Using AI for Document Review: Getting Started for Trust and Estate Attorneys

“Using AI for Document Review: Getting Started for Trust and Estate Attorneys,” that is the subject of today’s ACTEC Trust and Estate Talk.

I’m ACTEC Fellow Stacy Singer from Chicago.

Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming part of everyday legal practice, offering new tools to improve efficiency and streamline routine tasks. One area where AI is already proving valuable is document review, helping attorneys analyze large volumes of documents more quickly while still maintaining careful oversight and professional judgment.

ACTEC Fellow Shaina Kamen of Miami, Florida and New York City will explain practical ways to get started, the types of tasks AI can assist with, and important considerations for maintaining accuracy, confidentiality, and ethical compliance when incorporating these tools into practice. Welcome, Shaina.

Shaina Kamen: Thank you, Stacy.

Why AI Is Becoming a Valuable Tool for Document Review

So, who here listening today has had a client bring stuff to that initial client meeting? Paper files, planning documents, ink statements, balance sheets, and anything else. Probably most of us, right? So what do you do with all of this stuff? You might organize it, review the documents, prepare notes, prepare a summary, but how long does it take for all of us to do that? A few hours at least, and many of us bill our clients for this type of review, whether it’s attorney time or administrative time. So today, as Stacy said, we’re going to talk about how we can use AI to review documents and to supercharge that document review function by pairing the review with other tasks.

So, for example, AI might intake all of those client documents and provide summaries, not just of each individual document, but the entire estate plan as a whole in minutes. And I might review gift tax returns and estate tax returns and provide a summary of all the prior planning transactions and calculated clients remaining transfer tax exemption. AI might help you to review estate planning-adjacent documents like those marital agreements, those dissolution agreements, and provide a digest of obligations to former and current spouses to integrate into the estate plan. And also, to look at those lengthy operating agreements or those shareholder agreements and summarize key provisions impacting membership evaluation. So pairing AI’s document review capabilities with other tasks can really help support your practice and free you up to develop client strategy and do more sophisticated work.

Beyond Summaries: Using AI to Analyze Estate Planning Documents

So, think about asking AI to review planning documents and gift tax returns for a client, which is a pretty typical AI-oriented task. But instead, you ask AI not only to review, but to summarize gifts made to the client’s children and provide suggestions for planning to equalize disparities in gifting between them. Sounds like it might be really helpful for many of us. So how do we get started and get into AI?

Getting Started with AI: The Importance of Context and Prompting

One of the things that I always find comforting is that if you’re not as familiar with AI and you don’t know where to start, that is totally okay because AI is evolving so rapidly that working with AI tools will be a continuous learning exercise for every single person. No one is an expert at AI.  For me, my philosophy or mindset is that I like to be a little chatty with chat GPT. What I mean by that is that I want to provide whatever generated AI tool that I’m using with a number of things to help get started on a project.

So first, I want to give my AI tool the text to be reviewed. That might be a paragraph, it might be a longer excerpt from the document, or it might be an entire trust agreement. I also want to get the tool that I’m using to help hold background or context about my role and what the situation is. Really get chatty. I’m an attorney practicing in Florida. This client is single and the client has two children who are minors. You want to give the tool as much information as possible about the applicable jurisdiction and what you’re seeking to have reviewed. For example, this dynasty trust is governed by New York law. This is a Tennessee community property trust. And you also want to be very specific about your goal in using the AI tool. This is a Florida SLAT, identify any provisions in the trust that might cause unintended estate tax inclusion under Section 2036 of the code.

Building Better Prompts for Better Results

And last, your preferred form of output. This is where you can really get the AI tool to work for you. Beyond just summarizing information, you can use AI to give you output in the form of tables and charts, which I find to be really helpful. And another output that you can ask AI for that we’re going to talk a bit about today is to provide or offer suggestive language. But remember, your first prompt is a starting point, and you can’t simply use AI by asking it a single question and expecting to get the most perfect results on the first go round. As lawyers, we need to continuously be trained on how to most effectively draft the prompt to get the most out of using the tool.

