Canadian Lawyer

October 2019

The most widely read magazine for Canadian lawyers

Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/1172374

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 35 of 55

SPECIAL REPORT ESTATE PLANNING 36 www.canadianlawyermag.com more relevant. As baby boomers age, retire and die, an unprecedented sum will be bequeathed. Wealth Professional Canada reported in 2018 that between 2016 and 2026, around $1 trillion will pass through inheritance in Canada. But there are signs Canadians could muff the handoff. A 2018 poll from Angus Reid found that more than half of Canadians don't have a will, only 35 per cent have one that is up to date and 18 per cent of those without a will said it was because it's too expensive. Filling these gaps are a torrent of legal tech products built to serve lawyers and clients in wills, trusts and estates. Five years ago, Atin and Hull & Hull co-founder Ian Hull created an AI-powered, will-building tool that, depending on the situation, types of assets, tax status of family members and other considerations, provides advice about how to arrange the estate plan. "It's a simple process but extremely powerful. [It] covers every kind of conceiv- able option. But for the client [it] is straight- forward, simple and visual," Atin says. Atin, an adjunct professor at Osgoode Hall Law School and a certified specialist in estates and trusts, says Hull e-State Planner is not about saving time. Although the tool has made him more efficient drafting wills, he says, clients appreciate the real-time visual representation of the plan specifics they are trying to communicate to their lawyer. "It's actually value added rather than saving time," he says. Legal tech products such as Atin's and Hull's are popping up in every practice area. For Willful CEO Erin Bury, her idea was inspired by a negative experience with the status quo. Bury and her husband Kevin Oulds co-founded Willful in 2016 after an unex- pected death in Oulds' family put the complexity and difficulty of end-of-life plan- ning front and centre in their lives. "And while that person did have a will, they had never discussed end-of-life plan- ning — whether they wanted to be buried or cremated or what type of funeral they wanted. So, his family was arguing over all of this stuff, while trying to plan it," Bury says. "Being a millennial who used a lot of text- driven apps, [my husband] just wondered why the estate-planning process hadn't been touched by technology and was still being done the same way as it had been 50 years ago," she says. The original plan for the app was to address a person's death-related inter- ests outside of the scope of a will — such as funeral wishes, subscriptions, online subscriptions and other aspects of a person's digital footprint, she says. But research led them to find that people didn't want to think about their own death and the "must-have" was the will creation itself. They launched the will-making app Willful in May 2017. It began in Ontario, has since expanded to five provinces and Bury says they plan to reach across Canada by 2020. Neither is a lawyer by trade. Bury and Oulds partnered with estate lawyers from across Canada to create Willful's legal content and initially found it difficult to find practitioners who wanted to assist in their automation. "Because, obviously, we're calling them and saying, 'Hey, can you partner with us to create legal content, so people can use our "Being a millennial who used a lot of text-driven apps, [my husband] just wondered why the estate-planning process hadn't been touched by technology." Erin Bury, Willful

Articles in this issue

Links on this page

Archives of this issue

view archives of Canadian Lawyer - October 2019