Software Engineers Are Becoming More Like Lawyers
Satisfice (James Bach), Thursday, October 1st, 2026
James Bach finds testing an AI coding agent is mostly close reading and legalistic debate with other AI agents.
Tester James Bach describes a project systematically testing Claude Opus as a coding agent, where most of Bach's time goes not to engineering but to analyzing documents that define behaviors and scoring criteria, and debating AI 'skills' that must agree with Bach's findings before a bug report can be filed.
Bach likens the work to expert-witness and legal practice, requiring patience, close reading, logic and rhetoric.
Bach argues engineers are becoming human agents in a web of loops, both controlling and controlled by AI.