Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast

Vibecoding Turns Legal Ideas Into Working Tools

• Charles Uniman

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You do not need a computer science degree to build something genuinely useful for legal work, but you do need a clear problem and the willingness to experiment. That’s why I invited Matt Pollins (Lupl, https://www.lupl.com/) and Alex Baker (Legal Tech Collective, https://www.legaltechcollective.com) to talk about vibe coding and what it means when software can be built with natural language instead of traditional programming.

We unpack the definition of vibecoding and why the term now covers a wide spectrum, from non-technical beginners to seasoned engineers who increasingly “manage” AI agents that generate most of the code. Then we bring it back to the real world of practicing lawyers: how prototyping helps you understand AI, APIs, and agents faster than reading hot takes online, and how small “micro apps” can eliminate repetitive grunt work, speed up delivery, and improve client service without replacing professional judgment.

We also go deep on Vibecode.law (https://vibecode.law/, the project Matt and Alex built to bring balance to a polarized conversation. You’ll hear what’s inside Vibe Academy, how the project showcase helps lawyers learn from each other, and why vibathons can be a practical way for law firms, universities, and even clients to build together. Along the way, we talk about legal tech workflow gaps, work management, security and rollout realities, and why legal education needs to catch up.

If you’re curious about legal tech, law firm innovation, AI tools for lawyers, or how to turn a nagging workflow problem into a working prototype, hit play, share this with a colleague, and leave a review so more builders can find the show.

Welcome And Guest Introductions

SPEAKER_00

Welcome everyone. This is your faithful podcast host, Charlie Uniman. Two super guests on the podcast today, Matt Pollins of uh Lupal and um uh uh Alex Baker, who is uh, as I've called it uh to him and Matt, their day jobs lupal for Matt and and for Alex uh Legal Tech Collective. But both are heavily involved in Vibcode.law, not vibecoding.law, as I have mistakenly put it to Matt and AlexVibecode.law. We're gonna spend most of the podcast talking about that. Uh I uh I think we'll not need much of an explainer to our listeners, but uh we'll get into some of the uh more important issues and what vibecode.law talks about. So welcome, gentlemen, both of you.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks, Charlie.

SPEAKER_00

Wonderful to have you.

Matt’s Path From Law To Lupal

SPEAKER_00

So let's begin by uh giving each of Matt and uh Alex an opportunity to talk about what they're doing currently uh when they do what they do to pay for their pay for their shoes. So, Matt, why don't you start by giving a little bit of your uh professional journey into uh legal tech and tell us about uh uh lupa, particularly what it does and and uh uh how it uh differentiates itself from others out there in your space. Go ahead, Matt.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Thanks, Charlie. So I'm a uh uh lawyer by background, so I'm a technology lawyer turned legal tech founder. Um I was a partner with a law firm called CMS, which is a large law firm in Europe, and I spent about half my career in Europe. The other half I was based out in Singapore, although strangely never crossed paths with Alex, who was also out in Singapore, as I'm sure he'll come on to in a minute. Um, and about five or six years ago, I really pivoted away from being an attorney into founding a legal tech company, which is Lupal. And Lupal is a work management system for lawyers. So we're a place where lawyers plan, organize, automate their work. And as you know, Charlie, um, in law firms, there are systems for organizing the documents and there are systems for organizing the time and the billing. But in the middle between those things is uh a space which is who's doing what and what needs to happen next on my deal or my case or my project. And typically today that space is filled with word tables, Excel trackers, and email threads. And whilst every other industry has a work management system, you know, you can't run an engineering team without Jira or Linear. In legal, we still have our Word and Excel trackers. And so we take work out of those things, we put it into a real-time system where it can be organized and automated. Um, so that's the day job. And then, as I'm sure we'll come on to, along with Alex and others, um, as a weekend project, which has started to become a bigger thing. We recently set up Vibecode.law, which is a platform for uh learning about and and sharing vibe coded projects. So that's me.

