Course · Interpersonal Skills
Legal Engineering Foundations
What a legal engineer does: how legal work is organised, how to find work worth improving, how to work with lawyers, the toolbox, risk and ethics, and how to measure and justify a project.
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Legal engineering is the craft of redesigning legal work so that it is faster, clearer and more reliable, using process design, data, templates and software. It is the first course of the Legal Engineer Program. It teaches the habits that every later skill depends on: understanding how legal work is really organised, choosing the work worth improving, listening to the lawyers who do it, knowing what tools exist and when not to use them, handling the risks and ethics, and proving that a change worked. It comes with an Opportunity Scorer and a Payback Calculator, and it ends with a capstone in which you choose a first project for an invented legal department and make the case for it.
The Curriculum
What legal engineering is: the job, the roles around it and why it exists→
What a legal engineer does, how the role differs from its neighbours, why the field exists and the skills it needs. Practice: Who Does What? and Is This Legal Engineering?
How legal work is organised: matters, tasks, documents, decisions and where time goes→
The anatomy of legal work, the kinds of work, how the work is organised and priced, and where waste hides. Practice: Which Kind of Work? and Find the Waste.
Finding work worth improving: opportunities, criteria and the ladder from eliminate to automate→
Eight criteria for choosing work, the ladder from eliminate to augment, quick wins and big bets. Practice: Climb the Ladder and an Opportunity Scorer tool.
Working with lawyers: listening, requirements, trust and getting a new way adopted→
Interviews and shadowing, requirements and acceptance criteria, understanding resistance, pilots and adoption. Practice: Ask the Better Question and Write the Requirement.
The toolbox: categories of legal technology, build or buy, and choosing well→
The categories of legal technology, build versus buy versus configure, vendor evaluation and integration. Practice: Which Tool Category? and Buy, Build or Configure?
Risk, ethics and governance: building tools that lawyers can responsibly use→
Professional duties, data protection and security, accuracy and bias, who may give legal advice, human oversight, testing and governance. Practice: Whose Duty? and Spot the Risk.
Measuring value: baselines, metrics, business cases and telling the story→
Baselines and metrics, an honest business case and payback, the common traps and telling the story. Practice: Which Metric? and a Payback Calculator tool.
Capstone: Capstone: choose your first project and make the case for it→
Score five candidate workflows, choose one, build its business case and write a one-page recommendation. The first piece of your portfolio.
What It Covers
“You will not be asked to write code. You will learn to choose the right problem, understand the people who live with it and show, with numbers, that your answer worked.”
- Seven modules and a capstone that follow a real project from first question to business case.
- Written for lawyers and for people entering legal technology: no code required, no unexplained jargon.
- Two working tools you keep using: an Opportunity Scorer that ranks candidate workflows and a Payback Calculator that tests a business case.
- The first piece of your portfolio: a scored opportunity assessment and a one-page recommendation.
Included With All-Access · Or Buy It Alone
Introductory PriceChoose how you unlock Legal Engineering Foundations
Subscribe for every course and most tools, or buy just this one course on its own.
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Or give this as a giftOther Scrolls in This Chamber
Across the Table$15 →Interests, walk-away numbers, offers, trades, pressure tactics and professional limits, with practice rooms and calculators.
Cooling the Room$15 →How conflict escalates, mapping a dispute, de-escalation, hard conversations, choosing a process, mediation, power, culture and ethics, with practice mediations.
The Client Conversation$15 →Trust, the first meeting, fees and scope, updates in plain words, advice and decisions, bad news, boundaries and ethics, with practice meetings.Part of a program
Step 1 of 8 in the Legal Engineer Program
Learn to design, automate and measure legal work, and finish with a portfolio you can show. Each course is sold on its own; the whole program is $69 once and unlocks every course in it.
See the whole programModule 1 is free to try. Sign in, pass each module quiz and the course average, and your Certificate of Completion is emailed to you automatically. This course teaches method and technique with invented people and figures; it is general education, not legal advice, and professional rules differ from country to country.
Common questions
- Do I need to be able to code?
- No. The course is about choosing and framing problems, working with people and measuring results. Later courses in the program introduce simple technical skills step by step.
- Is it only for lawyers?
- No. It suits lawyers moving towards legal technology, paralegals and operations staff, and people from technology or business who want to work in legal. Each group will find some parts familiar and others new.
- Is this the Legal Engineer Program?
- It is the first course. The whole program is sold as a bundle at a lower price than buying each course, and this course can also be bought on its own.
- Is it tied to a particular software product?
- No. It teaches principles that outlast any product, and it names kinds of tools rather than brands.
- How do I get the Certificate of Completion?
- Sign in, pass each module quiz and keep a course average of at least 75. The certificate is then issued and emailed to you automatically.
- Is any of it legal advice?
- No. It is general education using invented organisations and situations. Apply it to real work only with advice on the facts and the rules that apply.
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Free to use in class. The free parts open for everyone, no account needed.