Why should lawyers learn to code?

Why should lawyers learn to code?

The name of this blog is a spoiler – I am a lawyer who loves to code. It brought many benefits to me personally, including increased creativity, more efficiency in practicing law, and new opportunities to do stuff differently.

Therefore, it is no surprise that I think that all lawyers should learn to code.

Below you will find nine (9) reasons why lawyers should learn to code, from better contracts to just generally doing a good thing for your brain.

1. Your Logical Reasoning will get a boost

When I first started, coding reminded me what I used to love about law in the first place – solving problems. The process that goes somewhat like the following in both law and code:

1. Find a target – legal question or a coding project
2. Look at the challenge
3. Identify your resources
4. Tackle a larger problem in smaller chunks
5. Reflect/exclude these bits one by one
6. Solution

Coding is just absolutely fantastic practice of this. It also gave me a new tool in interpreting law – functions are like sections of a statute, so writing a Section in pseudocode helps navigate those huge paragraphs!

My neurons also happened to enjoy the extra attention.

2. You will write clearer contracts

A good programmer spends a lot of time polishing their code to make it as succinct and readable as possible. Making the program do something is one challenge, however, making sure that someone else can read it is a whole another story.

The same applies to law – your drafting can be top notch, but if the business unit has no idea what is expected of them, you failed. As a coding lawyer, you will add new tool to help you meet these demands.

3. There are many opportunities for coding lawyers

The investment in legal tech has soared in the past couple years and legal tech roles are popping up all the time. There are so many new job titles and opportunities, from legal technologists to tech-empowered legal project managers.

Additionally, everyone is worried that AI will replace lawyers. Tackle fear with skill! You can become irreplaceable by being able to grasp what the impact of AI actually is and reap the benefits. Who knows, you may even end up pivoting to tech altogether!

4. You’ll understand world better

Understanding the building blocks of all the algorithms and tech that govern our lives is essential. Coding opens all the black boxes around us, until you realise, how things stack on top of one another. It helps to understand bias better, too.

Similarly, this applies to legal tech. It is a lot easier to create a really good automated contract, if you understand how your automation software works. You may not be the one to do the dirty work – but as a coding lawyer, you can offer better instructions and be an equal partner to your innovation unit.

5. You’ll be empowered by code

Be it a legal tech app or a little passion project, I love being able to build things myself and try concepts without having to make it a big team project.

For example, as a project manager, I often quickly build small automated templates for little things on my matters. These save time of my team, without having to waste all these savings on instructing someone else. I can also make tiny changes without having to constantly ask for help.

6. Multidisciplinarity is your best friend

From sushi dogs to legal design, I love a good fusion. It is a known fact that you can often solve a problem by borrowing from another discipline.

In working with data or understanding how to train an AI model, having a different pair of glasses is an added value that can enhance the way you problem solve.

7. Your legal proofreading skill will level up

We all know that one colleague, who looks at a 100+ pages agreement and spots that one missing full stop at the end of one of the sentences. Coding is great practice of this dark art.

The process of debugging (= going through your code to figure out why it doesn’t work) is oddly similar to the process of proofing a contract:

1. Go through all the definitions, if everything lines up
2. Take a look at the substantive clauses – did you tie all ends
3. Check formalities and add all missing semicolons

8. You can start cheap and easy

Learning to code can be pretty cheap. I have been coding for two years, digging deep in iOS apps (Swift) and Python (probably the most popular programming language). But my total investment so far is approximately USD 26 (for two discounted Udemy courses by Angela Yu on python and Swift), USD 46 if you count my I took CS50 t-shirt.

Learning to code was one of my best decisions – but in case it wasn’t, USD 26 would be very well worth the experiment.

Additionally, when it comes to barriers to entry, I feel like the only barrier to entry is my own self (sketching and Netflix included).

9. You’ll discover more about the way you learn

Finally, learning something new as an adult is a gift. Take a hard look on how you best absorb information, tweak the way you learn, track yourself, and get some best practices out of it.

Knowing how do I learn best has saved me when learning for a bar exam. It’s been a while since I left law school and fell out of the memorization purgatory. Thanks to getting to know my brain a little better, studying for the bar exam was a breeze.

Final Provisions

No matter what your motivation is (and we will talk a lot more about motivation here), coding can be beneficial for any lawyer for a whole lot of reasons.

Where to start? Here are my tips on How to start coding as a lawyer!

What do you think?

Should all lawyers code?