SPEAKER_00

That's very very good, Alex. Yes, please.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah,

Alex’s Commercial Lens On Legal Tech

SPEAKER_02

thanks, Matt. Uh so unlike Matt, I'm not a lawyer.

SPEAKER_00

Good for you.

SPEAKER_02

So my my background is in uh on the commercial side of the technology businesses. So I've been working with uh AI companies for about 15 years, and my my my first role at a technology company actually was for an advertising technology business. And I accidentally fell into the world of legal tech in about 2018 when a friend of mine was building a prototype for um a legal tech startup at the time and uh joined that business, it went on to be you know reasonably successful, and um I then uh throughout my journey with that business, like I just met a whole bunch of other legal tech founders along the way, primarily lawyers in my background, and um they were all looking to um commercialize uh the products that they'd created. So in the back end of 2023, I launched uh legal tech collective, which is helping uh lawyers that are legal tech founders, uh law firms that are productizing their services through the creation of technology applications that they're selling to clients, as well as more recently AI native uh law firms to take their products into the market and to commercialize them successfully. And uh Matt and I, as he mentioned, have more recently uh been working on myco uh.log and um I'm really interested in what what comes from those uh initially prototyped products and what commercial benches can will we may potentially see coming coming off the back of uh uh lawyers getting their hands wrapped around live coding applications.

SPEAKER_00

Very good. Uh well, if I may say each of you is doing God's work. Um I say that because as a former practicing lawyer, I only wish that I could have had some of the tooling that uh that Matt described. And uh as someone who, when I retired from the practice of law 11 years ago, tried my hand at starting uh what I have described on this podcast as the late lamented Deal Stage uh legal tech startup. Um I certainly could have used the advice that uh Legal Tech Collective is now offering. Didn't have it back then, my co-ferners, co-founders and I uh you know didn't lose too much uh time and money, but uh Dealstage didn't succeed, but others have taken up uh the banner to uh to provide uh transaction management software uh in the cloud. So uh kudos to both of you for doing what you're doing during daytime and in evenings and on weekends, and maybe increasingly now. Um uh more time uh is being devoted by both of you to to vibe coding uh something, a phrase that uh didn't exist a few years ago, um uh probably even more recently than just a few years ago, came into existence.

What Vibe Coding Really Means

SPEAKER_00

And pairing the the words vibe coding and law certainly didn't exist more than a few months ago, I would I would say. Um tell us um how would you define it, and maybe you uh could just each of you give us a few minutes uh so those who benighted few who don't know what it means can get up to speed and then we'll get into what's going on with it. Let's start with you, uh Matt.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, thanks. So um, in terms of how to define it, I think the term first got used by a guy called Andre Karpathy, who's one of the founding engineers at OpenAI. He's since moved on to other things. But um he used the term because he said there's a new type of software engineering where you don't actually write code and you don't necessarily read the code, you just give in to the vibes and you've built software with natural language. And I think you're right, Johnny said it maybe I don't know, a year and a half ago, some something like that. And at the time he he shared that he writes about 20% of his code with uh natural language. Since then, though, as of I think it was December last year, he and others have uh have shared that they're probably writing 80% or more of their code with natural language. And then the term itself is starting to get stretched because you have at the one end of the spectrum people who have never written a line of code in their life and wouldn't recognize Python if it came up and introduced itself to them. And they're building apps, you know, using some of these vibecoding tools. So they're obviously vibecoders, but then you also have companies like Spotify or even Clawed Code itself, which have shared that they haven't written a single line of code since December of last year. And so there's an open question, at least in my mind, as to whether those engineers who could write code, they used to write code, but they increasingly act more like managers of teams of agents, are those vibe coders as well? So it's sort of become quite a broad term that that means lots of different things.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And no, it's an umbrella term, and uh there's a wide spectrum, I I I gather, it uh in terms of what entitles one to call oneself a vibe coder. Uh lawyers love language, uh, vibe coding involves natural language, as Matt had mentioned. Uh, but how much more maybe necessary, and by more the sort of thinking and analysis, problem solving uh the that that may be called upon to maybe necessary to build apps. Um we'll get into some of that. Alex, you care to add a little bit to what Matt was saying, and then I did cut you off, Matt. I'll get back back to you too.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I I would I would just add uh yeah, I'm I'm firmly at the non-technical, non-developer end of the spectrum. I certainly wouldn't know Python if it slapped me in the face. Um there's it's no surprise the the big AI companies who have started with the uh coding and software development as the first area in which they have tried to um and successfully, in my opinion, uh apply AI. Because the faster that your developers can create and refine and expand your own internal software capabilities, it's an exponential um trajectory that you're then on because every improvement that you make to your foundational model then it makes it better at being able to create the next thing and refine the next thing. So um it it's it's really no surprise that that like I say, those those big AI companies have have focused on software development as their starting point. Um but the the I think the benefit at the other end of the spectrum, the the other end that I find myself in is that it's just so much easier now to get started, to get off the ground, to build something that it probably won't work when you first start exploring with these tools. But they are so capable that it enables anybody to be able to build at least a what looks like a prototype out of the box with some natural language. And you know, if anyone is is capable of that, all you have to have to really get started is is just an idea.

