The estate tax exemption amount has more than doubled since 2017. However, unless Congress takes further action, the exemption amount authorized by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) will revert to its previous levels at the end of 2025. As an estate planning attorney, you can help your clients by employing certain estate planning strategies over the next two years before the sunset of the higher exemption amount. Keep reading to learn how your clients may be affected and how you may be able to assist them.

From the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS’s) release of the 2024 lifetime exemption and annual gift exclusion amounts, to the Social Security Administration’s announcement of 2024 cost-of-living adjustments and a new final rule regarding the use of FinCEN identifiers under the Corporate Transparency Act, we have recently seen significant developments in estate planning, elder law, and business law. To ensure that you stay abreast of these legal changes, we have highlighted some noteworthy developments and analyzed how they may impact your estate planning, elder law, and business law practice.

More industries are increasingly using artificial intelligence (AI), and the legal field is no exception. News breaks regularly about new tools that utilize and incorporate AI technology. The outer limits of a machine’s ability to think and act on its own are unknown—AI creators have even expressed fears of its ultimate capabilities. 

The drawbacks of generative AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Google Bard, and Jasper for the legal industry in particular include their inability to consider all necessary information when crafting legal documents and their collection and storage of private data, which could breach client confidentiality. As we recently showed in a case study, AI solutions are also significantly limited in their abilities to accurately draft estate planning documents. 

Despite these drawbacks, AI tools may offer some solutions to help legal professionals streamline their processes. Keep reading to learn how AI can help improve your productivity.