Luke D. DeFio of Albany Law School secured first place for his paper, "The Witness That Wasn't: Electronic Wills, Generative AI, and the Coming Collapse of Probate Authentication." DeFio receives a full-tuition scholarship to the Heckerling Graduate Program in Estate Planning at the University of Miami, along with a $5,000 cash award. His work, alongside the other winning papers, is slated for consideration in the ACTEC Law Journal.
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ACTEC Foundation Names Winners of 2026 Student Writing Competition
The ACTEC Foundation has announced the winners of its 2026 Mary Moers Wenig Student Writing Competition, an annual contest that drew a record 33 submissions from law schools across the country. The winning entries highlight emerging legal intersections between estate planning, artificial intelligence, and evolving genetic privacy rights.
Cassandra Nelson of New York University School of Law took second place, while Chloe Clements of Howard University School of Law and Heather Goss of Louisiana State University Paul M. Hebert Law Center shared third-place honors. The competition, overseen by the Legal Education Committee of The American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, aims to foster scholarly work in trusts and estates. According to T. Randolph Harris, who coordinated the judging process, the entries reflect the increasing complexity of the field as students grapple with digital assets and technological shifts in probate law.
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