SPEAKER_00

No, I think that that uh puts it uh very well. Uh lawyers love language, uh the that's their stock and trade for the most part, whether uh uttered orally or in uh uh put in writing. Um so it's a natural segue, I think, to go from thinking out loud with words uh uh and then uh uh doing so uh with the idea of putting together an application of some sort. And the idea behind putting together an application is to hasten your ability to get productive work done and uh to work with the tooling, uh, not to be replaced by it, I uh hastened to add at the outset of our conversation, uh, and to um dispense with a lot of the grunt uh clerical type work that uh is the bane and was the bane for me as a practicing lawyer of so many lawyers' existences. Um Matt, were you did I cut you off or you uh when you were uh uh elaborating on what you thought vibe?

SPEAKER_01

Not really. I was I was just gonna almost build on what you were saying there about I actually think lawyers make really good vibe coders because we're very precise with language. And a lot of the time when you're building an app with vibe coding, you have to be really precise, you know, about what you're trying to build and the changes that you want it to make. And so I think lawyers lawyers and vibe coding actually go together quite well. It's maybe taken us a little longer than engineers to get into it. Um, but I think we're really now just at the start of what we see as being a wave of vibe coding coming to the legal industry and across all knowledge industries.

Real Benefits For Practicing Lawyers

SPEAKER_00

Uh well let's let's uh double-click on that uh uh last point. Um here we have practicing lawyers, men and women who have clients that expect output that they can use to get deals closed and litigations uh uh uh dealt with, hopefully settled, but taken to trial if uh need be or on appeal. Um these are the uh Janes and Joes that are in the transcripts practicing law. Uh so if they have the itch, or if they're encouraged by their firms, uh to see what this vibe coding is all about, before we get into how they can do it, what can they expect to see as the benefits for their day-to-day practice uh by either uh learning the vibe code themselves or after having started getting better at it or relying on others in the firm uh to vibe code and then making use of those uh uh uh skills from their uh sister and brethren. What what what impact does it have on the day-to-day lawyer? Matt, you want to start?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I'll I'll take that one. Yeah, so I I think the benefits are probably twofold of of vibe coding for lawyers. I think one is learning how the tools actually work. So it's one thing to read about um APIs and MCP and voice agents. Um, it's another thing to just roll up your sleeves and test them out. And I genuinely think that you will learn much more about how the underlying technology works by actually using it and building things with it. Whether or not you plan for those things to be launched across your firm or or with your clients, you're just gonna learn a lot. And at a time when things are moving so fast, you know, it feels like the world is spinning faster than ever. There's a new model announced every week or every two weeks from Anthropic or Google or OpenAI, and it's hard to keep up. I think the best way to do that is just to roll up your sleeves and give it a try. So that to me is is a key benefit. Um and it's it's so accessible. I was at a university recently doing a hackathon, and there are a group of law students there who had never seen a line of code in their life. Um, but over a period of a day, they use Vive coding to build an application, and it's exciting and it's fun, and it's a great way to learn. So I think that's one of the benefits. I think the other is yes, there's a lot of legal tech out there today. I work for a legal tech company, Alex represents a number of legal tech companies and works with them. Um, but there are also a lot of unsolved problems in in day-to-day working. And if you're a lawyer and you're working on a matter, you're often going to be closest to that particular problem, whatever it is, that area of frustration in your day. And the ability to just go build something. Now, we can have the conversation in a minute about how you go from just building a prototype to getting it rolled out across the firm and using it with confidential data, et cetera. There are some paths to that that are starting to form. As a way of getting ideas out of your head rather than writing a long email to your IT department, I think that's also a a benefit. So to me, those are probably the two big benefits.

