Partner & General Counsel - Legal Domain Expert

$100–150/hrrate as listed

A senior practising lawyer works inside a frontier AI lab's research workflows, writing instruction specs and golden solutions for legal tasks and auditing model outputs that sound convincing but would not survive professional scrutiny. This is a full-time W-2 role through Cincinnatus LLC, hybrid and on-site in the Bay Area, with observed rates of $100–150/hr.

Summary, eligibility guidance and screening preparation are prepared by Sidequest from the platform's posting. Check the source listing before applying.

What the work involves

You sit between a leading AI lab's research team and the messy reality of legal practice. Day to day that means three things: reviewing legal knowledge-work tasks and model responses for accuracy, completeness, and defensibility; authoring instruction specs and golden solutions that define what a correct answer actually looks like; and designing evaluation sets and benchmarks hard enough to show whether the model is genuinely improving rather than getting better at sounding lawyerly. A large share of the value is in written feedback — explaining why a memo's analysis is thin, which authority is stale, where a clause allocates risk in a way no client would sign.

Expect calibration work alongside researchers and experts in adjacent domains. Much of legal judgment is tacit, and the task here is to make it explicit and teachable: what a senior reviewer would flag, in what order, and why. You will use client-issued accounts and equipment and work inside the lab's own tooling.

What the platform screens for

Verifiable seniority. A JD from an accredited school, 5+ years of substantive post-qualification practice at a firm, in-house department, regulator, or court, and clear progression to partner, counsel, of counsel, senior associate, senior in-house counsel, or GC. Clerkships and internships alone will not clear the bar.
Real specialization. Depth in at least one practice area — corporate/transactional, litigation, regulatory and compliance, IP, employment and labor, or tax — probed with follow-up questions that reward specifics over summary.
Active bar admission in at least one U.S. state, in good standing.
Evaluation judgment. Hands-on use of LLMs in your own practice and a demonstrated ability to separate well-reasoned output from plausible-sounding error.

Logistics

This is not a remote role. It is a hybrid, Bay Area–based position requiring on-site presence with the client's team multiple days each week when needed; candidates outside the Bay Area must be willing to relocate at their own cost, with no relocation assistance. The commitment is 40 hours per week for an initial six-month engagement. Employment, onboarding, payroll, and benefits are administered by Cincinnatus LLC as employer of record — Mercor is the discovery platform, not the employer. The $100–150/hr band reflects rates observed on comparable senior legal listings and is not a guarantee of any individual offer.

What they look for

Juris Doctor (JD) from an accredited U.S. law school
Active U.S. state bar admission in good standing
5+ years post-qualification practice with senior-level ownership of matters (partner, counsel, senior associate, GC)
Deep specialization in a substantive practice area (corporate, litigation, regulatory, IP, employment, or tax)
Hands-on professional use of large language models and ability to detect plausible-sounding legal errors
Precise, well-structured written feedback and drafting

Before you apply

Would you pass this screen?

Drawn from what this listing actually requires. Answered in your browser — nothing is sent to us, and we do not store your answers.

Do you hold a Juris Doctor (JD) degree from an American Bar Association (ABA)-accredited law school?
JD from accredited law school · required
Are you currently admitted to the bar in at least one U.S. state and in good standing?
Active bar admission in at least one U.S. state · required
Do you have at least 5 years of substantive legal practice after bar admission at a law firm, corporate legal department, regulatory body, court, or equivalent institution—not counting internships or clerkships?
5+ years substantive post-bar legal practice · required
Can you point to at least one substantive practice area (e.g., corporate transactions, litigation, regulatory, IP, employment, tax) where you have developed genuine depth through your legal practice?
Documented specialization in a substantive practice area · required
Do you currently reside in the Bay Area, California, or are you willing and able to relocate there at your own cost before the engagement begins?
Current Bay Area residence or willingness to relocate · required
Have you used large language models (such as ChatGPT, Claude, or AI-integrated legal research tools) directly in your professional legal work and developed the judgment to distinguish sound legal reasoning from plausible-sounding errors?
Hands-on LLM use in professional legal work · preferred

0 of 6 answered

Included with this listing

Interview prep — 11 questions

Matched to what this platform's screening actually measures. Answer each out loud in 60–90 seconds: claim → concrete example → implication.

What it tests: Whether the candidate can spot plausible-sounding but wrong legal reasoning, and articulate the specific gap or flaw. This is the core skill for vetting AI model outputs.
A strong answer: The answer names a concrete matter, describes the reasoning that seemed right on the surface, pinpoints the specific doctrine, case, statute, or factual assumption that was missed or misapplied, and explains how they discovered the error—either through deeper research, client pushback, opposing counsel, or peer review.
Where people lose it: Answering with a story about a simple mistake (typo, misquoted statute number) or a question the candidate couldn't answer. Also: glossing over what made the initial reasoning plausible, rather than explaining why it fooled them or could fool others.