Ross McNairn, CEO and Founder of Wordsmith, brings a rare perspective to legal tech - lawyer turned software engineer turned CTO at companies like Skyscanner and TravelPerk. In this episode, we go deep on his philosophy for building lasting products over quick wins, and why he believes we're entering the era of "legal engineering."
What We Cover:
Building Philosophy: Why Ross spent a year quietly iterating rather than rushing to market with an MVP wrapper.
The UK Opportunity: How Britain's legal heritage and technical talent create untapped advantages in the AI race.
Legal Engineering Revolution: Ross's five-level competency framework transforming lawyers into product-minded operators.
Market Evolution: Why the generalist legal AI era is ending and specialisation is the future.
Three Key Takeaways:
1. Quality Over Speed Wins Long-Term: Ross's mantra: "I don't want to be the first tool that everybody buys. I want to be the last tool that they buy." While Ross saw competitors rush wrappers to market, he believes disciplined product development creates lasting competitive advantages through superior reliability and user experience.
2. Legal Engineering is the New Frontier: Ross sees the future of corporate legal belonging to lawyers who think like product managers. Ross describes customers building sophisticated systems with 50+ interconnected agents - a glimpse into legal practice where workflow orchestration, not individual task automation, drives value for in-house teams managing constant business demands.
3. Invisible Quality Creates Unbeatable Moats: While everyone debates model capabilities, Ross sees the development and constant iteration of rigorous testing frameworks (evals) to ensure world-class legal outputs and intuitive experiences creating unbeatable advantage as products mature beyond flashy interfaces.
We hope you enjoy! And if you find this or our other conversations interesting - we’d really appreciate it if you could like, rate, subscribe, comment, and share!
Best,
Tom & Alex
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