User Guide

Background

This user guide is designed to give you a brief overview of the operation of the Inherit system, and workflow . At the heart of the system is Inherit’s proprietary AI legal bot that prompts you to ask questions directly with your client to identify their background circumstances and testamentary wishes. The bot replicates the line of questioning from an experienced estate planning lawyer to gather information and to identify legal issues for which legal advice is required. As you go through the narration for a client the bot identifies from the client’s circumstances the questions that should be asked of them relevant to their circumstances.. The bot collates those issues identified that forms part of the estate planning report. That report together with the client’s sign off of any data collected is then referred to the nominated lawyer from the Inherit panel as a “brief” of the client circumstances. The lawyer can then determine whether the issues identified or the scope of work to be performed is within Inherit’s default fee paid to the lawyer or whether the lawyer wishes to vary the fee scope. This may arise if, for example, the lawyer wishes to address specific legal issues arising from the issues report with client meetings or, to prepare any additional legal documents that may be recommended. The fee scope provides the basis for the lawyer’s engagement and the certainty about the fees that will be charged.

With the use of Inherits proprietary AI bot, you have the ability to navigate all of your client’s estate planning needs.

Inherit Workflow

Inherit’s workflow is designed to address the needs of two types of clients The first is a client who wants to commit to the whole process of gathering information, together with their testamentary wishes and the creation of testamentary documents like Wills and powers of attorney. The second client is a client who is unsure whether to change their existing Will and so may seek a review of their existing circumstances to determine if there are gaps in their existing estate plan that requires legal or other advice or if they need to update or review their existing testamentary documents.

With these needs in mind, Inherit’s workflow operates to gather information in 2 phases:

Phase 1

client details
occupation and source of income
citizenship
current relationship status
former relationships
children,
siblings
details of surviving parents and what assets may pass from their estate
Financial entities:
Assets and debts

Inherit summarises this information for you graphical by producing the following charts that you can print from the system for your file:

Family Chart

Asset chart

Entity chart

Note: - In a near-future software update, Inherit will allow API integration with major software database suppliers (eg. Xplan and Xero) to speed up the process by allowing the import of existing client information into Inherit.

Once all of the client’s current information is gathered, Inherit prompts you to generate an Estate Planning report before you move to the second phase of the system. The report identifies relevant issues about a client’s circumstance that should be investigated further with a nominated Inherit panel lawyer.

Phase 2

This phase operates post the creation of the Estate Planning Report and is focused on gathering information regarding the client’s testamentary wishes:

Death benefit nominations and wishes for retail super funds and SMSFs (if relevant)
Choice of executor, additional executor and substitute executor
Control of family trusts
Burial wishes and organ donation
Estate distribution: gifts
Distribution of the residue of the estate
Restrictions on control of assets
Appointment of Life tenants
Powers of attorney

Inherit’s workflow and the estimated time involved at various stages in the process is summarised as follows:

Inherit navigation:- the dashboard

When you first log in to Inherit you will land on the Inherit dashboard. The dashboard allows you to review the progress of works in relation to your clients moving from the collection of their data, engaging a lawyer, the generation of documents and their signoff. You or your team manage the entire process from beginning to end with the storage of signed documents in the Deeds register.

At present, the library contains a compilation of all of the current help text on various topics covered by the bot for different clients. The support icon allows you to log any errors or issues or suggest any improvements to the Inherit system. We encourage you to do that as often as you can so that we can make Inherit more effective and user-friendly to you and your staff.

Within the system settings icon you can add details of your branding and logo that can appear on the estate planning report. You can switch on or off a host of different email notifications that can be dispatched to you or your team as various communications are dispatched by Inherit during the workflow for each of your clients.

Commencing an estate plan for a client

Commencing an estate plan for a new client is a simple as selecting the “start estate plan” button on the dashboard. If you are working on an existing plan and wish to update information as it is provided to you, simply select “continue estate plan”

You can start an estate plan from an existing client within your system or alternatively create a new client. As you commence the plan ,you will be asked whether the estate plan is for a single or a couple. Information is gathered by the legal bot either from your clients either individually ( if they attend your office on that basis) or together. Questions are then asked in successive order on the assumption that your clients are both present to give you instructions on their respective estate plans and wishes which of course may differ, particularly in the case of blended families.

