Will Chen on What Open Source Changes for Legal AI

Why law firms may need engineers, open models and a very different approach to legal AI.

Sept 21, 2026

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Guest: Will Chen

Role: Founder, Mike OSS & LawProf
Website: mikeoss.com

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I spoke with Will Chen, a former Latham & Watkins lawyer who is now building Mike OSS, an open-source legal AI platform, alongside LawProf, the legal education platform he originally built while at university.

Will has become one of the most-followed voices in the Legal AI space; particularly around open source, the economics of legal AI platforms and whether law firms should be building more technology themselves.

We discussed:

→ Why Will decided to open source Mike OSS, and whether open-source legal AI can become commercially sustainable.

→ Whether legal AI platforms are really differentiated products or, in Will’s words, increasingly competing on deployment, distribution and access to models.

→ Why law firms may need to start hiring and paying top engineering talent very differently if they want to build serious technology internally.

→ The rise of open-weight and Chinese AI models, and what a rapidly moving model frontier means for companies trying to post-train their own legal models.

→ Will’s advice for junior lawyers entering the profession as AI becomes significantly more capable.

We also spoke about vibe coding, why lawyers still need strong fundamentals even as AI improves.

I hope you enjoy listening just as much as I did recording it!