Legal Engineer →

Nextlex; San Francisco, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Nextlex is seeking a skilled professional to bridge legal expertise with software engineering, designing and validating AI-powered legal tools that are accurate, trustworthy, and practitioner-ready.

You will collaborate with AI and product teams, curate datasets for model training, and review outputs for compliance with legal standards, while developing ontologies and knowledge graphs to support legal reasoning.

Qualifications

• J.D. or 3+ years of legal practice experience.
• Strong analytical skills and ability to work with technical teams.
• Understanding of NLP, data annotation, and AI evaluation methodologies.
• Excellent written communication and attention to detail.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with AI and product teams to define legal requirements, validation criteria, and quality benchmarks.
• Design and curate legal datasets for model training, testing, and evaluation.
• Review AI-generated legal outputs for accuracy, completeness, and compliance with legal standards.
• Develop domain-specific ontologies, taxonomies, and knowledge graphs for legal reasoning.

Skills

Legal analysis

NLP concepts

Data annotation

AI evaluation methodologies

Written communication

Education

J.D. or equivalent legal qualification

Tools

Python

SQL

Job description

Bridge the gap between legal domain expertise and software engineering. This role combines a deep understanding of legal workflows, regulations, and practice areas with technical skills to design and validate AI-powered legal tools that are accurate, trustworthy, and practitioner-ready.

Key Responsibilities

• Collaborate with AI and product teams to define legal requirements, validation criteria, and quality benchmarks.
• Design and curate legal datasets for model training, testing, and evaluation.
• Review AI-generated legal outputs for accuracy, completeness, and compliance with legal standards.
• Develop domain-specific ontologies, taxonomies, and knowledge graphs for legal reasoning.

Qualifications

• J.D. or equivalent legal qualification, or 3+ years of legal practice experience.
• Strong analytical skills and comfort working with technical teams.
• Understanding of NLP concepts, data annotation, and AI evaluation methodologies.
• Excellent written communication and attention to detail.

Preferred Experience

• Experience in legal technology, legal operations, or computational law.
• Familiarity with Python or SQL for data analysis.
• Knowledge of regulatory compliance frameworks (GDPR, SOC 2, etc.).