THE VIBE
I’m a lawyer who builds software and I have no idea what I’m doing. Sort of.
Six months ago, I was laid off from a tech startup. It was my first job in tech, and my first experience with layoffs. (I’d been in private practice for the first 8+ years of my career).
When it happened, I texted a friend who'd worked at all the Big Tech companies. She said, “Is this your first layoff?” — in other words, “welcome to tech.”
My role was Product Counsel; I was the first person to hold the title. I’d only been at the company for a little under a year and my friend explained that when it comes to layoffs, “last one in, first one out” is standard — i.e., the most recent hires are the first ones canned.
At first I didn’t know what to do with myself, but about 3 weeks into unemployment, I discovered vibe coding. My husband and I were on a double date when my husband’s friend (who is well known in Seattle AI circles) showed me an app he built using vibe coding. I was fascinated.
Over the next 3-4 weeks, I played around with Lovable. Then I built Codie — a productivity app for ADHD brains. I also started building Indigogh, an art marketplace with a built-in philanthropic model. I spent a lot of time working on Indigogh before pausing the project to focus exclusively on Batesly.
It’s been 4 months since then, and 2 months since I first announced my Batesly project on LinkedIn. Today, I have a production application running on AWS, 8 law firms in my demo pipeline, and a mass of infrastructure I built by describing what I wanted to an AI and watching it write the code.
I still can’t write a for loop from memory. I’m not sure I ever will. And I’m starting to think that doesn’t matter.
This is a newsletter about building things without permission. Without a CS degree. Without a technical co-founder. Without the credentials the startup world tells you that you need before you’re allowed to have an idea and make it real.
It’s called Vibes & Verdicts because that’s basically my entire process. The vibe is the building — prompting AI tools, stitching together platforms, shipping features at 1am because something finally clicked. The verdict is the lawyer brain that won’t stop evaluating everything: Is this actually good? Is this secure? Would I trust this with client data? Does this solve a real problem or am I just building to build?
Both parts are essential. The vibe without the verdict is a prototype that never becomes a product. The verdict without the vibe is a 47-page requirements document that never becomes anything at all.
A little more about me… I’m Rachel. I’m a Washington-licensed attorney. I run Arthouse Legal, a fractional general counsel practice for creative professionals. And I’m building Batesly — a legal practice management platform designed to replace the fragmented, overpriced, soul-crushing tech stack that most law firms are trapped in. iManage for documents. Clio for case management. A different app for billing. Another one for discovery. None of them talk to each other effectively and they all charge per seat.
I’m building one platform that does all of it, at a flat monthly rate, with a matter-native architecture that organizes everything around how lawyers actually work — not how software companies think lawyers should work.
I built it using Replit, Claude (chat and code), and AWS, using my workflow: vibe coding — which is what the cool kids call describing what I want in plain English and AI writes the code. Then I review it, break it, fix it, and ship it. The entire production infrastructure cost me under $5K.
Every week in this newsletter, I’ll share what I’m actually doing. Not the highlight reel. Not the “10x founder productivity hack” stuff. The real thing — the tools that work, the ones that don’t, the bugs that make me question my life choices, and the moments where something clicks and I remember why I started.
If you’re building something — an app, a side project, a business — without a traditional engineering background, this is for you. If you’re a lawyer wondering whether AI is going to eat your career or save it, also for you. If you just like watching someone figure things out in public, welcome. I hope you brought popcorn
Let’s do this!
THE VERDICT
Quick Takes
Vibe coding is getting mainstream attention, and most of the discourse is terrible. Hot take: the people saying “vibe coding isn’t real engineering” are correct. It’s not. It’s something else entirely, and that’s the point. Not everyone building software needs to be an engineer. Some of us need to be domain experts who can direct AI to build what we know should exist. Stop being a weirdo gatekeeper.
Legal tech pricing is a scam and everyone knows it. Per-seat pricing for software in 2026 is indefensible. It punishes firms for hiring. It makes growth more expensive. And the vendors know you’re locked in because migrating a DMS is roughly as fun as a root canal. Flat-fee pricing isn’t a gimmick — it’s just how software should work when you actually respect your customers.
The best AI tool is the one you actually use consistently. I’ve tried Claude, GPT, Gemini, Cursor, Copilot, and about fifteen other things. My actual stack is embarrassingly simple: Claude for everything strategic and complex, Replit Agent for building features, Claude Code for reviewing them. Stop tool-shopping. Claude is the best. (No, Anthropic isn’t paying me to say that, but they should.)
THE CONFESSIONAL
‘Being vulnerable is brave’, I say to myself
I almost didn’t start this newsletter.
Not because I don’t have things to say — clearly I do — but because there’s a voice in my head that says: “Who are you to write about building software? You’re a lawyer. You don’t even know what a Docker container is.”
And that voice is technically correct. I deployed my app to AWS and I’m still not 100% sure what a Docker container does versus what App Runner does versus what an EC2 instance is. I know my app runs. I know it’s secure. I know the data is encrypted. I’m a little fuzzy on the exact container orchestration situation.
But here’s what I’ve realized: that voice — the one that says you need to understand everything before you’re allowed to do anything — is the reason most good ideas die. Not because they’re bad ideas. Because the person who had them didn’t have the “right” credentials to try. Fuck that.
So here I am, trying anyway, in public. For all of y’all to judge me. With a newsletter memorizing everything.
Gods help us all.
I’m Rachel — a practicing attorney building legal tech through vibe coding. Every week I share what I’m learning, what’s working, and what I probably shouldn’t admit publicly.
Next week: “The Prompt Is the Product” — Why your ability to write good prompts matters more than your ability to write good code, and how to actually get better at it.
Know someone building without a CS degree? Forward this. They’ll thank you… maybe?