The problem
After the signing, clients take home a binder of 80 pages or more and still call to ask who their successor trustee is or what happens if a child dies first. Many firms send a short summary letter, but writing one takes about an hour of attorney time. At 12 plans a month that's 12 hours, and without it the same questions come back by phone.
What the AI does
Claude reads long documents whole, so a 50-page trust, the pour-over will and the powers of attorney can go into one chat. On the Team plan, which Anthropic says doesn't use business data for training by default, the paralegal uploads the final signed documents and asks for a summary in the firm's standard layout: trustees and successors, who inherits what and when, guardians, financial and health care agents, with the article and section for every point. The attorney checks each line against the cited section, corrects anything that oversimplifies, and signs the letter. The summary describes what the documents say; it doesn't add advice the attorney hasn't given.
A worked example
A three-attorney estate planning firm in Minneapolis signs about 12 trust-based plans a month on flat fees. It buys two Claude Team seats for its paralegals, who draft the summary letters for the attorneys to check and sign.
Before
About an hour of attorney time to write each summary: 12 hours a month
After
About 25 minutes for the attorney to check and correct each draft: 5 hours a month
What it's worth
About $1,400£1,053€1,253A$2,021C$1,979 a month of attorney time, against a $40£30€36A$58C$57 cost. Saving 35 minutes on each of 12 plans is 7 hours, if attorney time is worth $200£150€179A$289C$283 an hour. Claude Team is $20£15€18A$29C$28 per seat a month billed annually or $25£19€22A$36C$35 monthly, with a 2-seat minimum. Fewer follow-up calls are not counted.
How to set it up
- Write the firm's summary template once: the headings, the order and a line saying the documents control if the summary differs.
- Use Claude Team seats only, and record the decision under ABA Formal Opinion 512 and the state bar's confidentiality rule, including what your engagement letter says about AI tools.
- Upload the final signed versions, not drafts, and ask for every point with its article and section number.
- Have the attorney check each point against the cited section and sign the letter before it goes to the client.
- Keep the checked letter in the client file so the firm answers later questions from the same summary.
What goes wrong
- A summary can flatten a conditional gift or a contingent beneficiary into something simpler and wrong. The attorney checks every distribution clause in full.
- Claude's help center says it reads images only in PDFs of 100 pages or fewer. Use text PDFs of the final documents, not phone scans of signed pages.
- Client documents go only into a plan with business terms. The Free and Pro plans are for individuals; Team needs at least 2 seats.
- On hourly billing, ABA Formal Opinion 512 says to bill for the time actually spent, not the time the task used to take.