Intro
500 hours. That’s how long I spent at SP Madrid & Associates Law Firm as a Developer-slash-AI Prompt Engineer intern. Sounds like a mouthful, but basically: I coded, I automated, I told AI what to do (and sometimes begged it to behave).
It was equal parts law firm drama and tech playground — and somehow, I came out smarter, faster, and way more caffeinated.
Our OJT team at SP Madrid & Associates Law Firm
About the Firm
SP Madrid isn’t your dusty, leather-bound-law-books kind of firm. They’re lawyers who actually like tech. Which means they let an intern like me experiment with AI and automation instead of just making coffee. Respect.
SP Madrid & Associates Law Firm
What I Actually Did
- AI babysitting: Tweaked client chatbots and document bots so they stopped saying dumb things.
- Automation magic: Wrote Python scripts to make repetitive legal tasks disappear. (Bye-bye manual reports.)
- Prompt engineering: Crafted prompts that didn’t just sound smart, but actually made the AI useful.
- Team stuff: Meetings, feedback loops, reviews — the usual “we’re building something real” vibe.
Working on AI development and automation projects
Wins (a.k.a. Things I Brag About)
- AI agents got 40% better at responding (no more “🤖 sorry I don’t understand” every two minutes).
- My Python scripts cut 60% of the manual workload. The lawyers loved me.
- Built an OJT tracker system because… well, nobody else was doing it.
- Learned how to ship ideas that weren’t just school-project theoretical, but production-level usable.
OJT Tracker System I developed to monitor progress
Skills Leveled Up
Technical: Python, APIs, AI workflows, automation, Git, databases.
Soft: Explaining tech to non-tech people (lawyers), managing time, and keeping my cool when AI hallucinated case law out of nowhere.
Learning AI development techniques
Collaborating with the development team
The “Oh No” Moments
Legal jargon was a foreign language at first. Imagine trying to automate something when you don’t even know what “affidavit” means.
Found out the hard way that one bad prompt = hours of cleanup. AI is smart… until it isn’t.
Balancing fast vs. right. Turns out lawyers like things accurate. Who knew?
Me and my buddy, Vince.
Just me.
The Best Parts
Built an AI-powered document analysis system that could chew through legal docs and spit out the important stuff. The lawyers were impressed; I just felt like a wizard.
Team meetings where my ideas actually got used. Nothing like watching something you pitched end up in production.
AI interface implementation for document analysis
Wrap-Up
This OJT wasn’t just about padding my resume — it was a crash course in solving real problems without a textbook.
I learned that AI is only as good as the humans guiding it, that law firms can be surprisingly innovative, and that breaking things (then fixing them) is how you grow.
Would I do it again? Absolutely. But maybe with less coffee.