u/urmm

I've been a software engineer for a few years. Worked in bigtech, good salary, stable job, the whole thing. Then my position got cut and I had one of those forced moments of clarity that I think a lot of people in tech are having right now.

I could update my LinkedIn, apply to 200 jobs, and land somewhere similar in 2-3 months. Or I could actually figure out if I could build something on my own.

I chose the second one. Probably naive. Still figuring it out. But I want to share what I've found so far because I think there's something here that a lot of engineers are sitting right next to without realizing it.

My instinct as a engineer was to think about SaaS. Build a product, charge subscriptions, scale it. The dream everyone talks about. But the more I sat with it the more I realized I'd be spending 12 months building something in a vacuum, competing with funded startups from day one, and probably running out of motivation before I ever got a single paying user.

So I started asking a different question. Not "what can I build" but "who is already in pain and has money to solve it."

That reframe changed everything.

What I kept coming back to was professional services firms. Lawyers, accountants, consultants. I kept landing here for one simple reason, these are businesses where time is literally the product. A lawyer billing $300/hr losing an hour a day to something inefficient isn't just annoyed. They're losing $6,000 a month (assuming 20 work days per month). Per person.

And the thing eating their time more than almost anything else is documents. Every firm I looked into was drowning in them. Contracts, case law, regulatory guidelines, internal memos. Hundreds of PDFs that someone has to manually search through every single time a client asks a question.

As a developer I knew immediately what that problem was. It's a retrieval problem. It's solvable. And nobody had pointed modern tooling at it in a way that actually fit how these firms work.

What I'm actually building is a research assistant that lives inside a firm's own document library. You type a question in plain English. The system searches every document they have and returns an answer with exact citations in under a minute.

The part I think makes it actually useful for lawyers specifically, not just another ChatGPT wrapper, is how it handles authority and conflict. A Supreme Court ruling carries more weight than a legal commentary and the system knows that. When two sources contradict each other it shows both positions instead of pretending there's one clean answer. Lawyers think in terms of precedent and conflicting interpretations. The tool has to think that way too or they won't trust it.

I also built an annotation layer where senior lawyers can leave notes on documents that become part of what the system knows going forward. Outdated ruling, firm-specific interpretation, internal policy that overrides a guideline, they just flag it and the system learns it permanently.

I don't have a client yet. I want to be straight about that.

What I do have is a working system, a clear picture of who needs it, and a couple weeks of conversations with law firms that keep confirming the problem is exactly as real as I thought it was.

Every single person I've talked to has answered the question "how long does your team spend searching through documents every day" without hesitating. Nobody has said it isn't a problem. That tells me something.

I'll post an update when something happens, good or bad. AMA!

Also, wish me luck! And if you're at a firm that deals with this and you think I'm missing something about how lawyers actually work, I genuinely want to hear it. Still learning.

I've been a software engineer for a few years. Worked in bigtech, good salary, stable job, the whole thing. Then my position got cut and I had one of those forced moments of clarity that I think a lot of people in tech are having right now.

I could update my LinkedIn, apply to 200 jobs, and land somewhere similar in 2-3 months. Or I could actually figure out if I could build something on my own.

I chose the second one. Probably naive. Still figuring it out. But I want to share what I've found so far because I think there's something here that a lot of engineers are sitting right next to without realizing it.

My instinct as a engineer was to think about SaaS. Build a product, charge subscriptions, scale it. The dream everyone talks about. But the more I sat with it the more I realized I'd be spending 12 months building something in a vacuum, competing with funded startups from day one, and probably running out of motivation before I ever got a single paying user.

So I started asking a different question. Not "what can I build" but "who is already in pain and has money to solve it."

That reframe changed everything.

What I kept coming back to was professional services firms. Lawyers, accountants, consultants. I kept landing here for one simple reason, these are businesses where time is literally the product. A lawyer billing $300/hr losing an hour a day to something inefficient isn't just annoyed. They're losing $6,000 a month (assuming 20 work days per month). Per person.

And the thing eating their time more than almost anything else is documents. Every firm I looked into was drowning in them. Contracts, case law, regulatory guidelines, internal memos. Hundreds of PDFs that someone has to manually search through every single time a client asks a question.