Once you have completed the client’s details the AI bot will then drive the process of gathering information and will ask questions that are relevant to your clients specific circumstances, their assets and various entities that they own or control.

As shown in the screenshot below, there are two toolbars at the top of the screen. The first toolbar shows the overall workflow from gathering client information through to the estate completion. The toolbar below shows where you are in the current narrative. You can advance forward or back in the narrative by selecting the arrow buttons and can exit the plan and return to the dashboard by clicking on the up arrow.

Gathering, reviewing and updating client data

It is often the case when you interview your client that Inherit’s legal bot will ask a question that the client may not be able to answer or client may not have the relevant information available to you at the time of the interview. Inherit therefore allows you to gather information in different formats.

The first and most likely format when you first meet with your client is the interview format which is of a narration style of questions that Inherit allows you to simply repeat in front of your client. To use this style, simply select the interview button at the toolbar within the estate plan, shown below

If you have completed most of the information from the AI bot but have to return to the estate plan with additional information, you can simply select the “to complete” button at the top of the toolbar within the estate plan. This is useful for identifying documents that need to be uploaded into inherit and any questions you have check as “answer later”

The review format also allows you to complete missing information from the data collected in a form field format. If this is preferred in particular as a means of checking that all the information is complete. simply select the review button at the top of the toolbar ( shown below) and the relevant sections of information will be presented as a form that you can edit.

Client sign off

An important feature of the Inherit system is the accuracy and completeness of information gathered regarding your client’s circumstances and their testamentary wishes. You are provided with the option of downloading the data summarised in a report and sending it to your client for sign off (option 1) and then uploading it back into the system. Alternatively, you may sign off the data yourself as being accurate complete and ready for document generation (option 2). Sign off of client data or the uploading of the sign off form is a pre-requisite before the lawyer is engaged.

This is designed for risk mitigation if client information is not correctly gathered and recorded, and to reduce legal cost if a lawyer has to repeat a line of questioning because of uncertainty in the information provided.

Engaging a lawyer

Inherit allows you to share and exchange client information regarding their financial circumstances and testamentary wishes with an Inherit panel lawyer, all within the security of the Inherit environment. At the present moment, Hill Legal is the default Inherit adviser but over time a number of other specialist lawyers will be added to the panel to give you greater choice and range of experience. In a future Inherit update, Inherit will also assist you in selecting or recommending a panel lawyer based on your client’s particular circumstances or their location.

It is important to remember that because you are offering an estate planning facilitation service to your client, the lawyer does not know if your firm is engaging their services ( option 1) or if you are engaging their services on behalf of your client (option 2). This is important because the first question a lawyer will ask is “who is my client “ ? This is a subtle but possibly a significant practical distinction.

You will be invited to check box one of these options when selecting the lawyer. If you select option 1, the lawyer would regard you as their client in respect of their duty of care and the payment of their fees and will be less likely to want to engage with your client. If you select this option you will need to ensure that you have the lawyer’s fees paid to you by your client or available to you at the time that you complete phase 2 in the process and engage the lawyer as this is when payment will be required, apart from payment of the Estate Planning Report.

If you select the box, option 2, the lawyer will regard your client as their client or their “principal” and you merely acting as their “agent”. This will mean, from the lawyer’s perspective, that they are obliged to provide your client with cost disclosure and to meet with your client to discuss or confirm the Inherit information provided to them as part of discharging their duty of care to your client. While Inherit will collect the lawyer’s fee, the lawyer will seek confirmation that their fee will be paid from your client.

Which of the options you select will depend on your relationship with your client, your business model, the complexity of their affairs and the extent to which you want to be involved through the whole estate planning process for a particular client.

The following scenarios give you some guidance on which of these options to select for each of your clients:

On the lawyer page you can select the documents that you believe your client requires or you can leave that option open to the lawyer to choose.

Client data Privacy

For the purposes of a quote and therefore pre-engagement you can also identify whether you require the client’s personal data to be redacted or not redacted and you can nominate when engaging the lawyer whether you will be arranging for the documents to be signed or if you require the lawyer to meet with the client to sign off the documents. This may be appropriate, for example, if you have concerns about a client’s testamentary capacity or if there is family conflict.

