More than 80% of professional services firms still do things the old-fashioned way: pen, paper and Windows’ built-in operating system. This is how clients, files and documents are managed. Enter the “practice management system”, or what other industries tend to call a CRM. A few years back, the internet thought it had solved this modernization problem. Giants like Clio, PracticePanther, LEAP, Smokeball, MyCase, and CARET Legal, and specialized drafting tools like WealthCounsel and InterActive Legal, cropped up, promising to digitize the professional services firm and finally bridge the gap between paper-based chaos on the one hand, and an expensive, custom-built software solution on the other.
However, despite their impressive feature lists and extensive marketing, these platforms still leave many estate planning professionals feeling like they’re trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. The truth is, the legal and professional tech industry has been selling a broken model. For years, we’ve been presented with a false choice between a few flawed categories of software, each promising to be the solution, but none of them truly understanding the unique workflow of an estate planning practice.
Let’s break it down:
The Bloated Generalists: Paying for Everything, Mastering Nothing
First, you have the big, all-in-one practice management platforms. I’m talking about Clio, PracticePanther, LEAP, Smokeball, MyCase, and CARET Legal. These are the Swiss Army knives of legal tech. They do everything: family law, personal injury, criminal defense, and oh yeah, maybe they have some “features” for estate planning, too.
The problem? You’re paying for a bunch of bells and whistles you’ll never use. Your estate planning practice doesn’t need complex litigation calendaring or personal injury settlement calculators. But you’re paying for them anyway. This bloat also makes the software more complicated, which means more difficult and time-consuming staff training, onboarding, and integration. Even worse, adopting one of these behemoths often means you have to give up other software you’re already using in other areas of your practice; software that works perfectly fine and which you don’t want to replace.
They’re a jack-of-all-trades, and a master of none. And for something as nuanced as estate planning, that’s just not good enough. The unique demands of estate planning – deep client conversations, complex family dynamics, and nuanced document drafting – don’t fit neatly into the generic, one-size-fits-all solutions that dominate the legal and professional tech markets. Sure, you can hire more staff to manage the administrative burden, but that sort of defeats the point!
The DIY Form Builders and Drafting-Only Silos: Here’s a Hammer, Go Build Your Own House
Next up are the document automation tools that are really just form builders in disguise. Platforms like Gavel and HotDocs fall into this category. They sell you the dream of automation, but what they really give you is a toolkit to build your own automations. You have to upload your own will templates, create your own questionnaires, and map every single data point yourself.
The process is time-consuming and clumsy, and even after all that work, the final output is often basic, delivering nowhere near the highly variable detailed logical drafting and customizable results of a purpose-built, intelligently designed system. It’s the illusion of automation without the actual benefit. They sell you on customization to mask the fact that you’re really just investing and resources the time to build the automations yourself.
Then there’s the specialized drafting software. This is where the big names in estate planning live, like WealthCounsel and InterActive Legal. And for the record, their documents are often pretty decent. They are drafted by experts and are legally sound. But that’s where the value ends. These are not practice management systems. They are drafting silos. You still need a separate CRM or practice management tool to handle client intake, communication, and file management. This means your staff is stuck manually transferring data from your intake forms into the drafting software, a recipe for errors and wasted time. You’re juggling multiple subscriptions and a fragmented workflow that creates a disjointed experience for both your team and your clients.
The Real Solution: A Platform That Understands Your Practice
So, if all the existing models are broken, what’s the answer? It’s a platform that was designed from the ground up with a singular focus: to perfect the workflow of a Wills & Estates practice. That platform is Succession Wills PRO.
We didn’t start with a generic CRM and try to shoehorn estate planning into it. We didn’t give you a box of tools and tell you to build it yourself. We built a seamless, end-to-end solution that handles everything from client intake to document generation to the final signing, all in one place.
