Why Julia Kosinski Joined a Trust & Estate Software Company

Julia, you went to the University of Miami School of Law, practiced at firms, and were an attorney and trust officer at the Dalio’s family office. Why join Luminary, a software company?

I’ve had the opportunity to work in a sophisticated family office environment as well as in both large and small law firms. Across those experiences, I noticed a common theme: the tools available to manage complex planning felt outdated and inefficient. The processes were time-consuming and clunky.

When I came across Luminary, I got really excited because I instantly thought;

This would’ve helped me so much in my practice.

It would’ve freed up a lot of time, and most importantly, made me a more effective advisor. As the quarterback for planning, your role is to ensure that best practices are being followed. Luminary ups the ante for what that looks like.

Can you tell me more about how Luminary is solving those problems?

Luminary sits at the intersection of planning documents and financial assets. The users — whether they are family offices, financial advisors at a wealth management firm, or attorneys at a law firm — have a digital data record and holistic view of a client's estate plan and their wealth. Luminary houses all of a client’s documents, summarizes them, pulls information from integrated sources into a balance sheet, and provides you with client- or prospect-ready presentation materials.

And because you aren't relying on Excel, PowerPoint, Numbercruncher, ecetera, you can play with different strategies and hypotheticals in a dynamic way in the waterfall. You can quickly jump to making strategic plans. It’s simply amazing.

We have to talk about AI. The company was founded in 2022 — that wasn’t in response to the launch of ChatGPT, right? But have the advancements and broader accessibility of AI improved Luminary’s tools?

Luminary’s founding coincided with the release of ChatGPT and the acceleration of AI, but it wasn’t a reaction to it. [Luminary CEO] David Barnard's vision was taking shape long before that, inspired by his experience as head of private wealth at AllianceBernstein. He saw firsthand how fragmented information, disjointed workflows, and a lack of shared infrastructure created drag in an otherwise high-value, deeply human advisory service.

AI advancements have supercharged our software. Luminary was among the first companies in the space to thoughtfully integrate AI with a human-in-the-loop design. Our technology augments, rather than replaces, the expertise of legal, tax, and wealth advisors.

And we never train on client data. We learn from customer feedback and continually improve how our tools surface insights, reduce administrative friction, and make complex planning easier to understand and execute.

What’s something Luminary does that surprises users the most?

People are very impressed with how accurate and in-depth our AI summaries are. I was a born skeptic, and when I first tried it, I figured it wouldn’t pull out all the information that I needed. But I was impressed with the level of nuance it was able to understand about provisions and subtrusts. And this is something we hear every day from users. It’s a lot of fun to see their reactions.

The other thing that surprises users is how advanced our waterfall feature is. Everyone sees it and assumes it can run the calculations, but are especially impressed with how easy it is to input all the different hypothetical scenarios. We make it really easy and quick to choose from a dropdown the strategy, your beneficiaries, how much you want to fund it with, and see in real-time the impact these changes have on an estate. The ease of use is something we’re focused on and proud of.

How can people learn more about Luminary?

I’m doing a short live presentation and answering questions next week (Wednesday, June 17 at 9 a.m. PT/12 p.m. ET). If you can't make it, you should still sign up — we'll send you a recording!

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This interview was originally published by Modus News, an independent news website for family-office professionals. Founded in November 2024 by Michael Thrasher, it publishes a free weekly newsletter with exclusive reporting every Friday, short and long-form articles, opinion essays and more.

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