SPEAKER_02

Go ahead. Yeah, I yeah, I would I I would expand on on that last point rather than and maybe from my own personal experience, you know, I started by coding just over a year ago. And really when I did when I first started, it was it was just about playing around to to to learn and to understand what what the art of the possible uh was more recently uh it's actually started to transform the work that I've been doing by being able to decodify and productize my expertise and experience into applications. Now these aren't publicly facing applications, but um one of the most recent projects that I've been working on is an audit module for my business that allows me to be able to audit a legal tech venture's kind of market capability. So we look at everything from what their cap table looks like, what their financials have been, and what they're projecting, what their messaging is, what their pitch text says, does that correlate to what's on the website, and so on and so forth. And it allows me to be able to deliver a work product that previously would have taken weeks to create in a matter of days. And it doesn't remove me from the process, but it means that I can provide a better service to my clients and ultimately build, in my opinion, a better business. One that nobody that hasn't applied this sort of thinking is able to replicate other than adding immense amounts of human headcount. So I think you know, the the work that I do is um slightly more opaque and less structured than um, you know, if you're thinking about a marketing campaign, for example, that's that's less codifiable, more of that case, than doing a piece of legal work that is built on top of the foundations of of legislation, which yes is inter is open to interpretation, but there's still a structure around it. So I think um getting started and having that learning experience is is is is great, but actually the world is your royster once you once you get to grips with some of these tools and and what they could enable you to be able to do in terms of replicating your own capabilities and providing a better service to your client as a lawyer.

SPEAKER_00

Well, that the both of you, that's that's a very, very rich description of some of the benefits um features that are available if you if you uh do more than just dip your toe into vibe coding. I I I I hadn't quite thought of it the way that uh Matt had, but I think Matt is right. Um these uh legal tech tools are going to uh uh encroach on more and more of a lawyer's uh day-to-day work. And if you if you do try your hand at vibe coding, you're gonna have a better appreciation for how the bigger infrastructure, firm-wide tools made by third-party vendors work. You're gonna be more adept at using them, you're gonna be more adept at seeing where their holes are, uh, just because you have played around with these vibe coding tools, learned the lingo a bit, and gotten a sense of uh of how uh the thought process works when you're when you're using these uh more firm-wide tools, uh, all better handled, all better used uh if you've if you've uh uh gotten into vibe coding and you can transfer those skills to your your day-to-day work with these applications from the big legal tech boys. And and to Alex's point, and I myself running a small business of my own, and uh, you know, lawyers, even a big firm, sort of running their own small businesses, their practice groups within the firm, you can actually make tooling that you're not gonna put on the iPhone App Store or or uh the uh the Android uh uh uh uh store as you know, Google Play. But instead you're gonna use in your business, and you're the best judge of what part of your business needs that, once you've built them, tested them, and find that you can make yourself a happier practicing lawyer because you can eliminate some of the grunt work, you can do things with in a much more compressed time frame than you otherwise could, and you don't have to spend tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars in in headcount to get it done. So um uh, you know, listeners out there who haven't tried to do listen to what we have to say, it really, it really can have a marked and in and and and uh beneficial impact on what you do, on what you do in your in your day own day job data. Today, as a practicing lawyer, or as Alex pointed, even if you're outside the law but interested in uh in legal tech in whatever small business you have. Um so so I hope we've given people an an incentive, uh uh whether their appetites for getting into vibe coding.

