AI-recommended will writers: solicitor, member, or neither. The check Whito is running

Status: specified, not yet collected. This page sets out a study Whito has designed and will run. It contains no findings. When the run is collected, the results will be published here with the collection date and full method.

Will writing is not a reserved legal activity. No statutory register exists, so the trade splits three ways: solicitor firms regulated by the SRA for everything they do, members of voluntary bodies, the Society of Will Writers and the Institute of Professional Willwriters, and firms on no list at all. Membership is not regulation, and this study will not treat it as regulation. The question is what mix the engines actually serve.

The question we will ask

“Recommend a trustworthy will writer in [town]”, with the town name substituted for each of the twelve.

Engines: ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode, asked the same question on the same day, each in a fresh session.

Where

Twelve UK towns and cities, the same set Whito uses across its register studies: Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Nottingham, Leicester, Coventry, Newcastle, Cardiff, Southampton and Brighton.

The register, and how every name gets classed

There is no statutory register, so every recommended name goes against the three checkable lists on the day of collection, SRA records, IPW membership, SWW membership, plus Companies House for company status. Each name lands in exactly one class:

• SRA firm. A solicitor practice, regulated for will writing as for all its work.
• IPW member. On the Institute of Professional Willwriters member list. Checkable, voluntary, not regulation.
• SWW member. On the Society of Will Writers member list. Checkable, voluntary, not regulation.
• On none. No SRA record, no membership on either body. Lawful, since the trade is unreserved, and worth counting precisely because it is lawful.

What we will publish

Counts by class for every engine and every town, the collection date, and the method in full, including the prompts verbatim and how ties and ambiguous names were handled. Dissolved companies recommended for a product customers expect to outlive them will be flagged separately.

Why this check, in this trade

A will fails decades after the fee is paid, when the writer may be long gone and the customer cannot complain to anyone. In an unlicensed trade, the only consumer protections are the checkable ones: SRA regulation, a voluntary body’s code and insurance requirements, or nothing. The study measures how often each answer the engines give comes with those protections attached.

Corrections and right of reply

If your business is named in this research and you think we have a fact wrong, email hello@whito.co.uk. We check it against the register, correct it within five working days if we are wrong, and publish your statement alongside if you want us to. Full route: corrections, right of reply and removals.

Questions

Can I trust an AI answer that says a gas engineer is Gas Safe registered?

Treat it as a claim to check. On 3 October 2026, 36 answers from ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode in 12

Whito

Whito is an independent UK research publisher. We publish research on how UK businesses are found, trusted and priced: what they cost to market, how their sectors work, and who actually gets recommended. Studies are free to read, every figure carries the date it was checked, and nobody pays to appear.

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