About Robert

I'm Robert van der Vijver, and I've spent decades working inside California's legal system from more angles than most: criminal defense support, legislative analysis, reentry policy, research into the healthcare systems that serve justice-involved individuals, and the close reading of complicated records. The thread through all of it is the same. Read carefully, think clearly, and say what is actually there, not just what was easy to find.

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First, the part the State Bar would like you to read before anything entertaining happens: I am not an attorney, and nothing on this site is legal advice. I provide legal support services under the direction of licensed attorneys. They practice law. My job is making sure that when they do, the file underneath them holds.

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Experience

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My background spans criminal defense support for private attorneys, legislative analysis and training, and JIRI reentry policy work carried out through a contractor. I also conducted research for a private company focused on the healthcare requirements and current systems that serve justice-involved individuals during incarceration and reentry. Much of the work comes down to documents, often difficult ones. I am comfortable in medical and mental health records and the clinical language most people read past, which is frequently where a case actually turns. Born in the Netherlands and fluent in English and Dutch, I work with attorneys, decision makers, and organizations across California, with a focus on Sacramento, El Dorado, Placer, Amador, and San Joaquin counties.

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AI, with adult supervision

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I use AI tools every day, and I teach attorneys to use them without becoming a cautionary tale in someone else's CLE. I have developed MCLE training on AI-generated evidence and the legal work of verification, and I write regularly about how AI is showing up in California's courtrooms, case files, and patrol cars.

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My working position: AI is a gifted assistant with boundless confidence and no fixed relationship with the truth. It will summarize a thousand-page record in seconds, and every so often it will invent a paragraph, delivered in the same warm, assured tone as the accurate parts. So nothing it produces gets repeated until it has been checked against the source. The machine drafts. The human verifies. The attorney decides. In that order, every time.

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I also build websites (BAR Rule compliant)

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Including this one. I build and manage web presence for attorneys, from design and content to local search and the structured data that tells Google what you actually do. If your firm's online footprint is a directory listing from 2011 and a phone number that rings at an office you left, that is fixable, and fixing it does not require a single meeting about your "brand journey."

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How I work with people

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Most people know more than they think they do, and they say more when they are not being interrogated. I am good at the quiet part of this work: putting someone at ease, listening without rushing, and asking the next question in a way that does not feel like a trap. People remember more, and share more, when they feel heard rather than handled. That is usually where the detail that matters comes from.

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A bit more

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I came to this work through curiosity more than a straight line. I read widely, I am at home with science and the way technical material is built, and I would rather understand a problem fully than handle it at the surface. That range is the point. The cases and questions attorneys bring me rarely fit neatly in one box, and neither do I.

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Let's talk

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If you need someone you can trust with sensitive material and complex files, or a web presence that finally works as hard as you do, let's talk.

VdVLaw provides legal support services under attorney direction and does not provide legal advice.