What I learned building legal software

Context

Years inside IP operations — not as a spectator. Filing seasons, bilingual bulletins, partners who need answers while a client is still on the line.

Problem

Consumer SaaS habits (fuzzy search, silent automation, pretty empty states) transfer poorly when a wrong mark or missed renewal has professional risk.

Observation

Trust surfaces beat novelty. Operators forgive plain UI; they do not forgive false confidence. Exact-first search and human gates on AI writes are product decisions, not engineering preferences.

Decision

Prefer precision, provenance, and recoverable failure. Document intelligence only ships with review. Migrations happen in slices aligned to desk workflows.

Outcome

Systems that survive daily use — see engineering and decisions.

Lesson

Sit with the desk before choosing a stack. If you cannot name who opens the screen tomorrow, you are designing for an imaginary buyer.