The Inside View: The Growth, Benefits and Risks of Vibe Coding

Why It Matters

Vibe coding democratizes app development in law firms, accelerating client service innovation while demanding robust governance to safeguard security and compliance.

Key Takeaways

• Vibe coding lets lawyers prototype apps via natural language prompts.
• Bird & Bird uses AI playground and Betty Blocks for rapid innovation.
• Governance balances speed with security, compliance, and client data protection.
• Internal ideation platform crowdsources ideas, rewards experimentation, reduces shadow IT.
• Early successes include ESG claims scanner, boosting client service efficiency.

Summary

The episode of Talking Tech focuses on "vibe coding," a method where users describe desired software in plain language and large language models generate the code. Helder Santos, head of legal tech at Bird & Bird, explains how the firm is adopting this approach to empower lawyers and non‑technical staff to prototype applications quickly, bypassing traditional development bottlenecks.

Santos highlights three core benefits: accelerated creativity, rapid prototyping, and broader accessibility. By integrating an AI playground, Betty Blocks, and internal LLM models, the firm enables staff to experiment with workflows—such as an ESG claims scanner—while maintaining strict security and compliance controls. Governance remains a trade‑off, with clear limits on client‑facing data and a structured review process before production deployment.

Concrete examples illustrate the model in action. A partner’s ESG claim‑analysis tool was built via a two‑hour vibe‑coding session, then scaled to an enterprise‑level product. The firm also runs internal hack‑style sessions, a crowd‑voted ideation platform, and rewards for successful prototypes, fostering a community that shares code snippets across offices from London to Hong Kong.

The broader implication is that law firms can democratize software creation, reducing reliance on external vendors and shadow IT while staying compliant. Firms that embed vibe coding into their innovation pipelines may gain a competitive edge through faster client solutions and a more engaged, tech‑savvy workforce.

Original Description

In this latest episode of The Inside View podcast, Legal IT Insider’s editor Caroline Hill spoke with Bird & Bird’s globally renowned head of legal technology and innovation, Hélder Santos, about the growth, benefits, and challenges of vibe coding.

Vibe coding - an expression coined by AI researcher and former OpenAI/Tesla leader Andrej Karpathy in early February 2025 – means that users generate applications by describing their vision in natural language to large language models.

We discussed how vibe coding is helping Bird & Bird to be agile and accelerate client delivery, as well as give creativity to its people – helping them to turn knowledge into code, without the need always for a technical translator.

Santos talked us through existing examples of vibe coded tools and the challenges and failure points in generated code. We discussed how fee-earners can code in an enterprise safe way without creating shadow IT, in a way that can be supported by IT.

This is a really great listen, our thanks to Santos.