Why Vibecode.law Exists

SPEAKER_00

What is what is vibecode.law doing? Let's let's focus on the law part of it. Uh what is vibecode.law doing to contribute to this uh uh nascent uh and I hope uh more than just nascent soon, burgeoning uh idea of taking people who are not technical as the term is used, and allowing them to get into coding and and building some sort of tool. And what does vibe law do? Either of you, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, shall I start, Alex, and you you can chip in. So um we we founded vibe.code.law. It's actually a weekend project, as you alluded to at the start, Charlie. Um, and Alex and I and and the other founder, Chris Bridges, we're all based in the southeast of the UK and know each other just socially through that. And we founded it really because we felt like the conversation on vibe coding had become a little bit polarized. Between, on the one hand, we had people saying, look, I can vibe code a uh an $8 billion company over a weekend um and all software is dead, and everybody would just build tools when they need them. And then at the other end of the spectrum, you had people kind of looking down on vibe coding and saying, Oh, what a waste of time. It's just a hobby project, you can't build anything real with it. And we felt like the reality was somewhere between those two things. And so we just wanted to bring a little bit of balance to the conversation. So that was kind of the reason for building it. Um the other reason is that I just have a bad habit of buying domain names and I just the vibecode.org was available. So we just thought let's build something useful. Um and then in terms of how we're contributing, um, it's basically right right now we we effectively have two key components to the platform. We have something called Vibe Academy, which is an online learning system where people can learn to build apps. And we're trying to cater for both those who have never built a thing. So even if you've never built anything and you've been following the stuff on your LinkedIn feed and you're thinking, well, I'd love to have a go, but it all feels a little bit out of reach. There's a course on there that will teach you how to build your first app in three minutes. So we're trying to kind of cater to that end of the market, but then also the community is sort of growing with us. And we have some more advanced builders who have maybe been building for six, twelve, eighteen months, and they're interested in things like Git and the full software development lifecycle and security and authentication and some of those things, which um you know you don't do in a three-minute video, they might take a little bit longer. So that's the Vibe Academy piece. Um, and then I don't know, Alex, do you want to talk a little bit about the showcase part of the platform?

Vibe Academy And Project Showcase

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, absolutely. So once you've once you've started on this journey, um I think I could speak for both Matt and I here. There's really no going back. Um, it is an incredibly addictive pastime. And and what we wanted to provide for with the showcase is the ability for those of us that have been experimenting to come and showcase their work, to inspire others and to allow everybody to learn from one another about again what the art of the possible is using this technology. So um, anyone that comes and submits a project onto the platform, um, it will be showcased on the platform, but also the wider community can upvote the projects uh um appeal to them, and it will start in the not too distant future. Um prizes at the end of each month for uh whichever project happens to be uh the winner from from that particular in that particular um time frame. So there's there's lots going on on the platform already, I think. Um since we launched six weeks ago, something like that, there's already been um more than 50 projects submitted.

SPEAKER_00

Wow.

SPEAKER_02

Um so things are really starting to get going with this. And um actually it's it's been growing a lot faster than I think um any of us could have anticipated.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I want to see, I I was thinking national, nay, nay, uh international movement. Um I I want to see both of you uh grow this. So it's a worldwide effort that um really uh uh takes off. And and my suggestion here, and I'm speaking somewhat tongue-in-cheek, you have to have merchandise. You have to have t-shirts, you have to have uh baseball caps, you have to have uh uh you know fleece uh vests and hoodies with uh vibecode.law and uh you know clever phrases like uh keep calm and vibecode on uh uh uh available for sale. I I'll be the first to purchase the first t-shirt and hat. I'm a big collector of those, just as Matt collects uh domain names. I collect uh branded uh merchandise. Uh so uh when that uh gets launched, uh the merch, as they call it, let me know. I'll uh I'll I'll write a check. It's it's only in internet.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I was gonna say that we'll have to vibe vibe up the uh e-commerce part of the vibecode.law this weekend.

