Dear Legal Software Developer, How Do I Loathe Thee? Let Me Count the Ways...

You say you build software “for lawyers.” That’s cute.

If you actually practiced law, or spent more than five minutes inside a functioning law firm, you’d know that most of what you’re building is clunky, confusing, and completely detached from the reality of legal work. It’s like you read about law practice once in a tech blog and just ran with it.

This isn’t a new tale. A company decides it’s going to revolutionize the legal industry. It raises a bunch of money, hires a dev team, and starts coding with great enthusiasm and zero context. But somehow, no one ever stops to talk to the people who are actually going to use the product.

And when the launch flops? When adoption is nonexistent and feedback is brutal? You blame the lawyers for being “slow to embrace innovation.” Please. We’re not slow. We’re busy. Your undercooked software doesn’t help.

Built Without Us, Broken From the Start

Too many legal tech products are built in a vacuum. Maybe you interviewed one managing partner at a BigLaw firm and thought you had the full picture. Maybe your roommate from college is a 2L and gave you some “insight.” But you didn’t sit next to a solo drowning in intake. You didn’t observe a paralegal wrestling with court deadlines and unresponsive clients. You didn’t ask a working lawyer what’s really broken in their day.

So instead of solving real problems, you built a tool that works beautifully in a perfectly optimized hypothetical firm. Not a real one. By the time your beta testers start flagging issues, you’ve already blown through the budget because you spent everything on development and left nothing for implementation, support, or feedback. But sure, go ahead and post another feature announcement like everything’s fine.

The Lawyer Isn’t the Problem (For Once)

Mark this day on the calendar! I’m not blaming lawyers for once. Lawyers are not universally afraid of technology. We are afraid of wasting time on software that promised to save us time and somehow made things worse.

We’re not anti-innovation. We’re just allergic to tools that force us to click more, do more, or repeat steps that already happen somewhere else. If your software makes us jump through more hoops, we are not impressed. We are annoyed.

Also, if your product only works for a 50-attorney firm with three full-time IT staff and a dedicated admin to manage your system, it doesn’t work. Stop pretending it does.

While I’m Ranting, Please Stop Asking Us to Work for Free

Let’s talk about your marketing and development “strategy.” For reasons that remain unclear, you expect lawyers to help build and promote your product for free.

You want us to beta test your half-baked tool. You want us to post about it on LinkedIn. You want us to co-host your webinars, record glowing testimonials, let you slap our logos on your homepage, and provide hours of “feedback” that’s really just unpaid consulting.

In exchange, we get… “visibility.” Or a 10 percent discount. Or the honor of being labeled an “early adopter,” which does not pay our bills or reduce our malpractice premiums.

Even worse, some of you pretend that we should do this out of a sense of professional duty. As if we owe you our time because you decided to build something “for the legal community.” No. If you want lawyers to help design, test, or promote your software, hire us as the professionals we are. We’re not your marketing department, your QA team, or your interns.

One More Wild Idea

Bring lawyers into the process before you launch. Not once. Not for a quote to throw on your website. Build the product with us. There are a lot of us who are very innovative, have great ideas, and know what we are doing when it comes to the legal marketplace.

Sit down with solos. Watch how a two-person firm manages intake, scheduling, billing, and court appearances. Learn the difference between a high-volume eviction defense shop and a boutique estate planning firm. Figure out what “streamlined” means in practice, not in your pitch deck.

While you’re at it, set aside a budget for onboarding and actual support. No one wants to learn your system through a 60-minute demo followed by a support ticket black hole. If your software needs a user guide longer than a bar exam outline, it’s not ready.

TL;DR

If your product doesn’t work for real-world lawyers, we won’t use it.

If you built it without us, it probably doesn’t work.

If you want us to help make it better, respect our time and pay us for our expertise.

We’re not the problem. Your process is.