Contracts & automation
Some, learnableTurning contracting from bespoke drafting into something repeatable, with playbooks behind it.
Commercial counsel · Contract manager · Legal solutions consultant
The field
Working title, copy pending
One umbrella, many fields.
Legal innovation is not one thing. Privacy, AI regulation, access to justice, contracts, courts, legal design, and the work of making a legal department run well are all part of it. Here are some examples, grouped in three families. The tag on each one tells you how much code it takes, and for most the answer is none.
Each tag says how much code that field really takes. Click one to filter.
6fields need no code at all
5need some, and it is learnable here
1needs real software work
Three families
Technology for law
Tools that do legal work, and roughly a third of the field.
E-discovery & litigation technology
Some, learnableFinding the relevant thing inside millions of documents, defensibly.
E-discovery counsel · Litigation support manager · Discovery attorney
Knowledge & practice innovation
Some, learnableCapturing what a firm knows so the next person does not start from nothing.
Knowledge management attorney · Practice innovation counsel
Building the tools
Yes, real codeSomeone writes the software. At Suffolk, often students who learned it here.
Legal engineer · Solutions architect · Software developer
Law of technology
Doctrine, with technology as the subject.
Privacy & data protection
No codeWhat organizations may collect and keep, and what happens when they get it wrong.
Privacy counsel · Data protection officer · Privacy analyst
AI governance & regulation
No codeHow automated systems get audited, disclosed, and governed. Barely existed five years ago.
AI governance counsel · Responsible AI lead · Regulatory counsel
Cybersecurity & incident response
No codeWhat the law requires before, during, and after a breach, and who must be told.
Cybersecurity counsel · Incident response counsel · Compliance officer
Product & platform counsel
No codeLawyers who work on the product itself rather than on disputes about it.
Product counsel · Trust and safety counsel · Policy counsel
How law reaches people
Who gets served, how well the process runs, and whether people can understand it.
Access to justice
Some, learnableMost people in civil court have no lawyer. This is the work of helping them anyway.
Legal aid attorney · Access to justice fellow · Court self-help attorney
Legal design
No codeMaking legal information usable by the people it is aimed at. Plain language, better forms.
Legal designer · Plain language specialist · Legal content strategist
Legal operations
No codeHow a legal department runs. Process, spend, vendors, and whether any of it works.
Legal operations manager · Legal ops analyst
Court technology & ODR
Some, learnableOnline dispute resolution, e-filing, and modernizing courts. Suffolk runs a clinic in this.
Court administrator · Mediator · Dispute resolution counsel
Where to start
You will use this whatever you end up practising.
Litigators run e-discovery. Transactional lawyers run contract systems. Everyone touches privacy, and everyone is about to touch AI regulation. None of this is a separate career track. It is the equipment the job now comes with.