SPEAKER_00

That's right. Exactly. You know, I uh I want that soft uh baseball cap that I can I can wear proudly and have people ask me what vibecode.law uh means. But um, you know, in all in all seriousness, uh I I want to emphasize again, uh you're not if you're doing this uh for your small business, but more importantly with the law focus here for work in in your daily practice, you know, it's the distinction between building a full-blown uh app uh that's uh sold commercially and and doing a little scripting. Uh uh, you know, a small piece of code that once embodied in something that can be viewed on a screen and clicked around about can actually do uh work. And and um and and I I'm thrilled to hear that you have uh so many participants already contributing uh you know applications that they've put together themselves, most of whom I would assume are not uh computer science undergrad majors and and uh decades worth of experience in coding. The Vibe Academy, is that part of the Vibecode.law site? Is that a separate site? How do people get Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_01

It's you know it's part of the same platform. So um if you go to vibecode.law and then you just click on the learn tab, it will take you into the the Vibe Academy. And there are two courses on there right now. One is unfortunately me, so more of my voice, um, showing the build build your first app in three minutes. And then the other is from our co-founder Chris, who's a uh software engineer, turned lawyer, turned software engineer and app combined. Um and he covers some of the more advanced aspects. Um so we've got a couple of courses on there right now, would welcome feedback as well, actually, from listeners on what would be useful. Um, it remains very much a weekend project for us at the moment. So we just add new courses as and when we can. Um, but we're very much open to ideas. And actually, just Charlie, a quickly on your point about international, one of the really cool things has just been seeing these apps come in from other countries. I think, Alex, within a week we had the first app, a week after launch, we had an app submitted from Mongolia, right? The Harvey of Mongolia. Right. And I just love the internet and LinkedIn sometimes that you can launch something on a weekend in Sussex in the southeast of England, and you know, a week later you've got a um an AI application for lawyers in Mongolia live on the platform. So we welcome projects from all over the world. Um, and we'll get to work on that swag, Charlie, as well.

SPEAKER_00

Please, yeah, I love swag. Um the only thing I was gonna add to what you said there, sorry to cut you off,

Collaboration With Clients And Vendors

SPEAKER_00

Charlie.

SPEAKER_02

But the the only thing I was gonna add to what you said there, that is around this uh overused term of collaboration, right? But it's great to see people coming together from around the world. But one of the benefits that I I don't think we really envisaged before we launched this is starting to see lawyers and uh their clients working together on projects and the potential for that, um, as well as lawyers and legal tech companies, as you were talking to earlier, Charlie, is being able to have that conversation with a vendor that you pay a reasonable number of dollars every year to use their service. Often um we've heard from lawyers that you know part of the legal tech um vendor's offering is is is is a bit like you know this is where coding allows someone to be able to not just have a conversation with a vendor about what they might like to see in their uh applications being capable of, but actually show them what they wanted to do. So there's all of these um potential benefits that I don't think we really see properly materialized yet. But it's gonna be really exciting to see that start to develop and take hold and we're already having a couple of conversations with law firms that are interested in running their own um what we would call inadverted commas vibathons. Um yeah, getting lawyers together to build internally within the firm and equally to start bringing in clients to build with them.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, bringing in clients, uh a wonderful, uh uh a wonderful marketing uh aspect to that for the law firm. And I I I must add here that you know, having practiced uh in big law, uh I know that uh those firms can afford, they have budgets for innovation lawyers and all sorts of technical people that can uh themselves do a wonderful job. Uh hate to use the word, but it does serve a purpose, interfacing with legal technology companies. But uh in the UK and the US, uh let alone around the world, there are small to medium-sized law firms that don't have that kind of staff. And to Alex's point just made, uh those lawyers could benefit, I believe, I think that Alex would agree and Matt too, uh, uh, from learning a bit uh of what vibe coding could teach them so that when they, in the small to medium-sized practices that they run, let alone solo practices, uh, can uh have that intelligent conversation with a legal tech vendor about uh what it is they want to try to have built, what features they're looking for, and whether the tech in question can provide those features. And also not to second guess, but to be more analytically critical of what the legal tech vendor has to offer.

