Hey there Legal Rebels! 👋
I’m excited to share with you the 49th episode of the 2025 season of the LawDroid Manifesto podcast, where I will be continuing to interview key legal innovators to learn how they do what they do. I think you’re going to enjoy this one!
If you want to understand how to embrace AI through playful experimentation rather than fear, and learn how legal design principles can transform how we deliver human-centered legal services, you need to listen to this episode. Antti is at the forefront of legal innovation and AI adoption, and brings a uniquely accessible and curiosity-driven approach to empowering legal professionals.
Bringing Legal Design and AI Together for Human-Centered Legal Services
Join me as I interview Antti Innanen, co-founder of Legit, legal design innovator, and author of the upcoming book “Prompted: How to Create and Communicate with AI.”
In this insightful podcast episode, Antti shares his unconventional journey from being a self-described bad student and philosophy dropout in Finland to becoming a leading voice in legal design and AI innovation. He dives deep into how his firm Dot applies legal design principles to make legal systems and documents more accessible and less alienating, while his AI studio Legit helps legal professionals experiment with and adopt AI tools. Antti also reveals his hands-on approach to AI experimentation, including building self-driving law firm prototypes with AI agents that can handle client intake, document review, and even fee negotiations.
His stories and insights underscore his practical approach to technology adoption through curiosity and play rather than rigid frameworks. This episode is a must-watch for anyone interested in the intersection of legal design, AI, and access to justice, offering valuable perspectives on how to maintain humanity while embracing technological transformation.
The Skinny
Antti Innanen, co-founder of Legit and legal design firm Dot, shares his journey from being a bad student and philosophy dropout in Turku, Finland to becoming a leading innovator in legal design and AI adoption. Operating from sunny Alicante, Spain, Antti runs multiple ventures simultaneously including his AI consulting studio, maintains his legal design practice, and even co-owns a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu gym where he teaches as a black belt. Throughout the conversation, Antti emphasizes the importance of playful experimentation with AI, demonstrating this through his self-driving law firm prototype that uses AI agents for client intake, document drafting, and negotiations. His upcoming book Prompted aims to help legal professionals approach AI with curiosity rather than fear, while his background in legal design ensures technology implementation remains focused on making legal services more human-centered and accessible. Antti’s philosophy centers on fighting the good fight and doing meaningful work, refusing to get caught up in financial pursuits that lack purpose.
Key Takeaways:
Antti’s unconventional background as a self-described bad student and philosophy dropout became his superpower, teaching him to question traditional approaches and think creatively
Legal design principles focus on making legal systems, processes, and documents more human-centered, accessible, and less alienating for regular people
AI should be approached through playful experimentation and curiosity rather than rigid frameworks or fear-based hesitation
Antti built a self-driving law firm prototype using AI agents that can handle client intake, draft documents, review contracts, and even negotiate fees autonomously
The future may involve AI agents as both service providers and clients, fundamentally changing the nature of legal work and what value lawyers provide
Antti maintains balance by keeping consistent daily routines, avoiding calendar clutter through old-fashioned phone calls, and prioritizing activities that bring meaning over financial success
Legal professionals should experiment with AI by building things, testing tools hands-on, and maintaining childlike curiosity about what’s possible
The goal isn’t to replace lawyers but to augment capabilities and make quality legal services more accessible to people who need them
Notable Quotes:
“I was a bad student, you know, but really bad grades. I didn’t really fit into the traditional education system at all. I was more of a like a skater snowboarder type of dude.” - Antti Innanen (05:47-05:59)
“Those things that you know I was really ashamed of maybe that I didn’t graduate from like from a core university or I didn’t like you know I graduated with bad grades and I wondered a little bit here and there you know kind of became my superpowers also.” - Antti Innanen (06:26-06:42)
“Legal design is like at the simplest, how do we make legal systems or legal processes or documents or any kind of legal things, how do we make those things more accessible, more human-centered, and maybe less alienating for the people?” - Antti Innanen (09:42-10:00)
“I think that the only way that we are able to understand these things is by building them. You can read all the blog posts, you can follow all the hype, you can do whatever you want, but unless you build it, you just don’t fully understand it.” - Antti Innanen (30:09-30:25)
“If you ask me, what would my 10 commandments of how to do proper legal AI be? I’d be like, I don’t have any. I’d rather see you like build something, like test something, be like use like, you know, figure things out for yourself, because I think that that’s the only way of really learning is by doing these things.” - Antti Innanen (30:29-30:49)
“I have the feeling that these AI agents are always friendly and they’re never tired and they always want to give it another go. It’s almost like, you know, at least at this point, it’s like never ending patience from me.” - Antti Innanen (33:53-34:08)
“For me, it’s like I want to fight the good fight. I want to, like, for some reason, I don’t know why, but I have this, like, feeling like I need to do something meaningful. I need to feel like I’m fighting the good fight.” - Antti Innanen (46:08-46:21)
“I’m at that point of my career where I don’t need much, you know, I have my old car, I do jujitsu doesn’t cost me anything like I’m over of being like very like financially successful or anything like that. But I just want to do something meaningful.” - Antti Innanen (46:26-46:41)
Clips
The Real AI Use Case: You
Stop Waiting — Just Start
Reimagine Roles Before Automating
I Fought Becoming A Lawyer
Antti’s journey embodies a refreshing counternarrative to traditional legal career paths. His self-described status as a bad student and philosophy dropout didn’t limit him—it freed him to question assumptions and build innovative solutions outside conventional frameworks. This outsider perspective, combined with his deep expertise in legal design, enables him to see how AI can make legal services more accessible and human-centered rather than simply more efficient.
What makes Antti’s approach particularly compelling is his emphasis on playful experimentation. Rather than waiting for perfect frameworks or best practices, he builds prototypes, tests tools, and learns through hands-on experience. His self-driving law firm experiments demonstrate both the remarkable capabilities of current AI technology and thoughtful consideration of how these tools can expand access to justice rather than simply replace human lawyers.
Closing Thoughts
As someone who’s been in the legal tech space for years, I find Antti’s approach both inspiring and instructive. He represents a new breed of legal innovator who combines deep expertise in making legal services more human-centered with genuine curiosity about technological possibilities. His refusal to offer rigid commandments or frameworks for AI adoption, instead encouraging lawyers to experiment and build, is exactly what our profession needs right now.
What strikes me most is Antti’s focus on meaning over money. In an industry often dominated by billable hours and financial metrics, his commitment to fighting the good fight and doing meaningful work offers a different model of success. He’s using AI not to maximize profits but to expand access to quality legal services for people who need them.
For our Legal Rebels community, Antti’s story demonstrates that you don’t need a perfect academic pedigree or traditional career path to drive meaningful innovation. Sometimes being a misfit, a philosophy dropout, or someone who doesn’t quite fit the mold gives you the perspective needed to see possibilities others miss. His hands-on experimentation with AI agents shows us that the future of legal practice isn’t something to fear; it’s something to build, one curious experiment at a time.
The combination of legal design principles with AI capabilities creates powerful opportunities to make legal services more accessible, understandable, and human-centered. As Antti demonstrates through his work, the goal isn’t to remove humanity from legal services but to use technology to amplify our ability to serve more people with the same care and quality they deserve.
