Legal Workflow discusses online wills

I enjoyed an interesting evening at the Wills & Probate Summit from Today’s Wills & Probate at the end of February.  The format was unusual in that dinner and drinks came before the serious debate, which made for a lively exchange of views!

The hottest topic was online Wills and the room was divided between technologists advocating the expectation today that Wills should be made online and lawyers who worried that a pure online process cannot cover all of the intricacies and nuances of family dynamics in each given case.

I’ve never seen the proposition in these black and white terms.  As a solicitor-turned-geek I view the great opportunities that automation, machine learning and artificial intelligence offer when combined with an expert lawyer and empathetic personality.

Research indicates that there is 80% unmet legal need in this country, whilst at the same time lawyers are too hard pressed with processing work to spend enough time communicating with their clients.  That’s what I call a perfect storm breaker, if collaborative online products are there for clients and lawyers to use together.

This concept has been at the heart of our development at Legal Workflow.  We are launching our own online Wills product in March and indeed it is being beta tested by our ABS legalmatters at the moment.  It brings human and machine together, which I believe is the way forward.