reference architecture · estate planning
This page is a reference architecture: a precise specification of how I design and build an intake-to-drafting pipeline for an estate planning practice. It is an engineering document, not a case study. What follows is exactly what you would be hiring: the system, its data flow, its failure handling, and where your attorneys stay in control.
// skimmable for an attorney · specific enough for your office manager to pressure-test
The problem
A new matter starts with a questionnaire. The client works through a DecisionVault or Lawmatics intake: family structure, fiduciaries, beneficiaries, assets. That data is correct exactly once, at the moment the client enters it.
Then it gets copied. A paralegal re-keys it into Clio to open the contact and the matter. Re-keys it again into the WealthDocx interview to draft the plan. Types the asset list once more into the funding schedule. A practice drafting 40 plans a month is typically re-keying tens of thousands of fields a year.
Each pass is a chance for the error that matters: a settlor's name spelled two ways between the trust agreement and a beneficiary designation. A successor trustee present in one document and missing from another. A funding schedule that no longer matches what the client reported. Some of these surface at the signing table. The worst surface years later, when the pour-over will is probated in Surrogate's Court and the plan has to hold up as written.
The exposure compounds because the package repeats itself: a revocable living trust, pour-over wills, statutory short form powers of attorney, health care proxies, HIPAA authorizations, and funding instructions all carry the same names and the same structure. They all have to match.
Current state
// the same names, dates, and asset lists typed into each system separately; the funding schedule often makes a fourth pass
Target architecture
Everything downstream of the questionnaire becomes a mapped, validated, logged transfer. The client's answers land in one canonical schema, and that schema feeds every other system. Nobody types a client's name a second time.
// there is no LLM anywhere in this pipeline: every field mapping is explicit code that can be read, tested, and audited
Data flow
Capture
The client submits the questionnaire. The pipeline pulls the submission through the intake platform's API and stores it unmodified. That raw record is the permanent source of truth for what the client actually said.
Validate
Field-level checks against the schema: dates parse, counties are real New York counties, beneficiary shares total 100 percent, required fiduciary roles are filled. Anything that fails routes to the exception queue for a person to resolve.
Sync to Clio
Contacts, matters, and custom fields are created or updated as keyed upserts. Re-running a sync can never duplicate a matter or overwrite a staff correction unnoticed.
Assemble
The schema maps into WealthDocx interview answers through the WealthCounsel API, and the draft package comes back: trust, pour-over wills, ancillary documents, funding schedule, all from the same single record.
Review
An attorney reviews the drafts in the tools the firm already uses. The pipeline prepares documents. It never sends, signs, or files anything.
Error handling & audit trail
Failures stop, they don't guess
A value that fails validation never flows downstream. It lands in the exception queue with its source shown, and a person resolves it. The pipeline does not substitute a default and keep going.
Every write is recorded
Source field, destination, value, timestamp, and whether it was client-entered or staff-corrected. If a value on a draft looks wrong, "where did this come from" is one lookup, not an investigation.
Safe to re-run
Syncs are idempotent and retried on failure. A run that dies partway can be re-run whole without creating duplicate contacts or matters.
Drift gets caught
A nightly reconciliation compares intake, Clio, and the generated documents, and flags any mismatch before it reaches a signing table.
What stays human-reviewed
Engagement shape
01
Workflow mapping
I sit with your paralegals and follow a real matter from intake to signing: which fields get re-typed, where, by whom. This is days of work, not months, and it produces the field map the build is priced from.
02
Fixed-scope proposal
Exactly which integrations get built, the full field mapping, and what "done" means. Scoped and priced per firm, because every stack and every practice is different.
03
Build + parallel run
The pipeline starts with one document package. Before anything goes live, its output runs in parallel against your current hand-keyed process on real matters until the two match.
04
Cutover + support
Staff training, monitoring, and reconciliation reports. When WealthCounsel or Clio changes something, maintaining the mapping is part of the engagement, not a surprise invoice.
30 minutes. I'll map where your client data gets re-keyed and tell you honestly whether this architecture fits your practice.