Sean Hewens. Innovating at the intersection of design, law, and technology.
I lead Pneumatic, a legal innovation studio. I'm a former IDEO Senior Director, where I founded IDEO's Legal Design & Innovation practice. I'm always building AI tools and ventures.
FJC AI Toolkit
A platform teaching AI literacy to federal judges, delivering practical skills that help them navigate the ways that AI has burst into their courtrooms and into their judicial chambers.
Circuits, a Microskills Platform
Circuits is a peer-to-peer microskills marketplace where lawyers teach each other the tangible craft of lawyering. Behind the scenes, the Circuits AI captures these moments of human-to-human knowledge transfer and turns them into reusable knowledge assets.
I have decades of experience helping legal institutions — from federal courts to AmLaw 100 firms to solo practitioners — adapt what they do and how they operate. At a moment when legal technology is disrupting every nook and cranny of the legal industry, my secret sauce is keeping lawyers at the center of the innovation process.
Innovation Certificate Program (ICP)
An immersive innovation training program for a cohort of 40 leaders inside the firm, combining practical design thinking, organizational design, and behavioral science. The program ran successfully for five years (200 alumni total) before being adapted into an AI-focused version in Year 6.
AI-Enabled Lawyer Tools
Two AI-powered tools co-designed in close collaboration with the lawyers from a finance practice group at a major AmLaw 100 law firm. Tool 1 automates the first drafts of complex financial documents. Tool 2 is an AI deal-management tool that meets lawyers where they already work, in their email inboxes.
Rex, a Law Firm Innovation Lab
A complete operating model for an innovation lab inside an AmLaw 100 firm, including a playbook for sourcing and piloting new ideas, a balanced innovation portfolio strategy, and a staffing model where lawyers work alongside technology and design experts.
I design programs and lead multi-disciplinary teams operating in enormously complicated systems like international development and multi-billion dollar law firms with offices in 50 cities. I excel at designing the conditions to make sh** happen inside slow, political, and risk-adverse institutions where most innovation efforts die on the vine.
DOJ Debrief
An internal technology platform that helps DOJ prosecutors build new data and technology skills. The platform – called Debrief – enables federal prosecutors to exchange short, human stories about the tools and methods they are actually using, then makes it easy for real world connection to happen as follow-up.
The DFID Amplify Program
A $15M innovation program inside the UK Government's Department for International Development, designed to make global aid distribution faster, more iterative, and more closely matched to the needs of aid recipients and last-mile providers on the ground in the developing world.
Gates Foundation 2025 Initiative
A multi-year relationship with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation encompassing several engagements. The headline project was Gates 2025, an initiative that built a sense of shared purpose and coordinated grantmaking decisions across the foundation's 28 funding priorities and ~$6 billion annual portfolio.
IKEA Foundation
A redesigned annual grantmaking process that was less siloed, more collaborative, and strategically aligned with the IKEA Foundation's multi-year funding priorities.
I've always been a builder and a tinkerer, and AI has unlocked a superpower I didn't know I possessed even 12 months ago. I've built a venture-scale peer-to-peer learning platform, an automated title review tool, and even an LED map that replicates a model train layout my father built several decades ago. Software, hardware, and professional tooling — all built in close collaboration with AI tools AND my human clients — are my jam.
AI Title Review Tool
A working AI tool that automates property title reviews for real estate attorneys. The system ingests a title report and its supporting instruments (deeds, easements, plats, affidavits, etc.), extracts every encumbrance into a structured schema, runs a second-pass quality review, and renders the result as a Word document and an editable web workspace in the attorney's preferred formatting layout.
Ignatius, a Rare Book Cataloguing App
A rare book cataloguing app. Snap a photo of the front cover and copyright page and the app tracks down cataloguing information, returns a valuation, and adds the book to a personal collection which is viewable on the go for the next time you're in a bookstore wondering whether you already own that obscure Murakami you're thinking of spending $50 on…
A Wall-Mounted LED Train Map
A wall-mounted LED art piece recreating my dad's hand-drawn model train mimic panel. 298 individual LEDs animate two trains running on the track, one looping the perimeter, one making dynamic switching decisions through the inner network. This was my first collaboration with AI tools to program and build a physical product.