www.canadianlawyermag.com 35
THE LEGAL profession is often criticized
for its archaic and antiquated appear-
ance. Images of a lawyer wheeling around a
30-kilogram, 40,000-page file-folder that, if
digitized, could fit on an IPhone or draped in
robes (or sporting a wig in the U.K.) help to
drive the stereotype. In the courtroom, when
liberty, property and reputation hang in the
balance, the processes relied on can operate,
technologically, decades behind even an
elementary school classroom.
How the law deals with end-of-life plan-
ning is not immune to this stasis.
Jordan Atin, counsel at Hull & Hull LLP, is
among those using technology to change that.
Innovation in estates law is just in time for biggest
wealth transfer in history
Legal tech
revolutionizing
death
"I'm just a wills and estates guy. That's all
I do is draft wills," he says, adding that how
those wills are planned "has not changed in
500 years.
"You sit on one side of the desk, the lawyer
sits on the other side of the desk and they say
to you, 'So tell me what you own. Tell me all
the names of your kids. What do you want
to do with this? And what do you want to do
with that?' and the lawyer takes down notes
and then produces this big, thick document
that no one really understands," Atin says.
"It's still being done in 99.9 per cent of situa-
tions that way."
But succession plans have never been
Patrick Hartford's
NoticeConnect is centralizing
wills in Canada.
