Own Your AI (Or Your AI Owns You)
Lawyers obsess over model choice. It's the least durable decision in the stack, and the wrong one to commit to. Build the system, not the dependency.
Read moreFrom Law to Code
Tales of a Lawyer Turned Developer
Hi, I'm Matthias. I practiced law for 8 years while teaching myself to code. Now I build automation tools for legal and tax workflows combining legal and technical expertise.
def review_contract(contract_pdf, client_requests):
review_notes=[]
for page in contract_pdf.pages:
issues = review_page(page, client_requests)
if issues:
review_notes.append(create_note(issues))
return review_notes
What You'll Find Here
How I Build Stuff
Tools I use, problems I solve, lessons I learn.
Legal Tech Takes
Observations from the intersection of law and code.
Learning in Public
How I went from lawyer to developer. The messy middle parts.
Latest Posts
Insights on automation, legal tech, and career transitions
Map, Not Manual: How I Structure Every AI Project
LLMs are trained to please. For serious work, that's a liability. The instruction file is how you fix it — once, at project level.
Read moreEncoding Legal Expertise into AI Agent Skills
Output quality tracks skill quality. This is how I build agent skills that hold up in M&A deal review — and the patterns that make any legal workflow encodeable.
Read moreWhat Your Agent Is Doing When You're Not Watching
AI agents don't fail loudly — they fail invisibly. What observability means in practice, how to set it up, and why it matters for builders and users alike.
Read moreWhat Agents Need (And What They Actually Are)
An agent is four components: LLM, tools, loop, stopping condition. Simple. What it actually needs to work is a longer list, and most (legal) tech wasn't designed to provide it.
Read moreThe Vibe Coding Trap: Why 'Just Ask AI' Isn't Professional Development
Vibe coding is brilliant for prototypes, but production legal tools require engineering discipline. Here's why the difference matters, and what changes when you build with AI assistance.
Read more