eligibility.
- Family dynamics the attorney needs to know — estrangements, financially irresponsible beneficiaries, blended family tensions, concerns about a child's spouse.
The Asset Inventory
The asset inventory must capture ownership structure for every significant asset: how it is titled, whether it has a designated beneficiary, whether it has a survivorship feature. The assets that pass outside the estate — through beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and life insurance, through joint tenancy with right of survivorship, through payable-on-death designations — may be the client's most valuable assets, and they are governed by rules entirely separate from the will. Identifying them and their interaction with the estate plan is one of the most important functions of the intake.
The planning conversation is the attorney's function. AI can help prepare for the planning conversation — drafting the intake summary, identifying the key issues, suggesting the questions to ask. The actual conversation about planning goals, family dynamics, and planning direction belongs to the attorney who has the relationship with the client and the professional judgment to navigate it.
Ready-to-Use Prompts
Adapt these for specific client matters. All AI output requires attorney review; all tax figures and legal standards require verification against current primary sources.