Profile
Experience &
approach.
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.
- Purpose
- What must be achieved, decided or protected?
- Evidence
- What is known, uncertain or disputed?
- Law
- What does the law permit, require or restrict? What is at risk?
- Course
- What is the simplest sound response: legal advice or action, a change in practice, a tool or no intervention?
Work in the open.
OpenCaseLaw
An open, machine-readable corpus of Swiss court decisions and legislation, built for source-linked research.
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.
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.