Legal Domain Expert — AI Training at Mercor

Legal Domain Expert — AI Training & Evaluation | $50–90/hr | Bay Area, CA (Primarily Remote)

Join a leading AI lab's GenAI research team as a senior Legal Domain Expert, where your real-world legal expertise directly shapes how frontier AI models reason about complex legal work. This is a full-time W-2 role with Cincinnatus LLC, embedded within a top AI lab's extended workforce.

About the Role

This is not a generalist position. We are seeking a practicing legal specialist who can evaluate the quality of AI-generated legal reasoning, define what "correct" looks like, and build the benchmarks that measure genuine model improvement. You will work alongside AI researchers and program managers to translate deep legal expertise into structured, teachable standards.

Key Responsibilities

• Data QA & Review: Evaluate legal knowledge tasks and model outputs, identifying missing behaviors, shallow reasoning, and answers that wouldn't survive professional scrutiny.
• Instruction Specs & Golden Datasets: Author high-quality instruction specifications, produce authoritative solutions to legal problems, and define new legal tasks grounded in real practice.
• Benchmarks & Evaluation: Design challenging legal evaluation sets and help build domain-specific legal skills and tools with the research team.
• Calibration: Collaborate with researchers and adjacent specialists to maintain consistent standards, converting tacit legal judgment into explicit, teachable criteria.

Core Qualifications

• Education: Juris Doctor (JD) from an accredited law school; a highly ranked institution is strongly preferred.
• Experience: 5+ years of substantive post-qualification legal practice at a reputable law firm, corporate legal department, regulatory body, or court. Internships and clerkships alone do not qualify.
• Domain Depth: Genuine specialization in at least one area — corporate/transactional, litigation, regulatory/compliance, IP, employment/labor, or tax.
• Seniority: Demonstrated progression to partner, of counsel, counsel, senior associate, senior in-house counsel, or general counsel level.
• Licensure: Active admission to at least one U.S. state bar, in good standing.
• AI Fluency: Hands-on experience using large language models in professional work, with the judgment to distinguish well-reasoned answers from plausible-sounding errors.
• Availability: Able to commit to 40 hours per week for an initial 6-month engagement.
• Location: Must reside in the Bay Area, CA, with ability to come on-site occasionally.

Employment Details

This is a structured, full-time W-2 position with Cincinnatus LLC, an enterprise staffing company that places highly skilled professionals within leading technology companies. You will receive client-issued accounts and equipment and work directly inside the client's tools and workflows. This is not a freelance or project-based engagement.

Cincinnatus LLC is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer committed to an inclusive workplace and providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities.