Ed. note: This article first appeared in ILTA’s Peer-to-Peer Magazine.
AI is already reshaping how lawyers deliver legal services. Now it is beginning to transform how law firms build the very tools that power their businesses. AI-powered coding platforms — tools like Anthropic’s Claude Code, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot — have lowered the barrier to custom software development so dramatically that non-developers inside law firms are building functional applications, automating workflows, and creating data dashboards without engaging IT or outside vendors. This phenomenon, colloquially known as “vibe coding,” represents a meaningful inflection point in law firm operations—and its implications for big law are only beginning to come into focus.
The movement gained momentum in late 2025 when Jamie Tso, a senior associate at Clifford Chance, began openly sharing sophisticated legal AI tools he had built on his own — tools that replicated functionality offered by major legal tech vendors, but customized precisely to his firm’s workflows. In a January 2026 interview with Artificial Lawyer, Tso described how his journey began when the firm enabled no-code automation tools through their Microsoft subscription.
Within weeks, platforms like vibecode.law emerged to showcase vibe-coded legal tools. CaseMark launched its Thurgood platform to help turn prototypes into production-grade software, and conversations at legal tech conferences shifted from skeptical dismissal to spirited debate about whether this represented the future of legal software development.
Vibe coding represents a structural shift in how law firms build technology — one that will reshape procurement models, redefine operational roles, and create competitive advantages for firms that balance rapid citizen development with appropriate governance. There is both transformative potential and significant risks in democratizing software development within law firm businesses, from legal operations and knowledge management to client-facing legal services delivery.
The Emergence of the Citizen Developer
The term “vibe coding” was coined by Andrej Karpathy, co-founder of OpenAI, in early 2025 to describe “fully giving in to the vibes” when working with AI coding tools — describing what you want rather than how to build it, and trusting the AI to handle the implementation details. As Tso explained in his Substack article “The Era of ‘Vibe Coding’: How to get started,” this approach represents a fundamental shift from traditional programming.
Tso’s journey illustrates the trajectory. In his interview with Artificial Lawyer, he described the turning point. “The firm, through its Microsoft subscription, enabled no-code automation tools like Copilot Studio and Power Automate, so associates could build AI-enabled workflows. I got obsessed and started building not just for myself but for colleagues. Pretty quickly, partners and associates from different offices started sending automation requests every other day. Some of the document-processing tools I built ended up going viral internally and were ultimately adopted by the firm.”
This is vibe coding in action: the practice of building software applications through conversational interaction with AI assistants. Unlike low-code platforms that constrain users to predefined templates, AI-powered development tools generate actual code that can be customized and integrated into existing systems. As a result, domain experts can translate their deep understanding of legal workflows directly into functioning software without the traditional bottlenecks of vendor evaluation cycles or IT resource allocation.
Transforming Core Functions
Legal Operations, Knowledge Management, and Business Development
Legal operations teams have emerged as early adopters. According to a January 2026 Bloomberg Law article on in-house legal teams, Patricija “Patty” Corey, legal operations manager at cybersecurity company HUMAN, articulated the shift. “The teams that stand out will use AI, vibe coding, and light tech skills to build and iterate on real solutions quickly, without waiting on outside help.”
Real-world examples abound. As documented on the Debevoise Data Blog in September 2025, lawyers at Debevoise & Plimpton used vibe coding to create an AI policy training game — a fully functional web application built entirely through natural language prompts. According to Nonbillable, at Linklaters, associate James Phoenix built an AI time recording tool as a side project that is now deployed firmwide. The applications range from billing analytics dashboards and matter budgeting tools to conflict check enhancements that layer firm-specific business rules on top of existing systems.
Knowledge management professionals are building precedent recommendation engines that understand practice-specific context, document assembly tools that pull from firm-specific clause libraries, and research briefing systems that aggregate information across internal knowledge bases. When KM professionals who deeply understand their users’ needs can build and refine tools based on immediate feedback, usage rates climb, and the tools become embedded in daily workflows rather than remaining shelfware.
Business development teams are discovering that vibe coding opens possibilities beyond CRM configuration. Client analytics, pipeline tracking, and relationship mapping all rely on data that exists across multiple systems — a perfect use case for custom integration tools that can be built in days rather than months.
Justin Picciano, former Vice President of Sales and Customer Success at Introhive, points out how the rise of this capability impacts firm efforts around client intelligence. “The CRM is now just one of many data sources law firms can use to leverage information about their client relationships. AI-powered coding capabilities enable firms to rapidly integrate, distill, and distribute customized client intelligence across multiple contexts — billing, engagement history, matter intake, experience management, marketing, and communications. This creates a powerful capability to detect client health signals and unlock hidden opportunities for growth.”
Legal Services Delivery: Practice-Specific Tools for Client Work
Associates and partners are building AI-assisted tools tailored to their specific practice areas. In M&A practices, associates build custom contract analysis tools that focus on the dozen clauses that actually matter for their deals — change of control provisions, carve-out mechanics, specific indemnification structures — rather than generic platforms that flag hundreds of issues. Litigation teams develop case-specific document processing workflows. Due diligence has proven particularly amenable: real estate groups build tools that extract and normalize key lease provisions; employment lawyers create compliance audit tools that check employee handbooks against jurisdiction-specific requirements.
The common thread here is that these are not general-purpose tools trying to serve all lawyers. They are precision instruments built by lawyers who understand exactly what their practice group needs. When firms’ M&A teams build tools that encode their analytical approach and domain expertise, those tools become proprietary competitive assets. Client pitches increasingly include demonstrations of custom technology capabilities.
The Shadow IT Problem: Governance in the Age of “Everybody Builds”
The same characteristics that make vibe coding powerful — speed, accessibility, customization — also introduce significant risks. According to a 2025 global study by BCG cited in Law Practice Magazine, 54% of employees would use an AI tool that is not authorized by their employer, and Microsoft’s 2024 Work Trend Index found that 78% of knowledge workers are “bringing their own” AI tools. Clio’s 2025 Legal Trends Report found that while 79% of legal professionals use AI tools, 44% of law firms still lack formal AI governance policies.
The data governance implications are particularly acute in law firms where client confidentiality and conflicts management are foundational obligations. When a non-technical professional builds an application using AI assistance, who ensures data handling meets security standards? What happens when an application built by a departing employee becomes critical to operations, but no one knows how it works or whether it is compliant?
Code Maintainability and Technical Debt
Beyond security, firms face the challenge of maintaining AI-generated code. When applications are built through conversational interaction rather than traditional software engineering, the resulting code often lacks documentation, testing, and architectural clarity that makes software maintainable over time.
Chris Bridges, co-founder of Tacit Legal and one of the creators of vibecode.law, addressed this directly in Artificial Lawyer. “We’re realistic about what vibe-coding can achieve. Projects built by non-developers through AI-assisted coding aren’t production-ready out of the box. But that’s not the point. Vibe-coding is a catalyst for change: it lets domain experts demonstrate ideas rather than just describe them, validate concepts before investing in full development, and communicate precisely what they need through working prototypes.”
Scott Kveton, CEO of CaseMark, launched the Thurgood platform specifically to address this gap. In a January 2026 LawSites interview, Kveton explained, “You built something useful. We’ll help you get it into the hands of the people who need it. Not every attorney will build their own apps. But the ones who do shouldn’t have to become infrastructure experts to share them.”
Workforce Implications When Everyone Can Build
The ability to build software is shifting from a specialized technical skill to a general professional capability. Legal operations roles increasingly list “experience with Python, SQL, or similar” as preferred qualifications. Business development analysts who can build their own dashboards command higher salaries. Knowledge management professionals who can code their own tools are getting promoted into director roles.
The shift creates new career trajectories. Legal operations professionals are moving into roles that look more like product management — defining problems, prototyping solutions, iterating rapidly. Several Am Law 100 firms have created new roles called “technical translators,” “innovation engineers,” or “legal technologists” — hybrid positions that sit between IT and business functions.
But the transition creates genuine displacement concerns. Roles centered on vendor relationship management, commercial software configuration, and translating requirements into technical specifications face an uncertain future. When legal ops teams can build directly, business analyst roles that historically bridged business and IT become less critical.
For law students and young lawyers, the message is clear: technical fluency is becoming table stakes. Law schools are adding legal technology courses and coding bootcamps, recognizing that tomorrow’s lawyers will need to be comfortable directing AI assistants to build tools. The lawyer who can identify a workflow problem, prototype a solution, and iterate based on feedback is developing a skillset that will differentiate them throughout their career.
The transition is uneven across firms. Some are aggressively embracing the shift, reorganizing departments and creating new career paths around technical capability. Others view vibe coding as a niche skill. But the competitive dynamics are evident where firms that successfully integrate these capabilities will attract professionals who want to build, not just coordinate.
The Strategic Implications of Build, Buy, or Hybrid?
The rise of vibe coding is forcing law firms to reconsider the build versus buy decision. For decades, the answer has been overwhelmingly “buy” — law firms are not software companies, the reasoning went, and should focus on legal services delivery, while leaving software development to specialized vendors.
