Estate planning documents and how lawyers are hired and paid to draft them, with Texas specifics
The State Bar of Texas certifies specialists in estate planning and probate law through its specialization board, which requires documented experience, peer references, and an exam. Asking whether the drafting attorney holds it is a fair and ordinary question.
There is a real difference between a lawyer reading your facts before a draft is generated and reading the draft afterward. In the second case, the structure of the document was chosen by the software, not by anyone who spoke with you.
Texas courts expect the original signed will, and a missing original can raise a presumption that the testator revoked it. Overcoming that presumption means evidence, a hearing, and legal fees nobody planned for.
A couple in their sixties sat down for a ninety-minute consultation at a firm advertising a fixed price for a married couple's estate plan, and the intake sheet in front of them had checkboxes: house, retirement accounts, life insurance, children from a prior marriage. The husband had bought the house in 1994, eleven years before the marriage, and had refinanced it twice with money from a joint account. Nobody asked about that. The checkbox said house, and the question after it said who gets it. The answer they gave, and the answer the software would accept, were two very different documents once one of them died.
The question is worth asking directly, in those words, and the answer arrives faster than most people expect. Some firms will say the attorney drafts from a marked-up prior document; some will say a paralegal generates a draft from the intake sheet and the attorney reviews it before signing; a few will not answer cleanly at all, which is itself an answer. There is nothing wrong with software, and almost every competent estate planning practice uses an assembly system of some kind. What matters is whether a lawyer read your facts before the system produced the draft, or only afterward, when the shape of the document has already been decided.
Texas has a formal specialty certification in estate planning and probate law administered through the state bar's specialization board, and it requires substantial experience in the field, peer review, and a written examination. A lawyer without it can be excellent. A lawyer with it has been checked by people who do this work. Ask whether the person drafting holds that certification, and if not, ask what share of the firm's work is estate planning and probate rather than family law or real estate closings taken alongside it. A general practice that writes forty wills a year is a different proposition from one that writes four.
This one separates careful offices from casual ones. Texas probate courts want the original, not a copy, and a will that cannot be produced in original form invites a presumption that the testator destroyed it, which the family then has to overcome with evidence at a hearing they did not budget for. Ask whether the firm keeps originals in a fire-rated vault, whether it sends them home with you, and whether it will tell you about depositing the original with the county clerk for safekeeping, which the Estates Code permits for a modest fee. Ask also how your executor finds the document later. A firm with a written answer to that has thought about the whole arc.
Estate plans go stale on predictable events: a marriage, a divorce, a house sold, a child's divorce, a business interest bought out. Ask whether a codicil or a restated will is included for some period, priced at a flat rate, or billed hourly at the same rate as new work. Ask specifically about the house, because in Texas the character of the homestead as community or separate property, the surviving spouse's right of occupancy, and any reimbursement claim between the estates all move when the property does. A firm that quotes an update fee without flinching has priced the relationship rather than the transaction.
Ask the drafting lawyer to walk through what happens when the will is offered for probate, and listen for whether independent administration is being built in deliberately, with a self-proving affidavit attached at signing and a waiver of bond in the instrument. Independent administration is the reason Texas probate is cheaper than its reputation, and it exists only if the will grants it or all beneficiaries agree. Ask whether the firm handles probate itself, whether an uncontested independent administration is flat-priced or hourly, and how a muniment of title proceeding would be billed if no debts other than a mortgage remain. Ask who obtains the estate's employer identification number from the Internal Revenue Service, which oversees estate and fiduciary income tax filing, and whether that is included.
The couple with the 1994 house went to a second consultation and led with the refinances. The lawyer stopped the intake, drew a timeline of the separate property and the community funds paid into it, and said the will would need a reimbursement provision and a clear recital of character. That answer cost more than the checkbox package and settled a question their family would otherwise have argued about.
The Texas Estates Code allows a will to be deposited with the county clerk for safekeeping for a small fee. Not every firm mentions it, and it is worth asking about alongside the firm's own vault.
A self-proving affidavit signed with the will and notarized lets the will be admitted without calling the witnesses to testify later. Its absence adds steps and cost at the probate hearing.
Independent administration is what keeps Texas probate comparatively inexpensive, and it applies only if the will grants it or all beneficiaries consent. The grant belongs in the drafting stage, not the probate stage.