As a developer I knew immediately what that problem was. It's a retrieval problem. It's solvable. And nobody had pointed modern AI tooling at it in a way that actually fit how these firms work.

What I'm actually building is a research assistant that lives inside a firm's own document library. You type a question in plain English. The system searches every document they have and returns an answer with exact citations in under a minute.

The part I think makes it actually useful for lawyers specifically, not just another ChatGPT wrapper, is how it handles authority and conflict. A Supreme Court ruling carries more weight than a legal commentary and the system knows that. When two sources contradict each other it shows both positions instead of pretending there's one clean answer. Lawyers think in terms of precedent and conflicting interpretations. The tool has to think that way too or they won't trust it.

I also built an annotation layer where senior lawyers can leave notes on documents that become part of what the system knows going forward. Outdated ruling, firm-specific interpretation, internal policy that overrides a guideline, they just flag it and the system learns it permanently.

I don't have a client yet. I want to be straight about that.

What I do have is a working system, a clear picture of who needs it, and a couple weeks of conversations with law firms that keep confirming the problem is exactly as real as I thought it was.

Every single person I've talked to has answered the question "how long does your team spend searching through documents every day" without hesitating. Nobody has said it isn't a problem. That tells me something.

I'll post an update when something happens, good or bad. AMA!

Also, wish me luck! And if you're at a firm that deals with this and you think I'm missing something about how lawyers actually work, I genuinely want to hear it. Still learning.

I've been a software engineer for a few years. Worked in bigtech, good salary, stable job, the whole thing. Then my position got cut and I had one of those forced moments of clarity that I think a lot of people in tech are having right now.

I could update my LinkedIn, apply to 200 jobs, and land somewhere similar in 2-3 months. Or I could actually figure out if I could build something on my own.

I chose the second one. Probably naive. Still figuring it out. But I want to share what I've found so far because I think there's something here that a lot of engineers are sitting right next to without realizing it.

My instinct as a engineer was to think about SaaS. Build a product, charge subscriptions, scale it. The dream everyone talks about. But the more I sat with it the more I realized I'd be spending 12 months building something in a vacuum, competing with funded startups from day one, and probably running out of motivation before I ever got a single paying user.

So I started asking a different question. Not "what can I build" but "who is already in pain and has money to solve it."

That reframe changed everything.

What I kept coming back to was professional services firms. Lawyers, accountants, consultants. I kept landing here for one simple reason, these are businesses where time is literally the product. A lawyer billing $300/hr losing an hour a day to something inefficient isn't just annoyed. They're losing $6,000 a month (assuming 20 work days per month). Per person.

And the thing eating their time more than almost anything else is documents. Every firm I looked into was drowning in them. Contracts, case law, regulatory guidelines, internal memos. Hundreds of PDFs that someone has to manually search through every single time a client asks a question.

As a developer I knew immediately what that problem was. It's a retrieval problem. It's solvable. And nobody had pointed modern AI tooling at it in a way that actually fit how these firms work.

What I'm actually building is a research assistant that lives inside a firm's own document library. You type a question in plain English. The system searches every document they have and returns an answer with exact citations in under a minute.

The part I think makes it actually useful for lawyers specifically, not just another ChatGPT wrapper, is how it handles authority and conflict. A Supreme Court ruling carries more weight than a legal commentary and the system knows that. When two sources contradict each other it shows both positions instead of pretending there's one clean answer. Lawyers think in terms of precedent and conflicting interpretations. The tool has to think that way too or they won't trust it.

I also built an annotation layer where senior lawyers can leave notes on documents that become part of what the system knows going forward. Outdated ruling, firm-specific interpretation, internal policy that overrides a guideline, they just flag it and the system learns it permanently.

I don't have a client yet. I want to be straight about that.

What I do have is a working system, a clear picture of who needs it, and a couple weeks of conversations with law firms that keep confirming the problem is exactly as real as I thought it was.

Every single person I've talked to has answered the question "how long does your team spend searching through documents every day" without hesitating. Nobody has said it isn't a problem. That tells me something.

I'll post an update when something happens, good or bad. AMA!

