We don't usually say this, but for today's LawNext, you're going to want to watch the video version, if you can. The audio will be good, but the video will be great. You can find it on YouTube.

Why? Because we're going to be talking today about vibe coding, and you're going to want to see what our guests are showing today, not just hear them tell about it.

Those guests are Damien Riehl and Michael Bommarito. By day, Damien works on AI products at Clio and Mike is CEO of 273 Ventures, a company that provides AI strategy and services for law firms and legal professionals.

But outside their day jobs, they are also founders of the ALEA Institute, the Institute for the Advancement of Legal and Ethical AI, where a central focus of theirs is the FOLIO Project, which is seeking to develop and maintain open legal standards and a comprehensive ontology to enable different legal systems to communicate with each other. FOLIO is an outgrowth of the SALI Alliance, whose ontology was largely developed by Damien.

So what does any of this have to do with vibe coding?

Well, in connection with their FOLIO project, Damien and Mike have been building an array of tools for tagging and enriching legal documents (FOLIO Enrich), for mapping law firm taxonomies (FOLIO Mapper), for browsing and editing legal ontologies (FOLIO Ontology Explorer), and much more. (See the full list of FOLIO resources.)

And they've built all of it by vibe coding. Not over months, not with a team of developers, but on their own, often in a single weekend day, using AI coding tools.

When Damien first showed LawNext host Bob Ambrogi what he and Mike were developing, Bob thought, "It's not enough for me to just write about this. It really has to be seen, in action." So he asked Damien and Mike to come on LawNext, share their screens, walk us through what they've been building, and show us what vibe coding actually looks like in action when it's applied to serious legal technology problems.

Thank You To Our Sponsors

This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.

Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.
Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner).

If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.