Practice → Build

A new model for what a legal career can become.

For generations, the legal profession offered a remarkably clear answer to the question of what someone with a legal education should do:

Practice law.

Two expressions of legal expertise

Become a lawyer. Join a firm, government agency, company, or organization. Apply legal knowledge to legal problems.

That model remains important. But it is no longer complete.

Technology has created another path.

Legal professionals are increasingly building the infrastructure through which law operates.

I describe this transition as:

Practice → Build.

The distinction is not between "real lawyers" and people who left law. It is between two increasingly complementary expressions of legal expertise.

The practitioner applies law inside the existing system.

The builder changes the system itself.

Some people will spend their careers primarily practicing.

Some will primarily build.

Many will move between the two.

The legal profession of the future will need both.

And for people entering law today, the important question may no longer be only: "How do I want to practice law?"

It may also be: "What do I want to build?"

This idea sits at the center of much of my work on legal technology, careers, and the future of law.