Also, wish me luck! And if you're at a firm that deals with this and you think I'm missing something about how lawyers actually work, I genuinely want to hear it. Still learning.

I've been a software engineer for a few years. Worked in bigtech, good salary, stable job, the whole thing. Then my position got cut and I had one of those forced moments of clarity that I think a lot of people in tech are having right now.

I could update my LinkedIn, apply to 200 jobs, and land somewhere similar in 2-3 months. Or I could actually figure out if I could build something on my own.

I chose the second one. Probably naive. Still figuring it out. But I want to share what I've found so far because I think there's something here that a lot of engineers are sitting right next to without realizing it.

My instinct as a engineer was to think about SaaS. Build a product, charge subscriptions, scale it. The dream everyone talks about. But the more I sat with it the more I realized I'd be spending 12 months building something in a vacuum, competing with funded startups from day one, and probably running out of motivation before I ever got a single paying user.

So I started asking a different question. Not "what can I build" but "who is already in pain and has money to solve it."

That reframe changed everything.

What I kept coming back to was professional services firms. Lawyers, accountants, consultants. I kept landing here for one simple reason, these are businesses where time is literally the product. A lawyer billing $300/hr losing an hour a day to something inefficient isn't just annoyed. They're losing $6,000 a month (assuming 20 work days per month). Per person.

And the thing eating their time more than almost anything else is documents. Every firm I looked into was drowning in them. Contracts, case law, regulatory guidelines, internal memos. Hundreds of PDFs that someone has to manually search through every single time a client asks a question.

As a developer I knew immediately what that problem was. It's a retrieval problem. It's solvable. And nobody had pointed modern AI tooling at it in a way that actually fit how these firms work.

What I'm actually building is a research assistant that lives inside a firm's own document library. You type a question in plain English. The system searches every document they have and returns an answer with exact citations in under a minute.

The part I think makes it actually useful for lawyers specifically, not just another ChatGPT wrapper, is how it handles authority and conflict. A Supreme Court ruling carries more weight than a legal commentary and the system knows that. When two sources contradict each other it shows both positions instead of pretending there's one clean answer. Lawyers think in terms of precedent and conflicting interpretations. The tool has to think that way too or they won't trust it.

I also built an annotation layer where senior lawyers can leave notes on documents that become part of what the system knows going forward. Outdated ruling, firm-specific interpretation, internal policy that overrides a guideline, they just flag it and the system learns it permanently.

I don't have a client yet. I want to be straight about that.

What I do have is a working system, a clear picture of who needs it, and a couple weeks of conversations with law firms that keep confirming the problem is exactly as real as I thought it was.

Every single person I've talked to has answered the question "how long does your team spend searching through documents every day" without hesitating. Nobody has said it isn't a problem. That tells me something.

I'll post an update when something happens, good or bad. AMA!

Also, wish me luck! And if you're at a firm that deals with this and you think I'm missing something about how lawyers actually work, I genuinely want to hear it. Still learning.

Hey guys! So I wanted to share something I saw one of my clients doing.

I’m a software engineer and previously worked on large-scale document processing systems at Amazon and Adobe. Now, I build solutions for compliance/legal teams at different companies and was honestly surprised by how much of their day was spent manually searching through documents.

Their workflow was basically:

• digging through PDFs
• searching regulatory guidance
• checking internal memos
• trying to find prior case/work documents
• asking coworkers if they remembered where something was

A single client question could easily turn into 30–45 minutes of searching.

What surprised me most wasn’t even the amount of searching, it was how much important institutional knowledge only existed in people’s heads.

One senior employee would know:

• which sources mattered more
• which documents were outdated
• where exceptions existed
• how the company actually interpreted certain policies internally

A lot of that knowledge never existed in a searchable system anywhere.

After seeing this, I started realizing how many professional services firms probably operate similarly:

• legal
• compliance
• accounting
• consulting
• operations teams
• internal knowledge management

They’re sitting on years of documents and internal knowledge, but actually retrieving information is still extremely manual.

I’m honestly curious now how common this is across other companies/industries. Have any of you seen similar bottlenecks inside your company/team? Was thinking of solely focusing my solutions around solving this problem but not sure yet lol