Estate Planning and Probate Dictation Software

Last updated 21 October 2026.

Wills and trusts come from your forms. What does not come from forms is everything around them: the memo after the design meeting, the letter that explains the plan to clients in plain English, the notes on who gets what and why, and in probate, the petitions, inventories and letters to beneficiaries. That is where an estate lawyer dictates.

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What to dictate, by stage of the matter

1. Design meeting. A memo of the family, the assets, the goals and the decisions made, dictated right after the clients leave. The Client Intake template gives you sections for client information, case type, key facts, other parties and the result the client wants.
2. Plan summary letter. The letter that walks clients through the revocable trust, the pour-over will, the powers of attorney and who serves as trustee.
3. Drafting notes. Instructions to the paralegal on which form, which options and which distribution scheme.
4. Probate and administration. Petition facts, inventory descriptions, letters to beneficiaries and the court.
5. Elder law. Guardianship and conservatorship petitions, long term care planning memos, special needs trust explanations for families.

Example: two paragraphs of a plan summary letter

1. Open the letter in Word below the greeting and press your hotkey.
2. Say: "Your trust names your daughter Anna as successor trustee comma with your son Mark as backup period At the second death comma the trust estate is divided into 2 equal shares for Anna and Mark comma per stirpes comma so that if either of them dies before you comma that share passes to their children period new paragraph Your pour-over will sends anything left outside the trust into it period Your durable power of attorney names Anna as agent for financial decisions period"
3. Press the hotkey again. Two paragraphs are pasted at the cursor, with per stirpes, pour-over will and durable power of attorney spelled as legal terms.
4. Check the names and the 2 share split against the signed design memo before the letter goes out.

Estate and elder law terms

The Legal Edition dictionary has 12,000+ legal terms and corrects near misses after recognition. Estate vocabulary in it includes per stirpes, per capita, testamentary trust, letters testamentary, pour-over will, elective share, codicil, inter vivos (corrects "inter vyvos"), irrevocable trust, durable power of attorney ("durable power of attourney"), guardianship ("gaurdianship"), conservatorship ("conservitorship") and special needs trust.

Family names are the part no dictionary can know. A summary letter may name four generations, so add the client family's names to your Personal Dictionary when you open the matter. Trust names that you write the same way every time, such as "the Smith Family Revocable Trust dated", are better saved as a text shortcut with a spoken name.

Into Word, your document assembly or your practice management system

VoicePrivate pastes at the cursor, so the text goes into Word, Outlook, a free text field in document assembly software, or the matter notes in Clio, MyCase or a similar system. It does not connect to those accounts or fill forms by itself.

On-device recognition

Estate files list every account a family has and often their health. With VoicePrivate, speech is recognized on your own computer. The audio is not sent to a server and there is no cloud transmission of the dictation. Your firm still decides where letters and memos are kept.

Before you choose: best dictation software for lawyers in 2026 compares the options, attorney dictation services vs software covers cost and turnaround, and digital dictation equipment for lawyers helps if you dictate on a recorder. Related practice pages: family law, immigration and all practice areas.

Estate planning dictation: questions