About

I’m Ross Marlow.

Or rather, that’s the name I write under here. The real me is a corporate lawyer with over fifteen years in M&A, equity financing, and cross-border transactions. I write under a pen name because (a) my firm has opinions, and (b) honest reviews require not caring whether vendors invite me to their next conference.

Why this site exists

Sometime in 2024, a partner at my firm forwarded me an email pitch from a “legal AI” company offering a $500/month subscription to “transform contract review.” I was already using Claude for the same tasks, and getting better results, for $20.

That moment is what this site is about.

The legal-tech industry is in the middle of a wrapper bubble. Vendors are wrapping general-purpose models like GPT and Claude in legal-themed UIs, charging 25x markup, and selling them to risk-averse partners who don’t have time to test the originals.

Some of these tools are worth it. Most aren’t.

What I write about

• AI tool reviews: Honest evaluations of legal-tech SaaS, with specific tasks, specific time savings, and specific verdicts.
• Workflow over wrappers: How a practicing lawyer actually uses Claude, Claude Code, and other general-purpose AI to do the work that legal SaaS promises to do.
• The economics: What’s worth paying for, what’s a wrapper with a markup, and how to tell the difference.

A note on AI

I use AI tools to help draft these articles—the same tools I’m reviewing. Every piece is reviewed, fact-checked, and edited by me before publication. The judgments are mine. The bills I track are real. The screenshots are from my own license.

Contact

You can reach me at [email protected].

If you’re a legal-tech vendor who’d like your product reviewed: I review tools I pay for myself. I don’t accept free trials, sponsored posts, or “exclusive partnerships.” If you have a counter-perspective on something I’ve written, I’ll consider publishing your reply.