Independent lawyer in Zurich and Basel. Jonas Hertner

Dis­putes. Gover­nance.
Law & AI.

Practice

Advice, review & representation.

Advice & governance

Advice to boards, owners and legal teams on decisions about authority, ownership and responsibility, before commitments become difficult to reverse.

For families, foundations and individuals, the work includes governance, business and asset transactions, and succession. It takes account of the people, relationships and interests behind the legal structure.

Discuss a decision

Disputes & investigations

Advice and representation in Swiss and cross-border civil and criminal matters, including shareholder and financial disputes, investigations and corporate criminal liability.

An independent review clarifies what a major dispute turns on, what the evidence supports, potential recovery or liability, and the cost of proceeding, funding or settling.

The practice also covers Swiss proceedings involving state action, constitutional and fundamental rights, including questions arising from the environment and emerging technology, with counsel abroad where needed.

A Swiss AI-native litigation boutique.

I lead the work, select exceptional specialists for each matter and structure our fees to align with the client’s objective.

Investigation, strategy & representation

Law & AI

I help legal teams and organisations put AI to work: define a useful task, improve the workflow and keep the knowledge gained available for the next decision.

Define the task and sources before choosing or building an AI system. Establish who may decide, what must be checked, how exceptions are handled and what must be recorded. The organisation retains its knowledge, controls the process and can explain its decisions. Legal agents inside the organisation sets out the operating model. More at Rule & Reason.

Working together on legal AI

Profile

Experience & approach.

Portrait of Jonas Hertner

Jonas Hertner is an independent Swiss lawyer. For more than a decade, he has worked on Swiss and cross-border matters. He advises directly, provides independent review and works alongside existing counsel. Rule & Reason brings together legal advice, AI implementation and organisational knowledge.

Public benefit practice
Alongside the independent practice, head lawyer at Regenerative Law.
Private practice
Helped establish the Swiss office of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan.
Earlier work
Non-profit organisations, the Directorate of International Law of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, and the Court of Appeal of Basel-Stadt.
Education
Law degrees from the Universities of Lucerne and Geneva (with distinction).
Public work
Built OpenCaseLaw and wrote The Good Board.
Languages
English, German and French.

Method

Purpose before process.

I begin with the client’s objective and remain responsible for the work. The conclusions stay connected to their sources, with uncertainty and the next steps made clear.

Four questions to guide the work
StepQuestion
PurposeWhat must be achieved, decided or protected?
EvidenceWhat is known, uncertain or disputed?
LawWhat does the law permit, require or restrict? What is at risk?
CourseWhat is the simplest sound response: legal advice or action, a change in practice, a tool or no intervention?

Notes

Law & AI

Notes on law, artificial intelligence and the decisions that connect them.

Selected note

AI can widen legal review

AI can help a legal team examine more material and test more questions. Its value depends on traceable sources, measured performance and a lawyer prepared to stand behind the result.

Read the note

Public work

Work in the open.

These projects and notes make legal sources, practical guidance and working methods available for others to use and examine.

  1. 05.01 Open legal infrastructure opencaselaw.ch

    OpenCaseLaw

    An open, machine-readable corpus of Swiss court decisions and legislation, built for source-linked research.

  2. 05.02 Corporate governance thegoodboard.ch

    The Good Board

    A practical guide to Swiss corporate governance, organised around the decisions boards face. Jonas Hertner also helps board members develop and use AI tools tailored to their research and decision-making.

  3. 05.03 Framework / /agents

    Legal agents inside the organisation

    A framework for keeping legal knowledge inside the organisation, giving AI agents defined tasks and retaining human responsibility for decisions.

Supporting note: Legal work that stays useful. How sources, checks and decision records can serve the next matter.

Contact

Tell me what needs to be achieved, decided or protected.

Zurich & Basel

In your first email, name the people and entities involved so that conflicts of interest can be checked. Put any deadline at the start, but do not rely on sending an email to meet it. Send confidential information only through an agreed secure channel.