Legal Tech’s Future: Vibe Coding and Product Lifecycle Management

As stated in a Complex Discovery article, legal technology is entering a new era characterized by rapid prototyping, democratized development, and continuous product lifecycle management (PLM). For legal operations professionals, the ability to innovate quickly while ensuring compliance is becoming a decisive factor in achieving success. 

The shift from static, sequential product lifecycle management to continuous, agile cycles is reshaping how legal organizations approach solution design and delivery. Traditional development processes that spanned months are being replaced by iterative models, where ideas are tested, validated, and refined in days. This evolution is not purely technical. It represents a strategic alignment of legal teams with business agility while preserving governance and control. 

At the center of this transformation is the expanding role of product managers. Once primarily coordinators, they now act as strategic leaders who integrate market insight, regulatory demands, and user needs. Product managers are increasingly taking an active role in prototyping. Instead of only writing requirements for developers, they now build functional prototypes using no-code tools. 

The rise of “vibe coding,” introduced in 2025, underscores the democratization of development. By using natural language prompts to generate working code, legal professionals can prototype solutions themselves without waiting for IT cycles. 

For legal teams, these trends open opportunities to automate tasks such as document review, regulatory monitoring, and matter intake more efficiently. Nevertheless, there are still challenges. To ensure that rapid prototyping does not compromise reliability or compliance, governance, security, and change management must be established and implemented. Organizations that strike a balance between experimentation and strong oversight are best positioned to succeed.

Legal professionals who are accustomed to formal IT request processes may hesitate to take on direct responsibility for building prototypes. Overcoming this cultural shift will require strong change management strategies supported by a comprehensive training program. The future of legal technology lies not in choosing between rapid innovation and strict compliance, but in deliberately combining approaches that achieve both.