Like Clio, PracticePanther, LEAP, Smokeball, MyCase, and CARET Legal, Succession Wills PRO is an intuitive practice management CRM solution, but like WealthCounsel and InterActive Legal, it is built upon a foundation of carefully crafted legally-sound legal documents designed by experienced lawyers, but integrated seamlessly into the practice management CRM platform.
But Succession Wills PRO is more than just bringing together the best elements of what the competition are offering and leaving out the bad, we’ve brought some unique solutions of our own to the table:
Solving the “Other Half” of the Equation: The Client Intake Portal
Most software focuses only on the back-end: drafting the documents. They completely ignore the most time-consuming part of any estate planning file: educating the client and getting the information and instructions from that client. Drafting a Will and managing the file is only half the battle, so software that focuses solely on document preparation and CRM functionality only solves half the equation.
This is where Succession Wills PRO changes the game. Our platform is built on the same architecture as our underlying consumer-facing ‘Succession Wills’ platform. Why is that important? Because it’s been battle-tested by thousands of ordinary users without any professional training or knowledge of estate planning. This means it’s super intuitive and easy to use.
How does it work? Your clients are invited to a secure portal where they are given the opportunity to explore their estate planning needs and wishes themselves, and input their instructions and information directly into the system. No more investing your own time or paying staff for data entry. No more endless meetings, calls and emails with the client trying to gather what you need. Let the client do the work!
But clients can’t be trusted to complete that process properly, or maybe just don’t want to, right? That’s where our groundbreaking AI Legal Assistant feature comes in. If the client doesn’t want to or isn’t equipped to fill out our intuitive tab-by-tab online wizard system, they can opt to use this unique AI interface instead. Rather of filling in fields, our platform just has a conversation with the client—like sitting down with a lawyer, but without the time investment on the part of the lawyer. But here’s the critical innovation: Our AI never drafts the will. Instead, it conducts the consultation (asking thoughtful questions, explaining concepts, understanding the client’s situation), then feeds validated data into our proven, lawyer-built document generation system.
This doesn’t just automate document drafting; it automates client management. This exponentially boosts the productivity gains from using software in an estate planning practice.
A New Market for Non-Lawyers
This revolutionary intake portal does something else no other platform can: it opens up the world of estate planning to non-lawyer professionals. If you’re a financial advisor, wealth manager, accountant, or life insurance professional, you know the frustration of having to refer your clients out to a lawyer for their wills. You’ve already taken them almost to the finish line of the estate planning process, dealing with the financial and asset management side of things and priming them to think about the sorts of issues they need to in order to complete their will. However, as a non-lawyer, you’re not allowed to actually draft the will. You know what it needs to contain and what it needs to say, but the law, professional duties and the complicated “legalese” of most will templates prevent you from taking the client through this final step.
So you’re left with one choice: refer them to a lawyer to complete this final step. You risk losing that client or, at the very least, you lose control over a critical piece of their financial picture. You may also face a client who is unhappy to have to re-explain everything to yet another professional – maybe even someone they don’t know – not to mention the added cost.
With Succession Wills PRO, these types of professionals can now offer comprehensive estate planning services directly. Because the client is inputting all the data themselves and the will generation is automatic, the professional is merely acting as an administrator and coach. The professional is not drafting anything or preparing wills. You’re in the passenger seat with the map and helpful guidance, but the client is the one behind the wheel. This keeps you compliant with professional rules against the unauthorized practice of law. It’s a way to keep your clients close, deepen your relationship, and offer a more fulsome range of services.
Stop Compromising. Start Specializing.
Succession Wills PRO is not another bloated, one-size-fits-all platform. It’s not a limited document generator or form builder either. It’s a focused, powerful, and elegant solution designed for one purpose: to make your Wills & Estates practice more efficient, more profitable, and more client-friendly. Stop paying for features you don’t need. Stop building your own clumsy automations. Stop juggling multiple subscriptions. Experience what it’s like to use software that actually understands what you do.
Request a Free Demo! Experience the difference at successionwills.com/pro. See how an all-in-one, intelligent platform can transform your practice. 30-day money-back guarantee.
