Legal Engineer

We are recruiting for a Legal Engineer in the Innovation Team. For more information and to view the job description, please click here

Full job description (attached PDF)

Role overview

Slaughter and May is investing in the of next generation of legal delivery, and we are offering the opportunity to join the firm's growing Innovation team, based in the London office. Our lawyers advise on a broad spectrum of matters, leading on some of the most significant public and private transactions in the market

Our lawyers are among the brightest legal minds in the world, and technical excellence is central to our success. Generative and agentic AI are becoming part of how the firm practises law, and the firm is building the people skills, processes and capability to put them to work at the highest standard. We are looking for experienced, qualified lawyers who want to work at the frontier of legal AI.

We are recruiting for an experienced Legal Engineer to join the Innovation Department working closely with the fee earners. Embedded in key practice areas, our Legal Engineers will design and build the AI-enabled workflows that lawyers across the firm use, lead the firm's work on AI quality and benchmarking, and lead our engagement programmes across the firm.

Legal Engineers will need to establish credibility with partners, associates, knowledge lawyers and applied AI experts by having excellent legal knowledge and understanding, but also by being fluent in how AI tools operate, both in theory and in practice.

Key responsibilities

The key responsibilities of this role are set out below and there may be others which are not listed. You may be required on occasion to work outside our normal working hours of 9:30am to 5:30pm.

• Engage with partners, associates, trainees and knowledge lawyers across the relevant practice area to understand how matters are run, identify processes where AI could add real value, and translate that into structured prompts, workflows and playbooks that the firm's AI platforms can execute reliably.
• Go beyond AI-Enabled workflows for today's work and help us redesign work for AI-First.
• Establish credibility as a hands-on expert on the legal problems the firm is solving with AI, for example drafting and reviewing contractual provisions, analysing filings and briefs or knowledge retrieval, and matter management.
• Design, build and ship workflows on the firm's AI platforms. The role here will be to prototype quickly, test rigorously, harden for reliability, and hand over to knowledge lawyers for ongoing ownership in their practice area. Lead the firm's work on AI quality and benchmarking
• Engage and enable the knowledge lawyer and applied AI expert communities. Run regular sessions to keep them current on product updates and on what the Innovation team is shipping. Spot common solution patterns across practice areas. Deduplicate effort where two practices are building variants of the same thing.
• Partner with knowledge lawyers on practice translation. The knowledge lawyer is the practice-area owner of encoded knowledge. The Legal Engineer is the builder who helps them get it shipped, and the network node that links their work to what is happening elsewhere in the firm.
• Advise on the right technology from our tech stack for the task. Gather feedback and act as the voice of the practice into the firm's product management function. Synthesise input from partners, associates, knowledge lawyers and applied AI experts, and channel it into roadmap decisions and into the firm's relationships with its AI vendors via the product managers
• Work with the wider Innovation team to explore new tools and capabilities.
• Contribute to firm-wide adoption efforts, working with teams across Business Services, including Knowledge and Learning, Technology and Comms.

Candidate profile

Candidates for this position must have:

• Qualified lawyer (England and Wales, or equivalent jurisdiction).
• Typically four to seven years' post-qualification experience at a top-tier firm. More junior candidates with the right profile are encouraged to apply.
• Substantive experience in Transactions and Advisory or in Disputes at a top-tier firm, with the depth to discuss a contract, filing or matter step on the merits with partners in that practice.
• Credibility with partners and associates. The ability to hold a conversation about a contract, a filing or a deal step on the merits, and earn the right to ask how it could be done differently.
• Curiosity about technology & AI and a willingness to get hands on with the tools. No coding background required, but comfort with prompts, evaluations, structured outputs and the realities of how these systems behave is essential. Experience with prompt design, evaluation frameworks, structured outputs (JSON, schemas), or hands-on tool building (including agentic coding tools such as Claude Code) is a strong plus.
• Direct, recent experience using leading legal AI platforms (for example Harvey, Legora, Claude, M365 Copilot) on real legal tasks, with a view on where they work, where they fail, and what to do about it.
• A track record of having shipped something legal-tech adjacent: a workflow, playbook, evaluation set, internal tool, prompt library, or knowledge product. Designing on paper is not enough.
• Comfort working with product managers, engineers and vendors. Examples include a secondment to a legal-tech vendor or in-house Innovation team, contribution to a tool roll-out at a previous firm, or product time outside the law.
• Strong structuring instinct. The ability to take a messy, tacit way of working and turn it into something that can be authored, tested and shipped.
• Quality-minded. The discipline to test before shipping, to design rigorous evaluations, and to know when something is not yet good enough.
• Clear, concise communicator. Comfortable in front of partners and equally comfortable working through detail with technologists, product managers, knowledge lawyers and applied AI experts. Translating across disciplines is second nature.
• Bias for action. The role rewards people who would rather ship a v1 and learn than write a paper about what they might build.
• Network instinct. The instinct to spot when something built in one corner of the firm could solve a problem in another, and the energy to make the connection.

