For estate planning firms
Estate planning intake, captured at the right time
MatterReady splits estate planning intake into two phases — light triage before the consult, full asset detail after engagement. Clients aren't asked to dig up account numbers to get scheduled, and your paralegals don't inherit a half-finished spreadsheet after the engagement letter is signed.
Phased intake
Two phases, one pipeline
Most estate planning intake tools collect everything upfront. That kills pre-consult conversion (clients abandon long forms) and produces shallow data anyway, because clients fill in account numbers from memory. MatterReady collects each phase when the client is ready for it.
Pre-consult — light triage
Family structure, asset types, ballpark net worth, fiduciary nominees, and planning goals. Enough to triage the matter and prepare for the consult — not enough to make the client open a filing cabinet.
- Spouse, children, dependents, prior marriages
- Asset-type checklist + net-worth band
- Executor, trustee, guardian nominees
- Healthcare directive preferences
- Existing documents (yes/no per type)
Post-engagement — full inventory
Once the client signs an engagement letter, your team unlocks the Detailed Assets step from the intake page. The client gets a magic-link email to fill in the deep detail — values, account numbers, beneficiary designations — when they actually have the documents in hand.
- Per-asset rows with description, owner, value
- Account numbers, custodians, contact info
- Beneficiary designations per asset
- Distribution instructions and charitable provisions
- Audit trail of every edit, with timestamps
Firms that prefer the full inventory upfront can switch the pack to pre-consult mode.
Asset Sheet
Excel asset sheet, the format paraplanners already know
Every intake with structured assets has an Export Asset Sheet button on the admin page. The output is a per-category XLSX inventory — real estate, bank accounts, investment accounts, life insurance, business interests, retirement, and personal property — with type-appropriate columns and a Net total row per category.
- Layout your paraplanner can read at a glance
- Type-appropriate columns: description, owner, value, account number, beneficiaries
- Per-category Net totals; category subtotals at a glance
- Generated on demand from the live intake — always reflects the latest edits
- Suitable for attaching to a will package or handing to outside counsel
The asset sheet is a deliverable, not a substitute for attorney review. Final beneficiary designations and distribution structures stay with your team.
Planning Scope
Core, Enhanced, or Comprehensive — classified automatically
Every estate planning intake gets a Planning Scope label derived from the answers — visible on the lead detail, the intake PDF, and feeding prep effort estimates and routing rules.
Triggers
- Blended family or stepchildren
- Special needs beneficiaries
- Business interests requiring valuation
- Asset-protection or creditor concerns
- Disinheritance or contested family relationships
- International or non-US-citizen beneficiaries
- Charitable provisions or staged distributions
What the label changes
- Prep-effort estimates that match the matter shape
- Routing to attorneys with the right expertise
- Replacement for the legacy “Simple/Complex” line on intake PDFs
- Triage signal on the lead list
Planning Scope is informational. Your attorneys make every determination.
Why generic intake forms fail for estate planning
Estate planning is structurally different from most legal intake. The data shape is hierarchical (people, then assets, then beneficiaries, then designations). The depth varies by phase (light pre-consult, full post-engagement). And the deliverable most paraplanners want — a per-category asset inventory — is neither a generic web form nor a free-text document.
Generic form builders flatten that into a single long questionnaire that clients abandon midway. MatterReady ships with an estate planning intake pack built for the data shape, with three preset profiles (Basic, With Trust, Elder Law), tunable section visibility, and the firm-initiated unlock model for sensitive financial detail.
Integrations
Connected to the tools EP firms run on
Clio Manage and Clio Grow
Qualified matters sync to Clio Manage with contacts, custom fields, documents, and notes already in place. No retyping between intake and matter open.
NetDocuments
Intake documents and signed engagement letters sync directly to the matter in NetDocuments. Asset sheets attach as a single XLSX. Folder structure follows your firm's convention.
Designed to work with WealthCounsel
The asset sheet and structured intake summary are formatted to paste cleanly into WealthCounsel today, with direct integration on the roadmap. Firms running WealthCounsel can use MatterReady upstream without disrupting their drafting workflow.
Built for firms that run more than estate planning
If your firm only does estate planning, a focused tool like DecisionVault may be the right shape for you, and MatterReady can still sit upstream as the qualification layer. If your firm runs EP plus family law, business formation, probate, or guardianship — you probably don't want a separate intake tool for each. MatterReady covers all nine practice areas with intake packs that adapt to each matter type.
Get started
Book a 30-minute walkthrough — we'll cover the EP pack, show the phased intake flow, and walk through a real asset sheet export.