Law Schools And Earlier Tech Education

SPEAKER_00

Um the other uh point I feel compelled to make is let's not forget the law schools. Uh uh they have in the U.S., uh with which I'm more familiar been slow, but the speed is picking up. Uh the acceleration is happening to uh bring legal tech into their curricula. Uh I know they hold themselves out as uh often above that uh uh plumbing aspect of the law, but let's get real friends and understand that it's uh increasingly part of the practice. So if uh you're teaching at Harvard, uh don't think that you're uh lowering your standards by bringing technology uh into uh into the curriculum, and I pick on Harvard. Uh but there are others like that. Uh but I think if if whether it's you two or others in the vibe coding space that are working hard, they ought to make law firms, uh, I'm sorry, law schools much more aware of this aspect of of uh what legal tech can can be in the law school curricula. So I I hope we can see uh law professors and law school deans and law students jump onto vibecode.law and uh and contribute.

SPEAKER_01

I couldn't agree more, Charlie, on that. I um I actually almost think you could start even earlier uh in education. Like my son is only seven, and he spent the last six months um at school in his IT classes learning how to log in. Right. And I'm gonna start a conversation with the school about okay, in 15 years, I don't think we're all gonna need to log in. I suspect it'll be biometrics or something, so let's not spend six months learning to log in. Let's to Alex's point, let's have a mini vibathon and build a game or something that actually inspires people to get into building things from a younger, younger age. So I'm I'm totally with you on that, and I would almost start even earlier.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, I couldn't, I couldn't agree more. Um I am violently in agreement with that because I I do think that uh software is is not only eating the world, it it it's um AI and uh uh eating software. And and let's face it, uh, and I think you two gentlemen from just getting your vibes, there'll always be a room, always be room, or at least for the next 15, 20 years, uh, for taste and judgment, those two war horses of uh humanity's continuing contribution uh beyond what uh software can provide. But uh while I I bow to judgment and taste and think that uh we humans still remain somewhat special, um the earlier we can get people, whether it's in grade school uh or uh or college, undergrad, or law school, uh better understanding what coding and technology, IT technology is all about, the better. It's gonna make for a richer world, a richer life. Uh, and uh you'll still be called upon to exercise the judgment and taste that uh uh today's LLMs are nowhere near uh achieving, in my humble opinion.

Roadmap Vibathons Partners And Swag

SPEAKER_00

Um what uh what's on your roadmap uh for vibecode.law, if you care to say. If you don't, if you want to if you want to avoid that and keep it proprietary, by all means tell me and and uh we can move on. But uh curious, what do you have any uh special things you're willing to talk about that may be coming on down uh uh down the road uh and that will be uh uh added to the vibecode.law roster of features.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so the main thing is swag. We need we need a we need a swag. Of course, of course, of course. But but I mean actually you you'd be surprised how much of our WhatsApp conversation is actually about swag. Um but putting that to one side, the Vibe Academy will be adding more more classes to it. Um and then, you know, Alex, maybe you can speak to this, but we are looking to do more of these vibe thons. There's a big industry event coming up over the summer in in the UK, and um we're we're looking at partnering with them to to launch probably the biggest legal viber fund that there's ever been. Um so we're we're working a little bit towards that, which is funny in a way, because that's actually in person. Um so it's not all it's not all online. Um but those are probably the the the two main things. I mean, right now we're very much bootstrapped, we're not it's not a commercial venture, we're not funded by anything. Um so we may look to bring in partners at some point just to cover platform costs and and swag and some of those other things. Um but yeah, those are probably the main things. I don't know, Alex, if there's anything you would add.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I think prominently for for me, it's it's about us getting the message out there, more um helping more people, exposing more people to this technology and what what they're able to do with it. Um so that that takes a number of different um channels, if you like. One is as Matt mentioned, the the the ViBathon that we're gonna be running publicly this summer. But um, given we're an open source platform, um we're also enabling anyone that wants to run their own vibe to be able to take the platform and and go and run mini vibe thons in whatever part of the world um that you operate. So we're talking to a couple of universities here in the UK that want uh want to use the platform and assets to be able to deliver them. There's a couple of legal technology associations that we're talking to too that again want to run their own Vivathons. So for us, it's just about trying to get the word out there and getting people out of the learning curve and exposing them to what is possible. And I just want to go back to something that you were saying, Charlie, earlier, about judgment and taste. Again, one of the things that I found here, and I don't want to labor this point too much, but one of the things that I found in in being able to develop my own applications for my own use is that I can apply my judgment and taste. So I'm sure we've all been the in the position of using fun technology for that, whether or not that's in your working life or your personal life. I just wish we could do this. And I'm not suggesting for a moment that everyone's gonna go out there and rebuild all of the different various applications that you might happen to use in your in your um in your life. But I've I've I've had a great um experience of building a handful of things that are now completely tailored to my personal taste. And I think in the world of like legal, in the wider legal community, if we if we think about all lawyers using the same technology around the world, I think that's how you're gonna start to eliminate preference. So being able to start uh develop your own micro apps, your own micro tools to be able to differentiate. Um they're not gonna be a replacement uh for some of the enterprise platforms that you're going to need, nor would it be uh um a good user for one time to go and try and rebuild um outlook it, for example. Uh I certainly I certainly found that to be really powerful in in terms of being able to tailor something for for how I want to use it and how I want it to integrate with the other systems and technology that that I use on a daily basis.

