About
Jake Lawrence
I have spent ten years getting software to work inside public institutions, first as the customer and then as the person the vendor sends. Now I help teams adopt AI the same way: start with the people, set the rules, teach, and stay until it sticks. Chicago area (Pingree Grove, IL).
Background
- 2015 to 2020Two village hallsDeputy village clerk, then management analyst and the client-side project lead on enterprise software rollouts: asset management for public works, a municipal court system, a FOIA platform. I ran the RFPs from the buyer's side of the table.
- 2020 to 2025The person the vendor sendsImplementation for court case management and digital payments software, across 100+ deployments nationwide. Legacy data conversion, reconciliation, cutover, and go-live, usually a dozen projects at once.
- 2024 onIndependent practiceA court collections review console for a paying municipality (the full multi-court platform runs as a public demo at demo.courtcollect.xyz), a credentialing product with an anchor customer (its public demo runs at demo.useheddle.com), a free Ukrainian course, and the working systems on this site. The thread through all of it is AI enablement. That means getting people who never asked for a new tool to use it well, and to still be using it a year later.
How I work
Start with the people who have to use it
The clerk at the counter and the resident on the phone decide whether a system worked. Requirements come from watching them, not from the contract.
Move the data honestly
Most go-lives fail in the conversion. Map it, reconcile it, and show the counts that did not match before anyone signs off.
Show your work
Cite the source, publish the data, and test the claim. The research on this site re-verifies its own numbers in CI.
Teach until you are not needed
A rollout is done when the team runs it without me. So the first win is one they make themselves, and each week after that they get a little more than they can do today.
Reach me
Email is best: jake@jakelawrence.xyz. I am also on LinkedIn and GitHub. For a freelance project, the hire page has an intake form and fixed-scope offers.