Karen Nachbar

Jul 08, 2026

Print Share

What Every Financial Advisor Needs to Know About the Unauthorized Practice of Law

Estate planning is one of the most valuable conversations a financial advisor can have with a client. It also can be legally sensitive. When you invite a client to talk about their estate, you can open the door to a category of risk that advisors may want to focus on: the unauthorized practice of law, or UPL.

Many advisors who run into UPL issues simply don’t realize they’ve crossed a line — or they’re trying to help a client who doesn’t want to hear “talk to an attorney.” But the consequences, ranging from state bar referrals and FINRA or SEC enforcement to CFP board discipline and client liability, are real enough to take seriously.

Associate General Counsel Erica Ellis and I recently hosted a webinar for advisors on UPL – the full recording is available here.

What Is UPL?

The unauthorized practice of law is engaging in the practice of law without a license. The definition of “the practice of law” isn’t a bright line — it varies by state.

In general, UPL may include:

• Drafting legal documents or editing provisions within them
• Giving a legal opinion or recommendation tied to a specific person’s circumstances
• Interpreting legal documents as though you have the expertise of an attorney
• Recommending a client take a specific legal action
• Holding yourself out as someone with legal knowledge or authority

Sharing general educational information about estate planning concepts is not UPL. Applying that information to a specific client’s situation and telling them what to do may be.

The Risk for Advisors

Estate, trust, and tax planning all involve complex legal concepts, and questions in these areas can quickly turn into a request for legal advice. Your clients trust you, they want your opinion, and the questions they bring to you may be legal questions in disguise.

In a poll run during our UPL webinar, 79% of advisors reported that they have been  asked all of the following by clients: what documents the clients  need, whether the clients’ current documents address their needs, and whether the advisor can recommend an attorney. These questions come up constantly. Knowing how to respond appropriately is foundational.

How Advisors Can Minimize Their UPL Risk

Vanilla’s mission around UPL is educating advisors so they can determine for themselves what they are comfortable doing, so they can mitigate their risk in ways that make the most sense to them.  None of this means stepping back from estate planning conversations. It means understanding where your role ends and an attorney’s begins.

Educate and empower, don’t prescribe. It’s helpful to clients when you explain estate planning concepts like wills, trusts, and powers of attorney and give them reliable resources to consult. Use analogies, diagrams, and educational resources to help clients truly understand their estate plan. One key element in helping to avoid UPL is enabling the user to make their own decisions. Because of this, you may want to avoid steering them toward which solution they should choose. 

Highlight gaps, not solutions. Pointing out that a client has no estate plan, or that their documents haven’t been updated since a major life change, is appropriate. 

Let clients drive their own decisions. If you’re using estate planning software, the client should be navigating the questionnaire themselves. Your role is to provide context, offer educational resources, and be available for questions, but encourage your client to make decisions for themselves. 

Connect clients to attorneys when needed. Knowing when a client’s situation requires a licensed attorney — and being able to make that connection quickly — is part of what makes an advisor genuinely valuable. Some estate plans cannot be handled by software. Certain clients have complex legal needs and need an attorney to guide them and draft bespoke documents. It’s essential in those cases that you are collaborating with your clients’ attorneys and that you’re working with people you can trust.

The Vanilla Attorney Network, which can support clients of all wealth levels in all 50 states, makes it easy to connect clients to legal professionals who are excited about collaborating with and including the advisor in meetings —without putting you in the hot seat. The Will & Trust Center has 100+ trust and estate professionals who engage with advisors routinely and understand how to provide comprehensive team support to their clients.

Choose software purpose-built for helping to mitigate UPL risk.  Some of our competitors’ software tools easily permit advisors to make decisions and craft documents on behalf of clients, which makes me wonder whether those providers have considered UPL at all. Vanilla’s approach is vastly different: we avoid making overt recommendations to the user, enable the user to understand thorny legal concepts, and require that the client navigate the questionnaire themselves. Of course, the advisor can offer as much support as they are comfortable providing, but the client must make their own determinations within the software, which helps to protect the advisor from UPL.

Vanilla Document Builder Guardrails

UPL compliance wasn’t added to Vanilla after the fact. We thought about UPL as we were architecting the product.

In Vanilla Document Builder, clients complete the estate planning questionnaire themselves. They acknowledge at the start of the flow that neither Vanilla nor their financial advisor can provide legal advice. Advisors have visibility into the process but are not enabled to answer questions on a client’s behalf. 

When a client needs legal guidance beyond what the platform provides, the Vanilla Attorney Network is available for direct engagement to answer legal questions and provide bespoke documents meeting their needs. 

Watch the full webinar recording here. 

The information provided here does not constitute legal, financial, or tax advice. It is provided for general informational purposes only. This information may not be updated or reflect changes in law. Please consult with an estate attorney, financial advisor, or tax professional who can advise as to your particular situation.