AI jobs for lawyers and legal experts
Frontier AI labs pay practising lawyers, in-house counsel and legal professionals to grade a model's legal reasoning, write the reference answers it is scored against, and build the case scenarios that test it.
- Open roles
- 82
- Median rate
- $116/hr
- Publish an hourly rate
- 100%
listings, updated continuously
from 82 published bands
the sample every median here uses
What each legal specialty pays
Every listing we track, grouped by practice area. Rates are read from the platform's own posting — the median is of published hourly bands, and the range runs from the lowest published floor to the highest published ceiling.
| Specialty | Roles | Median | Published range | Distribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Family, Immigration & Specialist Practice | 7 | $170n=7 | $90–400 | |
| Litigation, Criminal & Civil Rights | 13 | $145n=13 | $80–400 | |
| Corporate, M&A & Transactions | 18 | $133n=18 | $80–400 | |
| In-House & General Counsel | 11 | $125n=11 | $85–160 | |
| General Legal & AI Evaluation | 9 | $120n=9 | $40–400 | |
| Intellectual Property & Patents | 6 | $104n=6 | $80–200 | |
| Contracts, Diligence & Commercial | 5 | $100n=5 | $75–160 | |
| Compliance, Privacy & Regulatory | 10 | $93n=10 | $31–150 | |
| Paralegals, Notaries & Law Students | 3 | $55n=3 | $35–150 |
Open legal roles
The listings behind the figures above, richest published ceiling first.
What lawyers do in AI
Grade a model's legal reasoning
Score AI-written memos, clause analyses and answers to questions of law against a rubric, and write the feedback a practising lawyer would give.
Write the reference answer
Produce the answer a model is measured against — grounded in statute, precedent and doctrine, with every citation checked against the primary source.
Build scenarios from your own practice
Turn the work you already do — deal diligence, patent claims, notarisation, discovery — into realistic tasks with a defensible correct answer.
Benchmark models on your jurisdiction's law
Run the same question through two systems and score which handled Australian, French, German, Japanese, Spanish or UK law correctly.
Work directly with an AI lab
Some listings are full-time roles embedded with a lab's research team writing legal evaluation sets — W-2, with on-site days in a specific city.
Who this work is for
Backgrounds in demand
- Corporate, M&A & transactional attorneys18roles
- Litigators, criminal & civil-rights attorneys13roles
- In-house & general counsel11roles
- Compliance, privacy & regulatory professionals10roles
- Patent attorneys, agents & IP counsel6roles
- Contracts & commercial lawyers5roles
- Paralegals, notaries & law students3roles
Commonly asked for
- Legal research & citation checking
- Contract review & redlining
- Due diligence memos
- Statutory & case-law analysis
- Patent prosecution & prior art
- Regulatory compliance review
- Privacy & data-protection review
- Drafting filings & pleadings
- Jurisdiction-specific benchmarking
- Rubric-based evaluation
- Written justification
Drawn from the listings themselves and not counted — the skills field on a listing is free text, and no ranking of it would mean anything.
Platforms hiring legal experts
- micro1Roles34Median$120Published range$31–400
- MercorRoles32Median$120Published range$60–170
- AfterQueryRoles11Median$118Published range$35–200
- EthosRoles5Median$100Published range$80–100
Figures are calculated over the legal listings each platform currently has open, on the same basis as the rate report.
Also join these expert networks
- PROFILE ENTRYEthos
One profile with Ethos, matched to paid opportunities across fields as they open — not an application to a single listing.
Create profile on Ethos → - PROFILE ENTRYHandshake AI
One profile with Handshake AI, matched to paid opportunities across fields as they open — not an application to a single listing.
Create profile on Handshake AI →
How AI expert work actually works
- 4 min read
How to Fact-Check an AI Answer
Break an answer into checkable claims, trace citations to their sources and distinguish false statements from missing evidence.
- 5 min read
What Is AI Evaluation Work?
An output, a set of instructions and a judgment to make. Understand the work, who uses it and where human reviewers fit into AI development.
- 5 min read
How to Pass an AI Evaluation Interview or Assessment
Prepare to demonstrate your reasoning, follow the assessment rules and explain your experience without scripts or invented credentials.
- 6 min read
Mercor vs micro1: How to Compare AI Evaluation Platforms
Compare the application route, project requirements and engagement terms. Choose a specific opportunity rather than a platform-wide promise.
Questions, answered plainly
Mostly judgement work: grading AI-generated memos, clause analyses and answers to legal questions against a rubric; writing the reference answers a model is scored against, with citations checked against primary sources; and building realistic scenarios — deal diligence, patent claims, filings — from the kind of work you already do. The legal judgement is what is being bought; the AI side is the subject, not the skill.
The median across the legal listings we track is at the top of this page, and each specialty's median and published range is in the table above it — every one with the number of listings behind it. Rates are read from the platform's own posting; where a platform publishes nothing, we show nothing.
It depends on the listing. Many name a specific credential — a US bar admission, a jurisdiction and years of practice, a registered patent practitioner, a commissioned notary — and not every listing asks for admission: the board has recruited current law students at an accredited school. Each role page states what that listing requires, and separates required from preferred.
Most listings here are project-based contract work paid by the hour, and most describe themselves as remote; some are full-time roles with on-site days. Several are posted per country — separate listings for Australian, French, German, Japanese, Spanish and UK-qualified lawyers — and some are restricted to the United States. Each role page repeats what its listing says. We publish no remote percentage, because a listing that says nothing about location is not the same as one that says “anywhere”.
Other fields
New legal roles, by email
One message on the days legal listings open. Nothing on the days they do not.