What is a Legal Engineer?

What is a Legal Engineer?

Legal Engineers at Orbital are bridging the gap between law and technology, using their expertise as former real estate lawyers to develop cutting-edge legal AI products - Orbital Copilot and Orbital Residential.

With first-hand experience of the challenges legal professionals face, they work within cross-functional teams - including product managers, UX designers, software engineers and AI engineers - to design Orbital’s technology.

Hi! 👋 I’m Tassneem - a former commercial property solicitor with over a decade of experience in the legal sector, having worked at Clyde & Co, Freeths and Hill Dickinson. Now, as a Legal Engineer at Orbital, here’s what a typical day in my life looks like.

A day in the life at Orbital as a Legal Engineer

9am – My day began at 9am, a little ahead of the usual 9:30am arrival time. The day kicks off at the local coffee shop next to our Clerkenwell office. This morning, I had a ‘donut’ scheduled - a casual catch-up with a colleague from another team. Today’s donut was with Conrad, our Talent Acquisition Manager, who was filling me in on all the new roles we were hiring for - 2025 is going to be a busy one!

9.15am - Back at my desk, I catch up on my team’s messages and update our ‘Jira’ board with my tasks - a shared to-do list that helps us track progress and keep aligned across different work items and skill sets as we design and implement new product features that impact our customers.

9:40am – Time for our team’s ‘stand-up’! Our daily team meeting is a perfect time to introduce you to my brilliant colleagues. At Orbital, AI engineers, software engineers and product managers collaborate with ex-lawyers turned ‘Legal Engineers’, each bringing a unique perspective and level of expertise to build bleeding-edge legal technology. We combine the Legal Engineer’s years of legal expertise with technical innovation, ensuring our products are not only powerful but also technically accurate and easy to use so that lawyers have the confidence to rely on its results.

10am – Kicking off the morning’s tasks, I’m reviewing my team’s feedback on an exciting new feature: a bespoke, AI-generated Report on Title designed to produce client-ready reports.

My time as a commercial property lawyer has placed me in good stead for this task. Having produced countless Reports on Title whilst in private practice, I was able to lean on these experiences in order to produce what I would consider the ‘ideal’ report. However, it is not just up to me to decide. Every feature undergoes rigorous testing - not just by our developers and legal engineers - but also through customer feedback, ensuring we’re building something truly valuable that customers will actually use in their day to day. After refining the report based on the latest input, I make amendments ready to present to our product manager - the person responsible for the direction of our product - so that it can make its way to the next stage of development.

This type of collaboration within our cross-functional team means that there is a variety of experts in their individual field involved in making the product. It is akin to a Formula 1 racing team - in order to succeed, the driver, the pit crew and the engineers building the car all need to bring their individual expertise to the table to create something really special.

11am – Time for our weekly Legal Engineering meeting. As the business grows, our expertise are being leveraged across our multiple products. This session is a chance for the Legal Engineers to connect, share knowledge, and stay aligned. We discuss the latest developments in commercial real estate, AI and legal tech, while also showcasing what we’ve been working on. By sharing the different ways we are approaching challenges, it enables us to work consistently across the products.

11:30am – Team retrospective on the past month’s work. This is our chance to reflect on what went well, what we should do more of and where there’s room for improvement. It’s an open and honest discussion, helping us refine our ways of working and ensure we stay engaged, motivated and aligned as a team.

12pm - Lunch. Stopping for a quick bite to eat, I meet a friend for lunch. The office is a few minutes walk from Leather Lane Market, making for endless food options and I am slowly making my way through the different stalls, but it’s a long road!

1pm - Onboarding a new customer to the platform. I had an introductory call with a new customer alongside our sales team and the product manager. These calls are a great opportunity for our customers to ask any questions they have about the platform’s capabilities. Often, legal engineers are best placed to assist as the thought leaders in the business when it comes to how lawyers and law firms can leverage our products. Part of our role in supporting the business is to roll up our sleeves and get stuck in with customers!

2pm – Prompting, Prompting, Prompting! Prompt engineering is a very new concept for many lawyers but it is a core part of my role - and my favorite part! We use advanced prompting techniques to instruct the latest large language models (LLMs) , ensuring we extract the most accurate, reliable results. Customer feedback tells us our products are best in class, and that’s something I take real pride in. Without the expertise of Legal Engineers, who bring years of commercial property experience, achieving such precise and consistent results simply wouldn’t be possible.

3.30pm - Discussing an upcoming webinar. Had a quick catch up with the sales team to discuss an upcoming webinar where we will be showcasing the product. We spoke about potential dates and what might be the most suitable content for the webinar.

4pm – ‘All-Hands’ – The day wraps up with our company-wide ‘All-Hands’ meeting. This meeting falls on the last Thursday of every month and is where the entire company comes together to reflect on the past month and track our progress as a business. This month’s session was particularly special - we took a step back to review 2024’s milestones and looked ahead to the product vision for 2025, setting the stage for what’s next. What continues to impress me is the company’s commitment to transparency with its employees. Leadership openly shares insights into their visions and goals, which for me fosters a culture of trust and collaboration. There’s a strong sense that every individual, regardless of their role, plays a vital part in the company’s success. It’s empowering to see how our collective efforts contribute to the bigger picture.

Final Thoughts

Transitioning from a commercial property solicitor to a Legal Engineer was an unexpected but exciting shift for me. If I am perfectly honest, I hadn’t even known such a role existed (probably because it had not existed four years ago and the world is now moving so quickly with the latest AI and I want to make sure I keep up!).

However, during my time in private practice, I saw firsthand how legal tech was transforming workflows and making a real impact. I have always had a passion for technology and I was drawn to the idea of blending my legal expertise with cutting-edge innovation.

For me, the Legal Engineer role is the perfect balance. It’s about applying deep legal knowledge in a fast-paced startup environment, working with advanced AI models, and collaborating with dynamic, intelligent, motivated colleagues who share a passion for building best-in-class legal tech for our customers.

We’re hiring

If you are interested in helping us solve some hard problems in the legal space using bleeding edge AI, please see our open roles and get in touch with us via our Careers Page.