Practical Prompt Ideas for Trust and Estate Attorneys

For estate planners in particular, prompts can really be used with almost limitless possibilities when we’re talking about reviewing documents. A simple general prompt like review this trust or review this document can be refined and supercharged with that review and function. So, for example, review this trust and identify its income tax size. Review this trust and identify whether it includes powers that might result in an estate tax inclusion for the grantor. Review this trust and list the applicable distribution standards. It’s nice to know what the distribution standard is in a trust, but more importantly, when I’m trying to get up to speed on a client project, which might involve modifying trust, this prompt in particular is a favorite because it might give you some insight as to whether decanting may even be a feasible option to look into further.

Using AI to Evaluate Existing Trusts and Fiduciary Provisions

The review and prompt can also be incredibly useful when you’re looking at like a “new to you” trust document, particularly if it’s an older trust document or a form that you didn’t draft and you’re not familiar with. Many of us have been in a situation with a new client who engages you and they need to very quickly understand their options in dealing with the difficult trustee. I like to use the review and prompt in this type of situation. For example, I might ask AI to review and summarize standards of liability for fiduciaries when it comes to holding concentrated positions of closely held entities. “Review and summarize how a new trustee can be appointed and whether there are any restrictions concerning the appointment, like an independent or corporate trustee requirement, review and summarize when a trustee may be removed.” That can be very helpful in starting to issue spot and get the conversation going with the client, and very quickly early on in an engagement.

A Real-World Example: Reviewing a Dynasty Trust with AI

And let’s talk about an example. Let’s say you have drafted a typical dynasty trust, and you want to put it through ChatGPT or another AI tool. And before I talk about this example, I just want to mention that there are of course significant client confidentiality concerns even when you’re just reviewing documents with AI. And so, for purposes of this example, let’s assume that I’m either uploading a fully redacted form of trust through the AI tool or, more likely, I’m using my firm’s closed system to preserve client confidentiality.

So, for my first prompt, I might upload the entire trust and I might input something that’s more of a review-oriented task. Like I might say something like, “This is a Florida dynasty trust. Please identify any provisions of the trust that might cause the trust to be taxed to the grantor for income tax purposes.” When I ran this prompt, ChatGPT identified all of the grantor trust provisions in the document and included the statement of the grantor’s intent concerning income tax treatment, as well as each of the grantor trust powers in the trust agreement. And, for my next prompt, like I said, I like to get a little bit chatty. So, I gave some more information as background. I said, “The client has a child who’s married, but there’s no premarital agreement in place. Please provide me with suggestions on how I might modify the trust to protect the assets passing from the child to his or her spouse at the event of a divorce.”

So that prompt right there is a good way of pairing the review function with asking ChatGPT to provide strategy or technique suggestions on a particular section of the trust. And what I liked about this is that – because I had uploaded my whole trust into Chat and Chat had actually reviewed my entire trust – it pulled out different things that it liked, like my spendthrift provision. And then there were other things about the trust that ChatGPT was less excited about. One of the things that ChatGPT picked out was that in the sample that I uploaded, there were mandatory provisions for principal distributions at designated ages and suggested that I convert the trust to a fully discretionary trust instead. Chat also gave some additional drafting suggestions to me, like nominating an independent trustee to facilitate some of those discretionary distributions to the beneficiary and more.

ChatGPT also gave me a lot of best practices and talking points that I could use with the client to help kind of explain the trust administration in a more protective way. But, I think in this example, what I wanted to flag here is that AI results are not “one size fits all.” So, it’s not a manner of just kind of spitting out the suggestions to the client without further review. In this example, ChatGPT gave me some suggestions that I found to be less helpful. And this is where your judgment as an advisor comes in, sifting through the suggestions.

Why Professional Judgment Still Matters

So, key takeaways today – AI is a great starting point for all of us. It helps to digest materials very quickly and it can really enhance your client engagement, especially when it comes to document review, which is typically a more time-consuming task. But again, we need to recognize that AI is just a starting point for our work and not a substitute for our own critical thinking and judgment. But that being said, AI can be a lot of fun and really enhance the way that we work with the clients. Thank you, Stacy, for having me here today.

Stacy Singer: Thanks so much, Shaina. That was a great summary of how to start using AI for estate planning attorneys. Thanks everyone for listening.

 

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