SPEAKER_00

Quite right. Very much very much uh very much correct. And I I've played around with that and I've uh uh just found that it has uh the coding, the little bit of uh coding that I've been able to do, uh vibe coding using uh you know Claude uh code or Claude co-work uh has has just enabled me to compress time uh uh when it comes to getting uh tasks done and eliminate, as I've said several times before, some of the uh routine repetitive grunt work that uh uh you have to have done in running a small business, but that you don't enjoy doing. Um we could go on and on. Uh perhaps we'll have a another go at it.

How To Connect And Closing Thoughts

SPEAKER_00

Um but if people want to reach each of you, whether it's for Legal Tech Collective, Loopal, uh, and of course Fib Coding, how do they get in touch with you, Matt Start and Alex uh next?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, probably LinkedIn is the easiest way to connect with me. Um so just reach out to me on LinkedIn. Um, also in the spirit of buying domain names that I don't need, my blog is at agents.law. Uh so you can um follow me there and I have a podcast and and and stuff on that platform.

SPEAKER_00

Wonderful.

SPEAKER_01

Alex?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so same for me. LinkedIn is probably the easiest place to find me. Um but if you do want to get in touch and have a look at what we do, our website's legaltechcollector.com.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I've taken a look at the site. Uh if you are at all interested in uh you know in getting advice uh as a nascent uh uh newbie or even more later stage legal tech company, uh do give a look. And and likewise loopal that uh that that uh bridge between the two areas of uh you know running a firm and practicing law, that uh Matt Helms is uh a vital uh looksy uh for practicing lawyers. Um gentlemen, thank you so much uh for for joining me. Uh it's been a uh great pleasure learning a bit, uh learning a lot. And as I say to so many of my guests uh here, when you're in the New York City area on the other side of the pond, do let me know. 30 minutes outside the city. Happy to hop in and and uh hoist uh hoist a beer at uh New York's uh many versions of of Pubs. And uh and uh look forward to a uh Viberthon in in NYC, either under your auspices or because someone has gone to vibeco.law already here and decided to uh to launch one with your help. So thanks again. It's been a great pleasure.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks so much, Charlie, and we'll hand deliver some swag to you when we see you.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you. Thank you. Take care of that. Thanks, Charlie.

SPEAKER_02

Thanks for having us on. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00

Bye-bye. Thank you for listening to the Legal Tech Startup Focus Podcast. If you're interested in legal tech startups and enjoyed this podcast, please consider joining the free Legal Tech Startup Focus community by going to www.legaltechstartufocus.com and signing up. Again, thanks.