Meet the lawyers of LawY: Jae Chang

LawY is an AI purpose-built for lawyers, by lawyers, which is why we’re excited to share a behind-the-scenes peek at the people behind the platform.

Meet Jae Chang, Family Lawyer and Operations Manager, who joined LawY back in October 2023. With his substantial experience in family law, he’s one of the many lawyers actively shaping LawY to ensure it remains a unique tool that solves lawyers’ real-world challenges.

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Hi Jae, tell us a bit about yourself and your experience in family law.

“I’ve been working in family law for almost 10 years now, and it’s a space I’ve really grown into and feel passionate about. Over the years, I’ve had the chance to work across a range of roles—on the ground in firms, behind the scenes in court, and now also in legal tech. It’s been a bit of an unconventional path, but each step has shaped the way I approach the practice of law today.

I always knew I wanted to get into litigation, and for a while, I was torn between crime and family law. It wasn’t until my final year of university that things started to fall into place. I landed a role as a Legal Support Officer with Legal Aid in the Family Law division, which I held for about a year and a half.

After Legal Aid, I stepped into a role as an Associate to a Family Court judge, which I held for a year. That experience was pivotal and it solidified my decision to practice in family law. As an Associate, I had the benefit of working with and receiving mentorship from renowned Judges, along with exposure to behind-the-scenes court procedures and processes. Also being able to observe some of the most well-regarded members of the legal profession run matters, hearings and make submissions was extremely insightful and valuable. Having that kind of guidance really gave me a strong foundation and helped springboard my transition into family law.

I began practicing law in 2016 and worked across several firms, including a well-known specialist family law firm in Newcastle. It was there that I also developed a strong interest in property settlement matters, largely due to the complexity and challenge of the work we handled.

Eventually, I returned to Sydney to commence a new role in legal technology at LEAP and later transitioned to LawY, where I currently work. In November 2024, I also took on the role of Adjunct Lecturer at the NSW College of Law, teaching in the areas of family law and the use of AI in legal practice—two areas I’m passionate about.”

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Thinking back to your time in private practice, what day-to-day frustrations did you face that you wish LawY had solved back then?

“From my experience working across a number of law firms, one of the most frustrating aspects of legal practice was how time-consuming and repetitive certain tasks were—especially drafting documents. Standard letters, precedents, and other routine paperwork could have easily been automated, yet we spent hours doing them manually.

Legal research also posed ongoing challenges. In many of the firms I worked at—particularly smaller or mid-sized family law practices—didn’t have access to costly platforms like LexisNexis. Instead, we relied heavily on publicly accessible databases like AustLII and Jade, which meant starting from scratch and manually searching for cases. Having a structured starting point or some kind of guided framework would have made a huge difference in streamlining the research process.

Another widespread challenge in practice is the difficulty of accessing colleagues for support or clarification. Whether you're in a large or small firm, everyone is often tied up—in client meetings, court, or conferences. When you're trying to get a second opinion or wanting to talk something through, it's not always possible to find someone available.

What became increasingly clear to me was that if we could expedite these time-consuming tasks—through automation, smarter research tools, or more efficient workflows—we’d free up valuable time to focus more on client interaction, serviceability, case management, and strategic thinking. Especially in family law, where clients are navigating through emotionally complex, high-conflict, stressful and uncertain times, that matters. They don’t just need legal advice—they need reassurance, support, confidence and availability. By reducing the administrative burden, we could offer more meaningful engagement, build stronger rapport, and ultimately achieve better outcomes for the people we're trying to help.”

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What would your past self—back in the thick of practice—have thought about LawY?

“I think I would have held some initial reservations about the accuracy and reliability of AI tools. Like any lawyer, I’m risk-adverse by nature, and so instinctively I would bring some skepticism and a myriad of questions about AI.

That said, now for me, AI presents an unprecedented and exciting opportunity—this is clear as day. When applying AI tools into the framework of a busy legal practice, I would start by experimenting with it before or after work hours, just to see and understand what it could do.

Like with any new piece of technology, your starting point for effective adoption is by testing it out yourself. Having a solid understanding of what AI can do, is key to ensuring safe and optimal implementation which is instrumental to legal practice.

Given today’s climate, where you’ve got junior or graduate lawyers who are far more attuned to this kind of technology, I would definitely consider the use of AI in practice. Especially from a risk management perspective, I’d want to properly understand the capabilities and limitations of AI, so that I can adequately and appropriately supervise its use and build the right guardrails around it.

