Where there's a will, AI still has work to do

AI and ml

Probate lawyer finds generated document looked the part but missed many of the questions that matter

A UK law firm has put AI-generated wills on trial, and the chatbot didn't fare particularly well under cross-examination.

SE Solicitors has taken an AI chatbot to task after asking it to draft a will for a fictional client, concluding that while the result looked convincing enough, it missed many of the questions a probate solicitor would normally ask before putting anything into writing.

The firm asked the chatbot to prepare a will for "Daniel," an unmarried 42-year-old with two adult children, a £440,000 house, £10,000 in savings, a car, and a dog. Wills and probate senior associate Tom McInerney then reviewed the document to see how it stacked up.

McInerney said the draft read well enough, but only until you start looking for the information and safeguards it omitted.

"The rise of AI has allowed people to prepare legal documents themselves, and I completely understand that impulse," McInerney said. "But a will is not a letter or a cover note, it is a legally binding instrument that must hold up in court."

According to the firm, the AI-generated document made no attempt to explore inheritance tax planning, lifetime gifts, pensions, life insurance, digital assets, trusts, or whether either child might be financially vulnerable. It also failed to ask whether Daniel had a partner, wanted to leave gifts to friends or charities, or wished to exclude anyone from inheriting.

However, most of those omissions stem from the experiment itself. The chatbot could only work with what it was given, while a solicitor would typically spend time asking follow-up questions before drafting a will.

"AI can't see the gaps because it has no idea about what you didn't tell it," McInerney said. "All it can ever produce is a will that fits the prompt, not the person."

The firm also criticized the drafting itself. In one clause about the family dog, the chatbot left a placeholder instead of specifying how much money should be set aside for its care. It also failed to make that gift conditional on the named beneficiary actually taking the animal.

SE Solicitors warned that relying on AI could lead consumers to overlook changes in inheritance tax rules or the need to review a will as their circumstances change due to marriage, divorce, children, property purchases, or other major life events.

The law firm also addressed data privacy, noting that anyone who asks an AI platform to draft a will is likely handing over sensitive personal and financial information. Consumers may not fully understand how that data is stored or processed, it argued, particularly compared with the professional confidentiality obligations placed on solicitors.

The exercise comes as AI is increasingly finding its way into legal work. SE Solicitors cites Google Trends data showing searches for "legal AI" have risen 312 percent over the past year. Separately, research commissioned by the Association of Lifetime Lawyers found 72 percent of UK adults aged 30 to 34 would consider using AI to write or update their will.

Whether that means AI is ready to replace probate solicitors is another matter. In this experiment, the chatbot did exactly what it was asked to do: turn a paragraph of information into a will. SE Solicitors' argument is that writing the document is only part of the job: the harder part is asking all the questions that never made it into the prompt. ®