Coming full circle through law and software

Wordsmith feels like something that has come full circle for me. I studied law at university, then moved into software, spent years in Asia across software engineering and product management, and eventually found my way back to law through technology. That combination is what made Wordsmith interesting: it sits right where legal knowledge, product thinking, and software are all changing at once.

Product work is rewarding when it is done properly, because you get to see people use what you have built and get real value from it. That is what has always drawn me to it. You are trying to understand a problem well enough to make it easier for someone else, and then seeing whether you were right.

Product work feels different now

What makes this moment different is the technology. The assumptions people had about software for the last ten years are changing quickly. It used to take a long time to build good, reliable software. That has not disappeared, but the execution side has become much faster, so the pressure shifts onto understanding the right problems to solve, making sharper decisions, and adapting as the technology changes again.

That changes the job of a product manager as well. You are not just writing requirements, managing a roadmap, and waiting for the build cycle to catch up. You are much closer to the act of building itself, working with engineers, designers, legal engineers, and customers to test ideas earlier, learn faster, and keep reshaping the product as new things become possible.

That is one of the things I enjoy most about Wordsmith. The work does not sit still. A large part of my job is reevaluating what can now be done, because the answer may differ from last week. You are constantly asking whether the way we solved a problem still makes sense, whether a workflow can now be simpler, and whether the team should be thinking about the problem differently.

For the next generation of product builders, that is a very exciting place to be. You are learning the old fundamentals, judgment, taste, customer understanding, prioritisation and trust with the team, but in a world where the distance between an idea and a working version of that idea is much shorter.

Autonomy, ownership, and a very high bar

The culture here gives you a lot of autonomy. There is very little handholding, but absolute freedom to execute your job in the way you think will get the best outcome. That only works because the team is strong: you are surrounded by people who are motivated, thoughtful, and very good at what they do, and that pushes you to think more clearly.

It is also a place where building your own tools is not just accepted, it is part of how people work. I have been building systems for myself to manage the moving parts of product work, and we have built internal tools to understand customer health and where people might need more help. In many companies that might feel like a distraction from the day job, but here, if it helps you reach the outcome, you are trusted to do it.

Moving quickly without being careless

The legal context makes the work more demanding in a good way. We have to move quickly, but we cannot be careless. Legal users care deeply about reliability, control, privacy, and detail, and that creates a healthy tension in the product. It is not enough to make something impressive; it has to be safe, useful, and good enough for people doing serious work.

What you get from a place like Wordsmith is not just another product role. You get daily practice in using AI seriously, in making decisions with it, and in building around it while the whole field is still taking shape. There is a big difference between reading about this shift and living inside it every day. Wordsmith gives you the chance to train that muscle properly.

“In the end, I joined for the people and the timing: a team that has done this before, at a moment the rest of the industry is only starting to catch up to.”