The debate intensified in early 2026. In a March 2026 Artificial Lawyer analysis titled “Vibe Coding Lawyers and the New Economics of Legal Tech,” commentators argued that vibe coding lawyers represent “a real threat to legal tech SaaS,” noting that “it’s worth asking an uncomfortable question: who says today’s legal tech founders are more qualified to build legal software than senior lawyers inside top firms?” A January 2026 article in The Red Line by Version Story noted that “vibe-coding lawyers were undeniably the main topic of conversation” at industry events, with debate about whether it is “fundamentally limited — insecure and unreliable” or “a genuine shift in how legal software gets built.”
AI-powered development tools fundamentally change this calculus. When building custom software no longer requires dedicated development teams or long timelines, firms can now build for specific, high-value use cases while continuing to buy for broad capabilities. Firms embracing internal build capability are reorganizing around new roles and team structures, adding “platform teams” focused on enabling business users to build safely. Some firms are creating entirely new departments (“Legal Solutions” or “Innovation Labs”) that combine technical capability with legal domain expertise.
A Path Forward for Thoughtful Enablement, Not Prohibition
The firms navigating this transition most successfully are neither embracing vibe coding uncritically nor attempting to prohibit it. Instead, they are developing frameworks that enable productive citizen development while managing risks.
By 2026, this has become urgent. As Jenny Hamilton, Chief Legal Officer at Exterro, observed in a January 2026 Corporate Compliance Insights article, “The legal profession faces a new category of risk that is accelerating faster than previous technology-mediated legal obligations: the use of AI for legal work. As a result, in 2026, general counsels will begin to engage more deeply with their legal tech strategy, invigorate the legal ops function with greater authority, and push their professionals to use purpose-built legal AI.”
According to a January 2026 article by the North Carolina Bar Association, “By 2025, the legal industry has moved past the question of if artificial intelligence will be used, to how it must be governed.” The solution? “Instead of a blockade, firms need a guardrails policy that empowers lawyers to use technology safely while strictly adhering to ethical and legal obligations.”
These frameworks typically include clear guidelines about what types of applications are appropriate for citizen development versus those requiring:
• Formal IT involvement
• Lightweight security review processes
• Training on basic security principles
• Code repositories and documentation standards
• Regular dialogue between IT leadership and business functions
Ryan Cimino, Head of GenAI Operations at Herbert Smith Freehills, captured the imperative in a firm publication. “By 2026, robust AI governance and mandatory upskilling will be non-negotiable for legal teams. Clients and regulators will demand transparency and accountability in AI-assisted outputs. Firms that combine robust guardrails with deep AI literacy and sophisticated selection of AI solutions will earn client trust and regulatory confidence.”
The Inflection Point
Law firms stand at an inflection point. AI-powered development tools have made software building accessible to professionals across the organization, creating unprecedented opportunities to customize, automate, and innovate. The firms that thoughtfully embrace this capability — enabling productive citizen development while managing data security, code maintainability, and workforce implications — will gain significant advantages in operational efficiency, client service, and talent attraction.
Bernadette Bulacan, chief evangelist at Ironclad, predicted in Bloomberg Law, “After decades of sheepishly holding the title of ‘Most Tech-Averse Department,’ in 2026 corporate counsel will surprise the enterprise with a full reputation rebrand as the company’s boldest tech adopters. They’ll leave those 2025 pilots behind and lead full-blown AI rollouts.”
But the path forward requires more than simply distributing AI coding tools. It requires new governance frameworks that balance enablement with appropriate control, honest conversations about workforce implications and role evolution, and investment in training and architectural guidance to ensure that today’s helpful prototypes do not become tomorrow’s unmaintainable liabilities.
The era of vibe coding in big law has arrived. The question now is not whether law firms will build custom software — many already are — but whether they will do so in ways that capture the extraordinary value while managing the very real risks. Those that answer this question thoughtfully will find themselves positioned to compete and innovate in ways that were simply impossible just a few years ago.
The revolution is here. The only question is how firms will navigate it.
Paul Giedraitis is Founder and CEO of Orgaimi, the world’s most powerful client intelligence platform for law firms. He is an artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning solutions expert, as well as a technology entrepreneur who has co-founded several successful startup ventures. Paul’s career experience spans industries including legal technology, capital markets, algorithmic trading, regulatory compliance, and FinTech. He has served as a board member and advisor to multiple startup companies and has appeared as a featured speaker at numerous industry events on the topics of AI and client intelligence in the legal industry.
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