On this page, you can also nominate the due date for the delivery of documents based on your clients circumstances and add any notes to the panel lawyer before submitting the request to your nominated lawyer.

Creation of legal documents

From the client information and testamentary wishes that the legal bot collects, Inherit will generate the required Wills and powers of attorney for your client that your nominated Inherit lawyer will review. This review may require alterations to the documents based on issues identified and resolved with you or your client from the estate planning issues report. The lawyer may also prepare other legal documents outside of the Inherit system that may be required as part of the fee scope. Both the Inherit generated documents and other external documents can be uploaded into Inherit and shared with your client for review and confirmation.

In the document works tab from the dashboard you can monitor the progress of documents as they are uploaded together with different versions of the documents for review and confirmation with your client. This process provides an important audit trail if there was ever a future legal dispute around the completion of a Will or power of attorney and the client’s testamentary wishes.

Inherit Deeds Register

The inherit deeds register is intended to conveniently allow you to store a signed version of any estate planning document for a client. It will also allow you to store certain estate planning documents that can be signed electronically, and this includes powers of attorney. In a future inherit update, the deeds register will be included in a blockchain environment for enhanced long-term security.

The deed register not only stores signed estate planning documents but also holds those documents that are collected by the bot during the narration process. Documents such as trust deeds, existing Wills, shareholders and unitholders Agreement’s and company constitutions that are gathered by the bot can be conveniently located in the Deeds register and you or your team can add documents into the Deed register at any stage in the process.

Note: When seeking the lawyer’s quote, if you check the box “share client attached uploaded documents”, all of the documents uploaded into the deeds register for that particular client will be shared with the lawyer but will NOT be redacted.

You can anticipate that the lawyer will want to review the legal documents submitted and may in fact charge for this review as part of confirming the fee quote or any variation, particularly if those legal documents impact the issues raised by the Estate Planning Report.

Fees, and prices

Inherit anticipates that advisers will engage with their clients to facilitate their estate planning needs on a fee-charging basis.

The philosophy behind Inherit’s pricing is that the fees charged by inherit include the fees payable to the lawyer and any variation sought by the lawyer, allowing the adviser the freedom to charge their own fee, based on the client service packages offered to their own clients.

Because inherit generates the Estate Planning Report and legal documents from the Inherit system, it provides these documents to you and the nominated lawyer at a wholesale price with a recommended retail price ( see below). You have the choice to charge the recommended retail price for these documents and to add a time-based fee to facilitate the estate planning process or otherwise charge a composite fixed fee, using Inherit as the provider in conjunction with the nominated panel lawyer.

Inherit’s pricing options comprise a PAYG pricing offer. As the name suggests, you can use Inherit at any time with no start-up cost or monthly subscription commitment.

For advisers using Inherit on a regular basis and for better value, Inherit provides monthly subscription pricing “seats” for “Pro” and “Premium” where there is a discount in the wholesale price of documents by up to 30%.

The screenshot below shows the number of estate plans per month you have to generate before there is better value to you moving from the PAYG, Pro and premiums plans. Inherit can provide you with an excel spreadsheet to assist you in determining the best pricing plan for you and your practice.

Your Estate planning facilitation fee

As indicated above, Inherit allows you the flexibility to charge whenever fee is appropriate based on your particular client circumstances and the existing services you provide to your client and fees charged.

However, based on enquiries that inherit has made from other providers in the marketplace, the following gives you some guidance as to the potential fees that you could charge your client ( in addition to the Inherit/lawyer fee) based on their individual circumstances, without regard to any existing fee arrangements with your clients.

Support

At Inherit we are here to support you at each step of the process to make estate planning a dynamic and profitable activity for your business and to strengthen your relationship with your clients and the value of your own business and service offering.

We encourage your feedback through the support button below on any issues you are experiencing or suggested improvements to the system. If you are experiencing difficulties outside of the website or have other issues or concerns, feel free to contact the following members of our team for any particular issue that you might have.

Issues of a technical nature regarding the operation of the website or its functionality:

Rafael Cohen

Co-founder/Director- head of tech

Email: rafael.cohen@inheritaustralia.com.au

Issues concerning the estate planning process, legal advice, sales or marketing

Chris Hill

Co-founder/Director- head of Legal

chris.hill@inheritaustralia.com.au