S2|E2: Building AI-Native Law Firms: Insights from Helen Fan

From Future Ready Lawyer: AI and the Evolution of Legal Practice by Armin Alimardani, Mark Bennett, Alexandra Vost

April 29, 2026 · 41 min · Season 2 · Episode 2

About this episode

Helen Fan discusses her experiments in building an AI-powered law firm and the implications for the legal profession.

Most lawyers using AI today are typing questions into a chatbot and reading the answer. But what if AI could act more like a team of junior colleagues working alongside you? In this episode of the Future Ready Lawyer podcast, we're joined by Helen Fan, a California lawyer and founder of the Silicon Valley Legal Tech Frontier Community, to discuss her experiments building an AI-powered law firm. Helen set up two AI Agents, Morgan, a senior associate, and Cleo, a junior, and gave them a real legal research task. To her surprise, they divided up the work, debated each other, and even created additional helpers on their own. We explore what this means for supervision, accountability, and trust when AI starts taking action rather than just answering questions. Helen also shares her vision for the AI-native law firm, why smaller firms are leading the way, and her advice for law students. Helen Fan — Personal & Community Helen Fan | LinkedIn — link Helen's Legal AI Lab — link Helen's Substack — link Silicon Valley Legal Tech Frontier — link Helen's Own Writing "Claude for Legal — Webinar Summary" — Helen breaks down how legal professionals can use Claude's Skills feature to build…

People in this episode

Hosts: Armin Alimardani, Mark Bennett, Alexandra Vost

Guest: Helen Fan

Topics covered

AI in legal practice
AI-native law firms
legal technology
supervision and accountability
law student advice

Keywords

AI
law firm
legal research
technology
law students
accountability
trust

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Silicon Valley Legal Tech Frontier Community