Legal AI Engineer

Dentons US LLP; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 120,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Dentons US LLP is seeking a Legal AI Engineer to translate legal expertise into scalable AI solutions. You will design AI-enabled workflows in collaboration with lawyers and knowledge teams, building prompts, schemas, and decision logic for an AI-first environment.

Responsibilities include re-engineering legal processes for AI-first execution, curating reference sets, and implementing evaluation frameworks to ensure reliability and compliance with firm policies and client confidentiality.

Qualifications

• J.D. from an accredited law school is required.
• Minimum two years of substantive legal practice.
• Minimum two years in a legal engineering/AI role.
• Experience on a law firm innovation team or legal tech company preferred.
• Hands-on experience building AI workflows and prompts.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, test and improve AI-enabled legal workflows and agents.
• Re-engineer legal processes for AI-first execution with human review where needed.
• Turn playbooks and drafting standards into prompts, schemas, and logic.
• Curate precedents for retrieval-augmented generation and evaluation.
• Build evaluation frameworks to measure AI output reliability.
• Identify failure modes and implement controls and escalation steps.
• Ensure solutions comply with Dentons policies and protect confidential information.
• Other duties to meet the position needs.

Skills

Legal AI experience

JSON/Schema

LLMs understanding

Cross-functional communication

Education

J.D. from an accredited law school

Degree in CS/DS/Engineering or related field

Equivalent technical experience

Tools

Harvey

Microsoft Copilot

JSON Schema

YAML

Markdown

Job description

Dentons US LLP is currently recruiting for a Legal AI Engineer to turn legal expertise into reliable, scalable AI solutions. Working closely with lawyers, practice groups and knowledge, innovation, and technology teams, the Legal AI Engineer will redesign legal workflows for an AI-enabled environment. This position will build them with prompts, schemas, playbooks, decision logic and evaluation frameworks, using platforms such as Harvey, Microsoft Copilot, and other enterprise AI platforms.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, test and improve AI-enabled legal workflows, applications and agents, including solutions on Harvey, Microsoft Copilot and other enterprise AI platforms.
• Re-engineer legal processes for AI-first execution, deciding what AI, automation and lawyers should each do and where human review is required.
• Turn playbooks, checklists, negotiation positions and drafting standards into prompts, schemas, decision trees and workflow logic.
• Curate precedents and model documents into reference sets for retrieval-augmented generation and evaluation.
• Build evaluation frameworks, such as golden datasets, rubrics and regression tests, to measure the accuracy and reliability of AI output.
• Find failure modes and hallucinations, and put controls, review gates and escalation steps in place.
• Work with Information Security, Risk and Knowledge Management to make sure solutions meet Dentons policies and professional obligations, including protection of confidential and privileged client information.
• Other duties as required to fully meet the needs of the position.

Experience & Qualifications

• J.D. from an accredited law school, required and a degree in computer science, data science, engineering or a related field, or equivalent technical experience, preferred
• Minimum two years of substantive legal practice.
• Minimum two years in a legal engineering, innovation attorney, AI engineering or similar role.
• Experience on a law firm innovation team, or at a legal AI company, alternative legal services provider or legal software company, preferred.
• Hands-on experience building and refining AI workflows, prompts or agents, not only using AI tools as an end user.
• Practical experience with legal and enterprise AI platforms such as Harvey and Microsoft Copilot, including configuring workflows, agents or prompt libraries and driving lawyer adoption.
• Skill with JSON, JSON Schema, YAML and Markdown.
• Working understanding of LLMs, RAG, embeddings, tool use, agentic workflows, structured outputs and model evaluation.
• Clear communication with both lawyers and technologists, and sound judgment about where AI helps and where human review is still needed.

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Dentons US LLP offers a competitive salary and benefits package including medical, dental, vision, 401k, profit sharing, short-term/long-term disability, life insurance, tuition reimbursement, paid time off, paid holidays and discretionary bonuses.

Dentons US LLP is an Equal Opportunity Employer - Disability/Vet. Pursuant to local ordinances, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.