When “AI Said So” Isn’t Legal Advice

A client’s family redlined her Power of Attorney using AI, citing Pennsylvania statutes throughout. Every citation was wrong.

Here’s a conversation that’s becoming more common. A family, trying to help, runs a loved one’s estate planning documents through an AI tool, gets back pages of confident, well-formatted analysis, and brings it to the attorney as their own research. That happened to us recently with a client’s Durable Power of Attorney. The redlines cited Pennsylvania’s Probate, Estates and Fiduciaries Code repeatedly, provision after provision. On its face, it looked like real work. It was not. The citations were wrong, and the interpretations of what those provisions actually do were wrong.

This is not a story about a bad actor. It is a story about a well-intentioned family that used an AI tool, got polished output, and reasonably assumed that polish meant accuracy.

AI language models are built to produce fluent, plausible-sounding text. They are not built to know Pennsylvania law, to track amendments to the PEF Code, or to understand how a single clause in a Power of Attorney interacts with Medicaid eligibility rules, fiduciary duties, or a family’s actual circumstances. When an AI tool cites a statute, it is not checking that citation against a legal database. It is generating text that resembles a citation. Sometimes that happens to be right. Often, especially with jurisdiction-specific law, it is not.

Estate planning documents are not templates to be assembled. Every provision in a well-drafted Power of Attorney, Will, or Trust reflects a deliberate choice, informed by the client’s specific goals, family situation, and applicable law. A misplaced word or a misunderstood provision can strip a fiduciary of authority they need in a crisis, undermine future Medicaid or long-term care planning, or create ambiguity that invites litigation among the very family members it was meant to protect. An AI tool has no client. It has no duty of loyalty, no duty of care, no obligation to protect anyone’s interests. A licensed attorney does. That distinction is not a technicality. It is the entire reason the profession exists.

We understand the appeal. Legal fees can feel like a barrier, and AI tools are fast, cheap, and available at any hour. But there is a real difference between being informed and being qualified to redraft a legal instrument. When proposed changes like these come back to an attorney, there are only two paths: quietly incorporate them and hope they hold up, or slow down, explain what each provision actually does, and confirm directly with the client, alone, what she truly wants. The second path is the only responsible one, even when it creates friction with a well-meaning family.

In the situation that prompted this piece, the family’s redlines were not incorporated. We explained, in detail, what each provision actually did and insisted on speaking with our client directly, without family present, to confirm her own wishes in her own words. That is not optional. It is the core of representing a client rather than a family consensus. Ultimately, the family and our firm could not reach agreement, and rather than compromise the integrity of the documents, we ended the representation and helped transition the file to counsel who could take the approach the family wanted. That outcome was not the one anyone hoped for, but it was the right one.

• Would you know if a citation in your own estate planning documents was wrong?
• Has anyone in your family ever “checked” or “improved” a parent’s Power of Attorney, Will, or Trust using an AI tool?
• Do you know the difference between a document that looks correct and one that has actually been reviewed by someone with a legal duty to you?

None of these questions get answered by a search bar. They get answered by sitting down with someone trained to see what a provision actually does, who carries a professional and ethical duty to the client, and who is accountable if something goes wrong, including the judgment to walk away from a matter rather than sign off on something that shouldn’t be signed.