Legal Engineer
16 hours ago
New York
Job Description Who you are: You are a highly motivated self-starter looking to propel your career to the next level in a thriving and collegial professional environment. Who we are: Tarter Krinsky & Drogin LLP (TKD) is an entrepreneurial, growing, and highly supportive firm located in the heart of New York City. Our position as a mid-size firm promotes a work environment that fosters relationship building inside and outside of the office. We care about each other, our clients, the work we do, and the communities in which we live. It’s the kind of environment where every employee can develop into their best professional selves, where everyone’s contributions matter, and where each employee makes a real difference right from the start. TKD is a place to challenge, share ideas, and contribute your ideas and skills as part of an exceptional team. Each day holds an opportunity to make a real impact. The firm is currently building a dedicated AI function — one of the most substantive investments in legal technology infrastructure a firm of our size has undertaken — and this role is the cornerstone of that effort. What the role entails: The Legal Engineer is the bridge between TKD's attorneys and its AI infrastructure. This is not a technology role that happens to sit near lawyers — it is a legal operations role that requires deep fluency in both legal practice and AI tooling. The person in this role will own the attorney-facing layer of the firm's AI program: designing workflows, managing pilots, running training and adoption, and ensuring that AI capabilities translate into genuine value inside legal practice. This role works in close collaboration with the Head of AI, training co-lead, and the incoming AI Engineer. It is a high-visibility, high-impact position with significant room to shape how the firm builds and evolves its AI function over time. Essential responsibilities include: AI Workflow Design & Implementation • Design and build AI-enabled legal workflows across practice areas, including litigation, transactional, business immigration, and corporate, • Translate attorney needs into structured, repeatable workflow architectures that leverage AI platforms effectively, • Document and maintain workflow templates, playbooks, and standard operating procedures, • Serve as the primary day-to-day manager of vendor pilots, • Coordinate between pilot participants, vendor support teams, and firm leadership, • Collect structured feedback, develop evaluation scorecards, and synthesize results for the Fractional Head of AI and executive committee, • Co-lead firm-wide AI training and adoption program., • Develop and deliver training sessions tailored to different practice areas and staff functions, • Host recurring office hours for attorneys seeking one-on-one platform support, • Identify and cultivate super users and practice group AI leads across the firm, • Develop deep proficiency in each AI platform deployed by the firm — going beyond standard user training to the level of real-time troubleshooting and workflow coaching, • Stay current on platform updates, new features, and competitive alternatives, • Maintain working relationships with vendor contacts and serve as a liaison between the firm and vendor support teams, • Establish error handling protocols and quality review processes for AI-generated outputs in legal workflows, • Maintain a structured feedback loop between attorneys, the AI function, and firm leadership, • J.D. required., • Minimum of two years of law practice experience at a law firm, in-house legal department, or public sector office. Active bar admission not required, but candidates must have practiced law., • Demonstrated experience designing and deploying legal workflows on one or more AI-native legal platforms (e.g., Harvey, Jylo, CaseBlink, Litera One, ContractMatrix, Legora, or comparable tools). End-user familiarity is not sufficient — candidates should be able to describe specific workflows they architected, the legal process problems those workflows addressed, and how they were adopted by attorneys in practice., • Hands-on software development experience beyond low-code and no-code tooling. Candidates must be able to point to applications they have built or meaningfully contributed to in a professional or project context. Proficiency with development tools and AI frameworks is expected — including one or more of the following: LangChain, LangFlow, GitHub, Cursor, Claude Code, or OpenAI Codex. This is not a requirement for a senior software engineer; it is a requirement that the candidate has written real code, understands how software gets built, and can work credibly alongside an AI engineer on custom application development., • Strong understanding of legal workflows across at least one practice area (transactional, litigation, immigration, or similar), with the ability to translate those workflows into structured, AI-ready process designs., • Excellent communication skills — able to explain technical concepts to non-technical attorneys and translate attorney feedback into actionable technical direction., • Highly organized, self-directed, and capable of managing multiple workstreams simultaneously., • Demonstrated ability to design and deliver training or change management programs., • Familiarity with Microsoft Azure AI Foundry, Copilot, or similar enterprise AI infrastructure preferred., • Experience with AI prompt engineering and structured workflow documentation preferred., • Prior experience building or managing an AI, legal tech, or legal operations function preferred. What success looks like: In the first 90 days, a successful Legal Engineer will have: onboarded and begun actively managing the firm's vendor pilots; delivered at least two attorney training sessions with documented outcomes; developed workflow documentation for at least one practice area; and established a regular cadence of feedback collection from pilot participants. By six months, they will have become the firm's go-to resource for AI workflow questions — the person attorneys come to when they don't know how to get AI to do what they need. What you’ll love about us: We care about your professional and personal growth. Training and developing our team members are at the heart of everything we do. We are committed to cultivating development opportunities for you and helping you achieve your targeted career goals. The firm values your unique characteristics. We foster an inclusive and diverse environment where multiple perspectives are appreciated as we understand that our employees play an intricate role in the expansion and success of our firm. Compensation & benefits: The good faith base annual salary range for this position is a minimum of $140,000 to a maximum of $200,000. The actual salary rate offered to candidates within that range will depend on a variety of factors, including without limitation, years of relevant experience, applicable bar admissions, office location, and the candidate's overall qualifications for the position as assessed by the Firm. Market and Firm factors are also considered. Our generous benefits package includes medical, dental, vision insurance; 401K, disability, life insurance, and Paid Time Off (PTO). More about the Firm: TKD is a pre-eminent full-service firm focused on serving middle-market and larger business clients. We provide high-quality personalized service based on our client’s goals. The strength of the firm lies not only in its experienced attorneys and congenial atmosphere but also in our holistic approach to law – serving businesses and individuals through commercial litigation, general corporate, real estate, construction-related matters, trust and estates, employment & labor law, as well as more specialized areas, including securities, not-for-profit and education, taxation, business-related immigration matters, international law, intellectual property, and bankruptcy, among others. Our lawyers have also garnered several prestigious recognitions for their contributions to the profession and their clients. We have been selected by Crain’s NY Business as a Best Places to Work in New York City and listed on the National Law Journal’s Hot List of the top 20 mid-sized firms in the nation. Many of our lawyers are ranked in Chambers USA and included among Best Lawyers and Super Lawyers. TKD is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We embrace equal employment opportunity and inclusiveness. We prohibit discrimination based on, among other characteristics, race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity, and sexual orientation), parental status, national origin, immigration or citizenship status, age, disability, genetic information (including family medical history), political affiliation, status as a veteran or active military service member, and pregnancy and lactation accommodations, in our employment practices including, but not limited to, recruiting, hiring, and promoting. TKD will not accept unsolicited resumes from search firms for this employment opportunity. All resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at TKD via mail, email, fax, the Internet, or in any other form and/or method without a valid written search agreement in place will be deemed the sole property of TKD. TKD will NOT pay a fee for any placement resulting from the receipt of an unsolicited resume.