Legal Researcher

Overview

This hourly, remote contractor role involves working as a Legal Research Subject Matter Expert (SME) to review AI-generated legal research outputs and/or produce expert legal research content. The role requires evaluating reasoning quality and step-by-step issue analysis while providing precise written feedback. Responsibilities include assessing solutions for accuracy, clarity, completeness, and adherence to prompts; identifying errors in issue spotting, jurisdiction handling, authority selection, citation accuracy, and rule application; verifying that legal statements are appropriately supported by primary authority where required; writing high-quality explanations and model research memos demonstrating correct, risk-aware legal reasoning; and rating and comparing multiple responses based on correctness and reasoning quality.

There is no immediate project available for this role; however, qualified candidates will be among the first contacted when relevant opportunities arise. This also provides access to future projects through the expert network.

Responsibilities

• Develop AI training content by creating detailed prompts and gold-standard legal research outputs such as issue outlines, research plans, memo templates, and authority summaries.
• Evaluate and rank AI responses to improve accuracy, defensibility, citation support, and clarity.
• Test AI outputs for inaccuracies, misleading certainty, jurisdictional errors, and bias; validate reliability across various legal scenarios.

Requirements

• JD, LLB, or equivalent legal qualification, or advanced paralegal/legal research background with substantial primary-law research experience; active bar membership is a plus.
• Minimum of 5 years of professional legal research experience in settings such as law firms, in-house legal departments, government, academia, or legal publishing.
• Strong ability to conduct structured legal research including issue framing, jurisdiction selection, authority retrieval, synthesis, and addressing caveats or uncertainty.
• Proven experience interpreting statutes, regulations, and case law, including understanding holdings versus dicta and procedural posture relevance.
• Strong citation hygiene skills, including verifying quotations, pinpoint citations, proposition support, and flagging unsupported assertions.
• Comfortable handling jurisdictional variation and clearly stating assumptions or limits (e.g., US state vs federal law, EU member states, common law vs civil law).
• Excellent attention to detail with minimum C1 English proficiency and clear, concise legal writing.
• Reliable, self-directed, and able to deliver consistent quality in an hourly, remote contractor workflow across time zones.
• Familiarity with legal research tools such as Westlaw, Lexis, or equivalents, and citation formats like Bluebook or local standards is a plus.
• Prior experience with AI data training/annotation, editorial quality assurance, knowledge management, or legal publishing is strongly preferred.

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Citation checking
• Jurisdictional analysis
• Issue spotting
• Legal writing
• Research memos
• Primary authority analysis
• Case law analysis
• Statutory and regulatory interpretation

Location

Remote (hourly contractor role)