Our recruitment process

We anticipate this being a two-stage process:

1st interview - Innovation Lead and a Knowledge Lawyer

Practical assessment - Further information to follow

2nd interview - Head of Innovation and Director of Knowledge and Learning

We welcome applications irrespective of race, colour, ethnic or national origin, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, religion, belief or marital status.

Slaughter and May is committed to ensuring that our recruitment processes are barrier-free and as inclusive as possible for everyone. This includes making adjustments for people who have a disability or long-term condition. If you have any questions, or require any adjustments to be made to one or both of the application or interview processes, please let your recruitment adviser know.

The purpose of this description is to provide guidance in relation to the general requirements of the position referred to. It is by no means an exhaustive list of the responsibilities that will be involved.

Any offer of employment with us is subject to the firm's receipt of a satisfactory report from its third party screening and vetting provider in respect of the successful candidate. Your adviser will be able to explain how this process works in practice in the event of any questions.

At Slaughter and May, we take the protection of your personal information seriously and we are committed to safeguarding the privacy of the personal information that you share with us, or is collected by us, during the course of our interactions with you. Our Recruitment Privacy Notice ("RP Notice") supplements, and should be read alongside, the firm's Privacy Notice.

These privacy notices are always available to view within the Legal and Regulatory section of our website.

Who we are

Slaughter and May is a leading international law firm, recognised throughout the business community for its exceptional legal service, commercial awareness, and commitment to clients. We advise across the spectrum of legal matters including high-profile, ground-breaking, and complex transactions, contentious matters and all aspects of risk. We deliver innovative and bespoke solutions to our clients, domestically and internationally. We provide clear legal advice that spans the globe whilst tackling the cultural nuances between jurisdictions. Our lawyers understand how to coordinate and manage matters in the jurisdictions most relevant to our clients.

Excellence is central to everything we do, and it remains one of the first words mentioned when others are asked about the firm. We are very proud of that reputation. One reason we are known for excellence is because we have always been guided by a set of values that have been an implicit part of who we are and how we operate.

Our four core values are:

1. The highest standards;

2. Independence of thought;

3. Collective endeavour;

4. Respect for all.

They are not simply a list of characteristics. They are part of a framework, as they demonstrate our commitment to our four stakeholder groups (Our clients; Our people; The firm; Society).

At Slaughter and May, with over 1,400 partners and staff worldwide, everyone's contribution is valued, and we all enjoy an open, friendly and supportive environment. We have an underlying sense of pride in who we are and what we do, and our inclusive culture gives rise to a unique diversity of thinking, which is critical to our success and helps maintain our position as a true market leader.

Business Services Development

We offer a variety of learning and development opportunities to members of our Business Services team, including sessions open to everyone on topics ranging from personal impact and resilience to written communication. We also run a series of development programmes for supervisors and managers, as well as various bespoke team and one-to-one sessions.

Our Network of Networks

The firm has eleven employee networks run by employees and supported by partners. Collectively, we form a Network of Networks, and our aim is to foster a spirit of inclusion, both amongst the networks and the firm more widely. We work collaboratively to create a more open minded and inclusive work environment.

We strive to make people feel comfortable about bringing their authentic selves to work.

Each network offers an informal support mechanism for employees with shared backgrounds, perspectives or interests and hosts a number of exciting formal and informal events throughout the year, which are open to everyone. They're a great way to meet new people in the firm, as well as to celebrate difference and learn about a variety of experiences and perspective