AI notetakers for estate planning law firms

This is general information, not legal advice. Check your state's recording and ethics rules. We make Astrid, and we say plainly below where its note templates are still general.

Why estate planning conversations are different

Most of the work in an estate planning matter is conversation: what the client owns, who they want to benefit, who they do not, what they are worried about, and what they decide after seeing a draft. The documents are the output. The conversation is the evidence of what the client wanted.

That has three consequences for notetaking.

• Many meetings are in person. Clio's own page on estate planning software mentions meeting clients in hospitals or at home. A notetaker that only joins a video call misses the meetings that matter most. We did not find a public source for what share of estate planning meetings happen in person, phone or video, so we will not give you a number.
• Other people are often in the room. A spouse, an adult child or a caregiver may sit in. Who was present, and who said what, is part of the record, and it can affect privilege and recording consent.
• The note may be read long after the meeting. If a will is contested, or if an intended beneficiary claims the drafting attorney was negligent, the attorney's contemporaneous notes are among the few things that show what happened. In some states intended beneficiaries can bring a negligence claim against the drafting attorney without a contract with them; others, such as Colorado, keep a strict rule requiring a contract. Whether your state allows such a claim is a question for your own research.

The conversations a firm needs to document

Astrid seeds call types for each practice area a firm selects at signup. For estate planning and probate they are:

• Planning consultation: what the client wants in an estate plan: family, assets, guardians, beneficiaries, wishes.
• Document review: walking the client through draft wills, trusts and powers of attorney.
• Signing preparation: arranging and preparing for the signing of documents.
• Probate and administration: opening or administering an estate or trust, with inventory, creditors, court filings and distributions.
• Status and check-in calls, the same as in any practice.

Each is classified from the transcript and drafted into a note for attorney review. The firm can add its own call types, such as a trust funding follow-up or a beneficiary designation review.

What a good estate planning note holds

This is our view of what is worth capturing, not a rule from a bar or a court:

• Who attended, in what capacity, and who was in the room.
• What the client said they want, in their own words, and the reasons they gave.
• Instructions about beneficiaries, including who is excluded and why.
• What the attorney explained, and what the client understood or asked about.
• What was decided, what was left open, and what the client is to bring or do next.
• Follow-ups with owners and dates: signing, funding a trust, updating beneficiary designations.

A transcript holds all of this. The note is the part an attorney reads, corrects and approves, and Astrid keeps the transcript and audio beside the note so a statement can be checked against what was said.

Capacity, and the decision about recording

In February 2026 the ABA amended Model Rule 1.14, replacing "diminished capacity" with "decision-making limitations," naming supported decision-making, and describing guardianship as a last resort. Conversations about capacity are common in estate planning, and a note about how a client engaged with the decisions is the kind of record that is read later.

Whether to record such a meeting is a judgment call. The NYC Bar's Formal Opinion 2025-6 on AI recording tools says lawyers should consider whether recording is tactically well-advised, and notes that a preserved recording can support an advice-of-counsel position or can capture a client's offhand remarks that someone later uses. A firm should decide this once, as policy, instead of leaving it to each attorney in the moment. Astrid captures a meeting only when someone starts a recording or a dial-in call, when your phone system sends it a recording, or when the firm turns on automatic joining for scheduled video meetings, so a firm can set a policy for sensitive meetings such as capacity assessments.

Consent and ethics

• Recording consent depends on the state. Federal law requires one party's consent. Several states, including California, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, require every party's consent, and a few have more nuanced rules. Justia keeps a 50-state survey, last reviewed September 2024.
• A family member in the room is a participant. In an all-party consent state, a notetaker that records a client's spouse or child needs that person's consent too. Whether a third party's presence affects privilege is a separate question to resolve before the meeting.
• Ethics guidance points the same direction. The NYC Bar opinion says clients should be told, and consent obtained, when an AI system records a conversation; that lawyers should check where data is stored, for how long, whether the vendor trains on it, and whether it can be deleted; and that lawyers should review transcripts and summaries for accuracy soon after. ABA Formal Opinion 512 on generative AI tools covers competence, confidentiality and supervision more generally.

Billing and your case management system

Estate planning documents are often priced as flat fees, with hourly billing for complex or contested work. Clio's guidance is to charge flat fees for routine wills, bill hourly for complex estate matters, and track time even when the fee is flat. A notetaker's job here is to document the work, not to assume hourly billing. Astrid files the approved note to the matter in Clio Manage and the follow-ups as Clio tasks. It is $40 per person per month billed monthly, or $400 per year billed annually, with a 14-day free trial.

What to check before you buy

• Can you decide per meeting whether to record? Some meetings, such as capacity assessments, may call for a different approach.
• Does it record in person, from a laptop or a phone, and what does it do if the phone locks or a call comes in?
• Can it show who was present, and does it label speakers?
• Does the vendor train on your clients' conversations? It should be prohibited in writing.
• Does the note reach the matter in your case management system, after an attorney approves it?
• Is there an approval trail showing who approved a note and when?
• Can you delete a recording on request?

How Astrid handles it, and where it is still general

Astrid captures estate meetings in the browser on a laptop or a phone, through a dial-in bridge for phone calls, or through a meeting bot for video calls. It matches the meeting to a matter, transcribes with speaker labels, and drafts a note for attorney approval. Training on your content is contractually prohibited with Astrid's providers, and an attorney can mark a call privileged to restrict it to attorney seats and firm administrators.

Two limits are worth knowing. Recording in a phone's browser is new, and a web page can be interrupted by the phone in ways a store app is not, so test it on your own phone before relying on it for a signing. And Astrid's note templates were first written for personal injury. For estate planning the call types, classification and drafting context are set for the practice area, but a call type without its own template is drafted with your firm's default note template until you edit or bind one. Expect to adjust the template in your first week, and bring a real estate planning meeting to the trial so you can see the result.

Using your own AI assistant with Astrid

Astrid has an MCP server, which lets an AI assistant you already use, such as Claude, connect to your firm's Astrid record. MCP, the Model Context Protocol, is an open standard that lets an AI assistant such as Claude connect to another application through a server that the application provides.

Once connected, you can ask the assistant things like:

• What did the client say about guardians for their minor children in the planning consultation?
• Which follow-ups from the signing meeting are still open?
• What reasons did the client give for excluding a beneficiary?

It works with the access of the person who connects it, so firm scoping and privileged-call restrictions apply the same way they do in the app. Marking a call privileged is off by default, so decide your rule first.

One caution applies to any tool like this: connecting an assistant means the content it reads goes to that assistant's provider. Treat that provider like any vendor that sees client content, and check its training and retention terms first, as the NYC Bar's opinion on AI tools advises.

Sources

• NYC Bar Formal Opinion 2025-6
• Summary of ABA Formal Opinion 512
• ABA Journal on the Rule 1.14 amendment
• Justia 50-state recording survey
• Clio on estate planning software
• Beneficiary claims against drafting attorneys: Biakanja v. Irving and Colorado's strict rule
• Astrid security, recording consent and Clio integration
• Model Context Protocol

Frequently asked questions