In practice, we’re often constrained by time and the limited tools available. If there’s something that can genuinely improve efficiency, it’s well worth exploring—especially when many of us are prone to long hours of endless work. I’d want to know how AI could ease that burden and enhance the delivery of legal services in a consistent and efficient manner.

Ultimately, the mass adoption of AI is a fait accompli. Like with any technological advancements, it will happen whether we embrace it or not. If you choose not to utilize AI tools, you risk being outcompeted and left behind.

It’s a bit like the shift from textbooks to online resources, from fax to email, or even from servers to cloud. If you're not leveraging available technology, you limit adaptability and flexibility. Basic things like working remotely become a challenge, especially noting the WFH sentiment post COVID. Even in the context of Family Court proceedings, there is an expectation that legal practitioners, clients and litigants can appear electronically via Microsoft Teams.

Being an early adopter of new technology ensures that you stay ahead of your game and prepare for ever-changing standards set by society and the profession. AI is quickly becoming part of that new professional standard, and staying up to date is essential for maintaining a competitive edge.”

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How does being a lawyer, yourself influence the way you approach contributing to the design and evolution of LawY?

“Being a lawyer definitely influences how I approach LawY—but it’s not just me. We’ve got a number of lawyers across the team who are deeply involved in helping us understand our users and shape features that address major pain points experienced by lawyers.

We run strategy sessions every few months to define our priorities and to dig into the real pain points—whether it's time lost to repetitive drafting or inefficiencies in managing correspondence. Those insights drive our product conversations, and we work closely as a team to translate these insights into solutions that genuinely ease the workload.

We’ve seen how powerful it is to give lawyers a first draft—having something to work from makes it much faster to review and refine, rather than starting with a blank page. Whether it’s for drafting or research, the goal is to give lawyers a springboard—something that gets the bones of the task in place so they can move faster and focus on higher-value work.

Before any feature goes live, there’s a strong feedback loop in place. We're hands-on in product; which involves rigorously testing whether the feature delivers on the problem it was designed to solve and whether it makes sense in a lawyer’s daily workflow. We're also constantly looking at how we can uplift the platform’s accuracy and reliability. That means reducing risks like hallucinations and steadily refining the quality of AI outputs—because that’s what ultimately builds trust and long-term value for lawyers.”

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What kind of feedback have you received from other lawyers?

“I’ve been here since around October 2023, and one thing I’ve consistently heard is how much the quality of the AI-generated answers has improved, validating my own experience. As the volume of verified answers grow, the AI becomes even more accurate—so it’s been rewarding to watch that progress over time.

The feedback has been really encouraging, especially about all of the substantial time-saving benefits that our users have experienced. For instance, some users rely on LawY while they’re at court. They’ve found it incredibly helpful in those time-sensitive situations where you need to move fast and don’t have the luxury of sitting down to do extended research. It really helps with navigating tight timeframes and limited resources.

Another good example is a firm I recently spoke to where everyone—from junior solicitors to partners—is using LawY. They’ve built protocols around it, and it’s now an integral part of their legal practice. By incorporating it into their workflow, they’ve saved hours every week. It’s exciting to hear about the firm-wide adoption of LawY that’s happening across the world.”

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Can you share what’s next for LawY?

“Absolutely—we’ve just launched some exciting new features, and there’s more on the way (which we can't talk about yet), all designed to solve legal-specific pain points in a practical, meaningful way.

One of our recent updates is a new way to submit for verification. Verification by qualified ‘lawyer-in-the-loop’ has always been a core feature, which is why we want to enhance it so that it’s always tailored to the way lawyers think and work. By helping you refine your input and frame questions with greater clarity, it ensures optimal AI output and a deeper understanding of the relevant legal principles at play.

How it works is that in a conversation in LawY, you can now select ‘Generate’ which extracts and rephrases a list of all substantive legal questions asked in your conversation. Then you can select what you would like a lawyer-in-the-loop to verify, and then hit ‘Submit for verification’.

We also know that safe and effective adoption of AI is an ongoing process for many firms, so we’re excited to share that we’ve kicked off our webinar series for the year. Our webinars help you get started with LawY and sharpen your AI skills to unlock the substantial time-saving benefits.”

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In conclusion

Thanks to Jae for sharing his experiences in law and in shaping the future of LawY. Our lawyers in the team play a key role to ensure we’re not building just any tech—we’re building the right tech for legal firms.

Stay tuned for more stories from the team, and learn how to get started using LawY in your firm.