Estate planning, like any advisory service in the accounting world, is concerned with dollars and cents. But, like other advisory areas relatively resistant to AI disruption, it is also concerned with human relationships and feelings connected with what is typically understood to be a very emotionally sensitive topic: death. It’s not even a question of whether or not AI could do an estate planning engagement on its own but whether the client would even want it to. David Nelson, an estate planning specialist with top 25 firm Aprio, noted that the highly personal nature of estate planning means it would be difficult to consider AI taking over the process. 

“Some mathematically driven fields may see automation sooner. Estate planning, however, is highly personal. At the end of the day, you’re sitting down with someone to talk about their mortality. There’s intrinsic value in human interaction for discussions like that,” said Nelson. 

Nelson himself said he has been using AI primarily as a way to synthesize information sources in order to produce an analysis of the tax ramifications of a given plan, which in turn also helps with developing plans based on the data they find. He also uses it to analyze documents, particularly long and dense ones, that can help spot issues that the humans missed, such as contradictions in the plan itself or conflicting effects from its various provisions. 

Overall, Nelson treats AI as a research tool. Looking at his field overall, he said that the estate planning world has picked up the technology, but not as deeply or as fervently as other specializations. People use AI tools fairly regularly for analysis or plan development, but it’s not a dominant part of the practice. It is not even used in the calculations. While no one is using paper and pencil to determine estate tax implications, professions are still mostly using “legacy number-crunching software.” Part of this might be because, so far, he has not seen an AI model that can perform the level of analysis he and professionals like himself do regularly. “On our end, AI is still a tool to guide analysis. But as far as I’ve seen, AI can’t yet produce the kind of comprehensive analysis we need. For example, if a client comes in with an estate plan that includes various assets—an S corporation, marketable securities, a C corporation, and trusts to hold portions of those assets—the tax implications of each are different. The complexity increases when you factor in a trust as an owner. AI isn’t yet able to aggregate and synthesize all of those issues into a cohesive analysis,” he said. 

(See our feature story, “Staying ahead of AI.”)

Hanna Dameron, an attorney with law firm ArentFox who has spoken at accounting conferences on the role of AI in estate planning, added that AI is not at the point where it can understand the complex human relationships and social factors that drive many engagements. She said you could take two different clients with the exact same assets and the exact same number of children and there may be 15 different plans that could be appropriate for them depending on things like how they feel about their various family members, how they view future investments, how they want their children to access their money, and more. Walking clients through this requires the emotional intelligence to understand their goals and explain to them in plain language how they could make a plan to accomplish them. She did not feel confident AI would be able to handle these emotional complexities just yet. 

“Estate administration is a very emotional process. If you have the family members squabbling over who gets grandma’s painting, you can certainly see a need for a human to come in and help mediate those disputes. But it’s also just the emotional process of ‘somebody’s got to go through the boxes and figure out where this asset might be’ or ‘there’s an insurance policy we never heard about. How does that make me feel that this family member never told me about that insurance policy?’ So, it’s not just dealing with the administration of dollars and cents. You’re looking at a deep financial portrait of somebody’s life and what they’ve left behind. And there can be a lot of emotions and questions that come up in that,” she said. 

(Read more: “AI in advisory: What work is at risk?“)

She noted that she speaks from experience, having shifted into estate planning after the death of her own mother and being the executor of her will, which was a difficult experience both emotionally and administratively. 

 “It made me feel very passionate about helping families set up a plan and then administer the plan with compassion and emotion. So, I think, when somebody is in a grieving state, of course, they want somebody to talk to, not just about sorting out what they’re dealing with, but also dealing with a legacy,” she said. 

Artificial intelligence has brought new efficiency and productivity to the valuation field, particularly where it concerns data entry, processing and analysis, which is a major part of the process, as well as generating the reports to explain what the data says. Lari Masten, who heads valuation advisory firm Masten Valuation, said that working the technology into her own processes has saved countless hours, turning tasks that were once an interminable slog into relatively quick jobs that can be completed in minutes. 

