As a lawyer who codes (though I don’t currently work as either a lawyer or a coder) I thought this article does a great job of explaining where coding fits into law. At least in my experience, coding is a “legal-adjacent” skill: coding is neither necessary nor sufficient for good lawyering. But there are deep conceptual similarities between coding and lawyering, and knowing how to do one job well can certainly make some parts of the other job easier.
For example: redrafting a contract is a lot like refactoring code. (Make sure that terms are only defined in one place; consider and account for edge cases; be aware of how changes in one area affect dependencies elsewhere, etc.).
If, like me, you’re allergic to repetitive, time-consuming tasks, coding is a way to potentially make your lawyering job go faster. I know lawyers who’ve used a combination of Python scripts and Zapier steps to fully automate client intake, for example.
HOWEVER! I’m pretty confident that coding will never become a core legal competency. Coding and lawyering are different roles, with different outputs, serving different stakeholders. Instead what’s more likely to happen is that coding will gradually eliminate a whole swath of tasks that we once assumed only lawyers could do — until we realized that those tasks were just algorithms in disguise, and therefore automate-able.
Like most other knowledge workers, lawyers are going to be responsible for managing — and applying wisdom and discernment — to the outputs that algorithms/software generates. And that’s a good thing! It’ll mean that lawyers are doing more of what they do best.
An interesting idea. In my experience it’s investors, not founders, who are often the source of complexity in startup agreements. I’ve found that angel investors or investors without a huge amount of experience with common practice in the YC/SV world struggle with concepts like SAFEs and convertible notes — even if they’re otherwise sophisticated investors. And those types of investors are often the only ones ready to bet money on very early stage startups.
All that’s to say: don’t neglect the educational aspect of what you’re selling. Make it easy for founders to explain how your documents works, and make it easy for investors to trust the documents you’ve prepared.
For example: redrafting a contract is a lot like refactoring code. (Make sure that terms are only defined in one place; consider and account for edge cases; be aware of how changes in one area affect dependencies elsewhere, etc.).
If, like me, you’re allergic to repetitive, time-consuming tasks, coding is a way to potentially make your lawyering job go faster. I know lawyers who’ve used a combination of Python scripts and Zapier steps to fully automate client intake, for example.
HOWEVER! I’m pretty confident that coding will never become a core legal competency. Coding and lawyering are different roles, with different outputs, serving different stakeholders. Instead what’s more likely to happen is that coding will gradually eliminate a whole swath of tasks that we once assumed only lawyers could do — until we realized that those tasks were just algorithms in disguise, and therefore automate-able.
Like most other knowledge workers, lawyers are going to be responsible for managing — and applying wisdom and discernment — to the outputs that algorithms/software generates. And that’s a good thing! It’ll mean that lawyers are doing more of what they do best.