The New Hot Job in Law Doesnt Require a J.D.

In 2018, when Daniel Himmel first moved from practicing law to a job that today might be called legal engineering, it felt like a big career risk.“I was nervous,” he said.“I thought, what is my career going to look like? Where do I go from here?”He doesn’t feel that way anymore.

As the head of legal engineering for North America at the legal tech company Legora, Himmel has hired about 70 people over the past year.They’re part of a global team of about 200 legal engineers the company has built since 2024.

“We’re hiring hundreds, and competitors are hiring them, and our clients are hiring them,” he said.“It’s a true profession.”And it’s one of the hottest jobs in the rapidly changing world of law.

As artificial intelligence is becoming a bigger part of legal work, technology vendors like Legora, law firms, and in-house legal teams are all looking for people who understand both law and technology well enough to rewrite work flows and teach others how to use A.I.tools.Often, they’re called “legal engineers.” But they are also sometimes described as “knowledge and innovation counsels,” “innovation attorneys,” or “legal applications engineers.”Exactly what the job entails varies from company to company, as does the salary: The law firm Latham & Watkins is hiring “legal engineering attorneys” in at least five cities, with a salary range of $220,000 to $250,000.

An “A.I.innovation adviser” at Kirkland & Ellis can make between $153,000 and $220,000 a year, according to the company’s job listing, while Gibson Dunn is advertising a salary for a “legal technology & AI Attorney” between $250,000 to $300,000.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

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