How Hilltop Wealth Advisors is Deepening Attorney Collaboration With Luminary

Hilltop Wealth Advisors is a North Carolina-based wealth management firm of approximately 20 employees, over half of them advisors. For more than a decade, Hilltop has built its practice around a seasonal planning model, with a mid-year season set aside specifically for estate plan reviews. That review has always been a core part of how the firm serves clients — and, until this year, it was also one of the most manual and time-intensive.

The Gap Between Client Reviews and Attorney Input

For more than ten years, Hilltop’s advisors set aside time each summer to read through each client’s estate documents by hand—wills, trusts, powers of attorney—and write a plain-language summary of who held each fiduciary role and what would happen to the client’s assets. “It was extremely tedious and time consuming,” said Chris Hostetler, an advisor at Hilltop. Junior team members and interns helped draft the summaries, but the work still required senior oversight.

Those reviews formed the basis for client meetings. Advisors would discuss the documents with clients, flag provisions that might need attention, and then follow up with the independent estate attorneys that clients work with. Regular conversations with those attorneys helped the team stay current on changes in the law, but attorney input generally came after the first client discussion. In the meantime, advisors had to interpret legal documents they had not drafted.

As Hilltop looked to scale the practice and serve clients with more complex needs, the limits of that process became clearer. Manual reviews took significant time, and the firm wanted attorney collaboration earlier. Hilltop needed a faster, more coordinated approach—one that led it to Luminary.

Why Luminary: Making Attorney Review Seamless

Hilltop evaluated a handful of estate planning platforms before choosing Luminary. The AI-driven document summaries mattered — they took the “grunt work” of reading and summarizing estate documents off advisors’ plates for the first time. But the deciding factor was Luminary’s Collaborators feature, which let Hilltop give estate attorneys direct, permissioned access to a client’s plan inside the same platform its advisors would use.

“What we really liked about Luminary was that it allowed us to put our clients’ estate attorneys front and center in the client’s planning conversation,” Hostetler said. “Luminary could do the grunt work. We could do a review to make sure we trusted the information. Then we could send the summary over to those attorneys with a quick update on what’s going on in the client’s life.”

That shifted where Hilltop’s expertise needed to sit. Advisors could focus on what they know best — the client’s life and goals — while the attorney weighed in on the legal document they had actually drafted. “The only thing we’re having to be the expert on now is our clients, because we’re the ones who talk with them most often,” Hostetler said.

Putting Collaborators to Work at Scale

For Hilltop, Luminary’s document summaries are the starting point. The firm uses Estate360 and Collaborators together to give estate attorneys a direct role in reviewing client plans. Once a client has authorized the sharing of information, the attorney can see the same executive summary and supporting pages the advisors use, review the plan on their own time, and add notes before discussing it with the team.

Hilltop extends that approach across its key attorney relationships. It groups the clients it shares with each attorney and prepares their plans in Luminary ahead of a joint review. The summaries help advisors move through the document work more quickly, while Collaborators gives attorneys room to apply their legal expertise directly. Their input then carries into Hilltop’s upcoming client meetings.

“It’s all about batching, and about getting Luminary to do the work that we had people doing much more slowly before,” Hostetler said. As Vik Prasad, Luminary’s Head of Customer Success, put it: “Bringing your top attorneys that you work with into the fold as part of the workflow, rather than as observers, is exactly why we built the collaborators functionality.”

The Impact

A More Coordinated Client Experience

Hilltop says clients value seeing their advisors and attorneys work together. “Many of our clients have just been very thankful that we are including their estate attorneys,” Hostetler said. “We’ve heard that from clients and prospects alike, that one of the things they really value is having a consolidated team…so they don’t have to be trying to translate between professionals.”

Earlier attorney input also gives clients a clearer reason to follow up on a recommendation. “This took it from an after-the-meeting kind of conversation to a before-the-meeting conversation,” Hostetler said. “We’re able to come to the client saying, your attorney has reviewed this and thinks you need to look at this.”

Stronger Collaboration with Clients’ Estate Attorneys

The shared review process gives the clients’ attorneys a direct role before the client meeting. “They just appreciated being brought into the process,” Hostetler said. With the client’s permission, attorneys can review the same materials as Hilltop’s advisors, add their perspective, and discuss potential next steps with the team.

For Hostetler, that collaboration makes each professional’s role clearer to the client. Advisors bring their knowledge of the client’s life and goals; attorneys bring their legal expertise. As those relationships deepen, attorneys may also be more likely to recommend Hilltop to other clients who need an advisor.

As Hostetler put it, the process helps establish that “we are all part of the same team here, we’re working together, and this is a combined and mutual conversation for your benefit.”

Better-Informed Client Meetings

Bringing attorneys in before client meetings gives Hilltop’s advisors specific questions to discuss with clients. During one review season, an attorney flagged a new North Carolina option for attorney-certified electronic storage of a signed will. Hilltop could then suggest that clients discuss the option with their own attorney.

In another review, an attorney raised a question about whether a power-of-appointment provision in a client’s trust still reflected that client’s priorities, given its creditor-protection and potential tax-basis implications. Because the attorney raised it ahead of the client meeting, Hilltop’s advisor could enter the conversation with a more precise question and connect the client with counsel for the legal analysis and any next steps.

More Reviews, Less Prep Time

Estate review preparation that once took 45 minutes to an hour per client now takes roughly 20 minutes, according to Hilltop's estimates. Luminary’s Estate360 and document summaries give advisors a starting point they can check and build on, freeing up time to focus on questions that need advisor judgment or attorney input.

That time savings helped Hilltop update reviews for nearly all of its planning relationships in a single season. The firm delivered close to 300 reviews: some through its attorney-reviewed batches, and others through a simplified review proactively emailed to clients.

Advice for Firms Considering the Same Approach

“Don’t miss the opportunity to actually include the estate attorneys,” Hostetler said. His advice is to use Luminary for more than producing a summary for the client: give authorized attorneys access through Collaborators so they can review plans and contribute before the client meeting. Hilltop found that its clients’ attorneys welcomed the invitation. “They are eager to help, probably more than you think, and they’re glad to be consulted on these matters and included in the process, rather than after the fact.”

Hilltop’s first season also offered three practical lessons:

1. Bring Attorneys Into the Review With Permissioned Access. Hilltop checks its information-sharing forms to make sure each client has authorized the specific attorney. Once permission is in place, the firm can grant Collaborator access and send the client a reminder that includes the attorney.

2. Turn Summaries Into Collaborative Estate Reviews. Hilltop used Luminary’s Estate360 and document summaries to review documents, trusts, and fiduciary roles, then brought attorneys into those reviews through Collaborators.

3. Scale Reviews Without Losing Consistency. Two team members became Hilltop’s Luminary leads. They used its summaries to prepare most client reviews and checked the information before sharing it, helping the firm keep the work consistent as it reached more clients.

Our estate attorneys have enjoyed being able to be a part of this process … and it puts us in a better position to be prepared for meetings. Luminary makes it easy for attorneys to contribute while keeping their time commitment manageable.

— Chris Hostetler, Hilltop Wealth Advisors

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