One of the biggest use cases in the valuation world, said Masten, is data entry and processing. Valuation tends to require a lot of data inputs that can take hours or even days to complete, but recent AI advances have allowed her to sort through literally thousands of documents to find data patterns. This not only aids her own insights but also thwarts those who want to hide those insights in massive piles of unstructured data. 

“Recognizing patterns [means] you can dump a ton of PDFs into a model and it can quickly summarize what is going on and put things in order a lot of times. I do a ton of litigation, and it’s so helpful there because for valuation purposes generally it’s not somebody who wants somebody looking at all their financial records and it comes in a big old pile, and so it helps organize it — ‘Here’s 4,000 pages; organize it by date and by financial record first and then underlying quantitative data second, etc.,'” said Masten. 

Her firm also uses AI for coding support when creating new macros, some of them quite complex and developed for specific clients for evaluation purposes. Instead of having to constantly test and retest an ineffective macro, professionals now can describe what it is they need to do and why, and the AI can provide assistance. 

“We’re not having to go out to Microsoft or Google and ask how to do a particular task. We can just go to one place and not be distracted by it,” she said. 

But while these might seem like purely quantitative processes, Masten said there are uniquely qualitative elements that make it difficult to imagine AI ever completely taking her place, saying professional valuation is both a science and an art. While valuation involves a lot of calculations, what exactly is calculated, and how, can come down to the holistic judgment of the professional. This has been the case, she said, even before AI came onto the scene. 

(See our feature story, “Staying ahead of AI.”)

“For decades, valuation has had software out there. You can dump a bunch of numbers in there and churn, but it doesn’t mean that it gives you a good output. I don’t have confidence that if I put in a bunch of information into a tool that it’s going to be able to understand how Lari Masten would reason through and solve that problem. It can do the math, but did it do the math in the way that when I do valuations? When anybody does a valuation, there’s three or four dozen decisions that they make and each decision gets them to a different place,” she said. 

There are reasons she does the things she does that a computer can’t necessarily understand at this point in time. While the calculations can be automated, according to Masten, the thinking behind them cannot, particularly where it concerns the ultimate conclusion of a valuation engagement. She has yet to find an AI model that can do that. 

“They’ll say, ‘Here’s three ways to solve it’ but they don’t understand if this one is more reasonable than that one. If you work on it you can automate a lot of portions … but the bigger picture of, what is the problem I’m having to solve? What standard of value do I have to follow based on that problem? How is the valuation date going to make a difference? What was known or knowable on a date? AI is not going to be able to really sift through that depending on what the inputs have been already. It’ll just pull information and it may not know when something became known or knowable, so there’s that professional judgment. The good reasoning, the backbone really behind any valuation, can’t be automated,” she said. 

Overall, she is supportive of AI and believes it will be of great benefit to the profession, but noted that there are some cons, particularly the need to vet information and not automatically trust what the AI says. Further, she expressed concern that even though AI cannot replace a valuation expert, professionals over time might lose some of those inherent human qualities that prevent this from happening now. 

(Read more: “AI in advisory: What work is at risk?“)

“There’s some measure of responsibility on the valuation people to go in and make sure that they’re vetting that information, that they’re still applying their logic, overlaying their skills, knowledge, expertise, training, that kind of stuff because [no matter] how great it is as a tool, it can’t use that logic that we have, it’s not a replacement for the interactive qualitative piece that the valuation analyst knows and tie that necessarily to the quantitative art that it does,” she said. 

This ties into communicating to clients the value of a human valuation expert: Yes, a computer can crunch the numbers, but that’s not all there is to an engagement, and not even necessarily why someone might hire a human professional in the first place. 

“It’s not [just] how to do valuation. The value ad is that you understand the problem,” she said. 

The ability to invest in the future has never been more important in our profession. The emergence of artificial intelligence, the need to rebuild our talent pipeline and create value for future generations is top of mind across the industry. 

In fact, in the Accounting Today Top 100 Firms of 2024 report, investment in technology and retaining and upskilling talent were among the many reasons for firm growth in the last year. The correlation is obvious. But we are also seeing growth in other areas, from outside investment to mergers and acquisitions. The pace of change is undeniable.

