Legal Researcher

In this hourly, remote contractor role, you will work as a Legal Research Subject Matter Expert (SME) to review AI-generated legal research outputs and/or produce expert legal research content, evaluating reasoning quality and step-by-step issue analysis while providing precise written feedback. You will assess solutions for accuracy, clarity, completeness, and adherence to the prompt; identify errors in issue spotting, jurisdiction handling, authority selection, citation accuracy, and rule application; verify that legal statements are appropriately supported by primary authority (where required); write high-quality explanations and model research memos that demonstrate correct, risk-aware legal reasoning; and rate and compare multiple responses based on correctness and reasoning quality. This role is with SME Careers, a fast-growing AI Data Services company and subsidiary of SuperAnnotate, delivering training data for many of the world’s largest AI companies and foundation-model labs. Your legal expertise directly helps improve the world’s premier AI models by making their legal reasoning more accurate, reliable, and clearly explained.

Important:
There is no immediate project for this role; however, if qualified, you will be among the first experts we reach out to when relevant opportunities arise. This will also provide you with access to future projects available through our expert network.

### Key Responsibilities
- Develop AI Training Content: Create detailed prompts and gold-standard legal research outputs (issue outlines, research plans, memo templates, authority summaries).
- Optimize AI Performance: Evaluate and rank AI responses to improve accuracy, defensibility, citation support, and clarity.
- Ensure Model Integrity: Test AI outputs for inaccuracies, misleading certainty, jurisdictional errors, and bias; validate reliability across legal scenarios.

### Your Profile
- JD/LLB (or equivalent) or advanced paralegal/legal research background with substantial primary-law research experience; active bar membership is a plus.
- 5+ years of professional experience performing legal research (law firm, in-house, government, academia, or legal publishing).
- Strong ability to conduct structured research: issue framing → jurisdiction selection → authority retrieval → synthesis → caveats/uncertainty.
- Proven experience interpreting statutes, regulations, and case law, including understanding holdings vs dicta and procedural posture relevance.
- Strong citation hygiene: ability to verify quotations, pinpoint citations, and proposition support, and to flag unsupported assertions.
- Comfortable handling jurisdictional variation and clearly stating assumptions/limits (e.g., US state vs federal, EU member states, common law vs civil law).
- Excellent attention to detail; minimum C1 English proficiency with 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 (e.g., Westlaw/Lexis or equivalents) and citation formats (Bluebook or local standards) is a plus.
- Prior experience with AI data training/annotation, editorial QA, knowledge management, or legal publishing is strongly preferred.