Transactional lawyers spend significant amounts of time working with documents. When drafting legal documents, precision matters; and ensuring that statutory and technical requirements are satisfied is essential.
Clients rely on their lawyers to cross the T’s and dot the I’s, both literally and figuratively, and a wide range of tools are available to support document creation and related workflows. While general-purpose drafting tools may be sufficient in some contexts, practice-specific software often becomes necessary to improve efficiency and reduce risk in more complex and highly regulated areas of law, including trust and estates planning.
For trust and estate law firms, there are many drafting software tools designed for their unique needs. But every firm is set up differently, and document drafting processes vary. Not all tools will work for every firm, so understanding your options can make all the difference.
Choosing trusts and estates drafting tools
In the section below, you’ll find an overview of many of the drafting tools available to trusts and estates law firms. Before reviewing your options, it’s important to note that the software discussed below is cloud-based. This means that your firm’s data will be stored on third-party servers.
As part of your ethical duty of technology competence, you have an obligation to carefully vet all technology providers with access to your firm’s confidential data, including cloud-computing providers. This process includes asking questions about where the data will be stored, who will have access to it, how frequently it will be backed up, and the steps that will be taken to protect the data.
Additionally, if a platform includes AI-driven features, additional due diligence is necessary. This includes understanding accuracy metrics, how client and firm data is protected, and whether any information entered into the system will be used for AI model training.
With that in mind, below you’ll find many cloud-based trust and estates drafting software tools developed for law firms. Pricing will be listed if it is available on the company’s website. The list isn’t comprehensive, but it provides an overview of the main features and differentiators, allowing you to choose the right tool for your firm.
Software options
Now, let’s consider your options, starting with WealthCounsel, which offers a cloud-based drafting solution for estate planning, elder law and business law practitioners. It relies on guided interviews and automated logic to create both simple and complex estate planning documents. The platform is designed to support both straightforward and highly customized plans through a large, regularly updated forms library. Pricing is not publicly available online.
Another option is Lawyers With Purpose’s STEPS (Strategic Trust and Estate Planning Software), a document drafting software designed for estate planning and elder law lawyers who seek a structured, repeatable approach to document creation. This software relies on the “client-centered software” workflow, which is a specific methodology for elder law. The system uses centralized client data entry to populate documents and reduce drafting errors across related planning materials. Pricing is not available on the website.
The American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys also offers estate planning and drafting tools. This software is not available as a stand-alone product. Instead, it is included as part of its broader membership offerings and assists with creating estate planning documents and trust funding. It integrates directly with the academy’s education, training and practice development resources. Pricing is not available online.
Next is InterActive Legal, a cloud-based drafting solution that helps attorneys with estate planning, elder law and related documents. It includes access to automated forms and regularly updated templates. The platform allows firms to customize documents to meet jurisdictional and practice-specific needs. Pricing is not publicly available online.
Finally, Trustate, a newer entrant into the space, provides web-based software for trust and estate planning practices, with a focus on automation and consistency across the estate planning lifecycle. The platform combines document drafting with tools for funding and administration. In addition to assisting with creating wills and trusts, it also supports post-signing tasks, such as asset transfers, beneficiary changes and follow-up workflows. Pricing for two users starts at $189 per month or $169 per month when billed annually.
Trust and estates drafting software is not one-size-fits-all, and the right choice depends on a firm’s practice areas, internal processes and priorities. While these platforms share many core features, they differ in how they handle drafting workflows, automation, education and practice support.
Before committing to a platform, take advantage of any free trials and product demos to determine whether the software aligns with your firm’s needs. Taking the time to compare options can streamline productivity and support more consistent, efficient client work.
Nicole Black is a Rochester, New York-based attorney, author and journalist. She is the principal legal insight strategist at 8am, parent company of LawPay, MyCase, CasePeer and DocketWise. She is the nationally recognized author of Cloud Computing for Lawyers and is a co-author of Social Media for Lawyers: The Next Frontier, both published by the American Bar Association. She writes regular columns for ABAJournal.com and Above the Law, has authored hundreds of articles for other publications, and she regularly speaks at conferences regarding the intersection of law and emerging technologies. Follow her on LinkedIn, or she can be reached at [email protected].
This column reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily the views of the ABA Journal—or the American Bar Association.
