Why Can't I Just Create My Last Will and Test­a­ment with Chat­G­PT?

In the di­git­al age, tools like Chat­G­PT un­doubtedly offer con­veni­ence, from an­swer­ing quer­ies to provid­ing ex­plan­a­tions on com­plic­ated topics. So, why should I pay for legal doc­u­ments like my Last Will & Test­a­ment if Chat­G­PT can provide it free of charge?

Chat­G­PT is on every­one’s lips. Nordic Legal Tech com­pany Aatos util­ises AI in show­ing legal re­com­mend­a­tions to the cus­tom­ers and provid­ing on-going legal sup­port. Catrin Le Rendu, UK so­li­citor at Aatos, tells why AI is a good ser­vant, but a bad master. And why no one should ask Chat­G­PT to create legal doc­u­ments for them.

While Chat­G­PT can gen­er­ate basic tem­plates and offer gen­er­al advice on common legal topics, it lacks the abil­ity to provide per­son­al­ised legal coun­sel.

“For ex­ample, the cre­ation of a Last Will in­volves sens­it­ive de­cisions and nu­anced con­sid­er­a­tions that AI is not equip­ped to handle. This in­cludes nav­ig­at­ing com­plex family dy­nam­ics, ad­dress­ing tax im­plic­a­tions tail­ored to your situ­ation, and en­sur­ing full legal com­pli­ance with UK reg­u­la­tions – any short­com­ing of which could sig­ni­fic­antly un­der­mine the ex­e­cu­tion of your final wishes,” says Le Rendu.

A Chat­G­PT Will Can Turn into a Night­mare Will

Le Rendu lists six reas­ons why no one should risk the assets they’ve ac­cu­mu­lated over their life­time by cre­at­ing a po­ten­tially in­valid Will with AI.

1. Chat­G­PT can and has fab­ric­ated in­form­a­tion: One famous ex­ample from 2023 is where an Amer­ican lawyer used AI to come up with legal ar­gu­ments, which he presen­ted in court. Un­for­tu­nately, the cases and de­tails that Chat­G­PT de­livered were fake.
2. Vague lan­guage and asset cov­er­age gaps: The pre­cise legal phras­ing and ter­min­o­lo­gy in a Will is cru­cial. AI-gen­er­ated lan­guage could po­ten­tially be am­bigu­ous or un­clear in parts. For in­stance, the Will might simply leave your “estate” to your spouse, but what does this mean? Do you want EVERYTHING to go to your spouse? Or, do you want to make spe­cif­ic dis­tri­bu­tions?
3. Nu­anced family dy­nam­ics: AI cannot prop­erly adapt for com­plex scen­ari­os like blended fam­ilies or unique per­son­al dy­nam­ics. The Will may ex­clude cer­tain people (such as step chil­dren).
4. Out­dated in­form­a­tion: Chat­G­PT's know­ledge has a cut-off date, so new laws or pre­ced­ents after that point won't be re­flec­ted, po­ten­tially making the Will out-of-date or in­ac­cur­ate.
5. Tax im­plic­a­tions: A prop­erly drafted Will can min­im­ise in­her­it­ance tax li­ab­il­it­ies, where­as AI doesn’t do tha. Laws about in­her­it­ance tax are highly nu­anced and in­di­vidu­al­ised.
6. Per­son­al se­cur­ity: When you enter your per­son­al de­tails into Chat­G­PT, you don't know where they might end up.

"The risks of a faulty Last Will only become ap­par­ent once the test­ator has passed away, leav­ing their loved ones to deal with the legal and emo­tion­al con­sequences. In the worst-case scen­ar­io, the family has to spend a large por­tion of the estate on legal fees, drain­ing re­sources that were meant for their sup­port," Le Rendu ex­plains.

Even though AI per­forms poorly when draft­ing legal doc­u­ments from scratch, it has un­doubtedly become an es­sen­tial tool for so­li­cit­ors. Aatos uses AI daily as an as­sist­ant to their so­li­cit­ors. AI handles some cus­tom­er ser­vice tasks, re­com­mends con­di­tions to cli­ents, and will soon help gen­er­ate doc­u­ments, with the cost sav­ings passed on to its cus­tom­ers.

"The logic used by AI in Aatos’ ser­vice has been de­veloped and trained with Aatos' own legal ex­pert­ise in a closed en­vir­on­ment. Prac­tic­ally, the AI trans­lates the al­gorithm into a form un­der­stand­able by humans and serves as a legal know­ledge bank. This en­sures that legal as­pects are up-to-date and re­duces the risk of AI gen­er­at­ing in­cor­rect or fab­ric­ated in­form­a­tion," Le Rendu ex­plains.

With Aatos, it is pos­sible to create a per­son­al and af­ford­able Last Will online. £99 is a small price to pay for peace of mind.

Con­tact

Catrin Le Rendu
UK So­li­citor
catrin@aatos.app

Mariia Kukkakorpi
Com­mu­nic­a­tions Man­ager
mariia@aatos.app

Aatos is a lead­ing di­git­al legal ser­vice in the Nor­dics provid­ing com­pre­hens­ive, af­ford­able legal solu­tions across Fin­land, Sweden, Den­mark, and the United King­dom. Aatos spe­cial­ises in per­son­al legal doc­u­ments and advice, making legal ser­vices ac­cess­ible and un­der­stand­able for every­one. Aatos’s ser­vices in­clude e.g. draft­ing Last Wills, Pren­ups and Lasting Power of At­tor­neys.