The landscape of the accounting and professional services sector is undergoing significant transformation, in part, driven by the influx of outside investment and mergers. The American Institute of CPAs announced it will revise its “independence rule amid the wave of private equity investments in accounting firms.” The volume of investment in professional services is shining a light on the fact that this is an exciting and vibrant time for the industry. The ability to be forward leaning and realize the investments that are needed to keep pace is essential to our ability to evolve. 

The pace of change can be challenging for any firm, large or small. As firms evaluate their strategic options, it’s imperative to recognize there are varied paths to achieving growth and innovation. One size doesn’t necessarily fit all. At CLA, we are watching how outside investment is impacting the industry. For some firms, outside investment has been successful and led to immediate growth. In other cases, we have observed that quick growth results in a lack of autonomy. This has furthered our belief in the independent model that is the foundation of our firm. 

Independence enables flexibility

The independent model lends itself to making decisions at a local level. When a firm is independent, there’s flexibility and a cogent desire to invest in the future. This allows organizations to be on the forefront of cutting-edge AI and digital technology solutions with a long-term vision. When firms invest in these technologies, they can consider the long-term value it will deliver to their clients instead of only considering the monetary return on investment.

CLA’s commitment to investment extends beyond technology to workforce development and industry innovation. We recognize that size and scale matter when it comes to AI and digital transformation. As a top 10 firm, we invested in technology and talent far before the influx of outside investment began transforming the industry. During the pandemic, for example, we pursued advances where others hesitated. 

The CLA Academy and engagement with non-CPA professionals reflect our dedication to evolving talent alongside industry needs. We continue to invest in workforce solutions to address the accounting shortage in addition to supporting initiatives like SkillsUSA to cultivate talent in sectors we operate in and deeply understand. By maintaining our independence, we ensure our investments align with our long-term vision while keeping jobs local and serving the heartbeat of the economy.

Independence also enhances the ability to invest in your people and your clients. At CLA, we seek out talent who embody the “ownership mindset,” who are looking to grow their careers alongside the firm. The career stability and longevity in the independent model has brought the industry to this day.  We believe it can and will continue.

Right now, in this environment, the partnership model that we believe in seems to be the different approach, whereas in the past, it was perhaps the only approach. Because of our independence, the flexibility it provides, and our willingness to invest in our future, we will be on the forefront of cutting-edge AI and digital technology solutions. It enhances our ability to invest in our people and in clients. At CLA, we firmly believe that our unique position within the market and our growth trajectory over the years validates such an approach.

Independence propels growth

The partnership model is particularly appealing for firms at a crossroads — those that are strong, profitable and successful, yet uncertain about their future in a labor-constrained, tech-driven environment. Over the past several years, firms like ours have grown not only organically, but also by joining forces with firms eager to leverage our extensive resources and industry expertise, benefiting from our unwavering commitment to independence.

Agility and responsiveness are key differentiators in our industry. They enable an organization to swiftly adapt to market changes and client needs. A commitment to innovation and resilience can provide a robust platform for growth, allowing partners to thrive within the partnership framework.

As we consider our growth options, not only are we bringing in new clients and expanding our services, but we are also inviting regional and national accounting and professional services firms to join our path forward. Because of our partnership model, CLA offers many of the same benefits as outside investment, while ensuring that decision-making remains at a local level, prioritizing the best interests of our clients, our people and the communities we serve.

Just as we advise clients, firms need to reflect on the optimal path forward. We like to think that while we’re independent, we have plenty of room to expand our partnership model. We are eager to share how that independence is a differentiator in the market, as we evolve our industry, elevate client service, and create uncommon but robust results.

As firms evaluate their strategic options, it’s imperative to recognize there are varied paths to achieving growth and innovation. Our independence allows us to make strategic investments that work toward long-term goals over short-term gains. Whether through AI and digital transformation, workforce development, or expanding our partnership model, we remain focused on delivering value to our clients and the communities in which they call home.

The accounting profession is experiencing a transformation, and firms across the industry must carefully evaluate their path forward. While outside investment has accelerated change, we believe our partnership is the only way forward for CLA. It fosters agility, innovation, and a true sense of ownership. By staying independent, we can continue shaping the future of our industry on our own terms.