Suggested rewrite: Led a cross-functional initiative that improved [business outcome] by [measurable result], demonstrating experience relevant to this role...
Strategic Project Lead – Legal
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- Remote from
- USA
- Salary
- Undisclosed
- Department
- Project & Program Management
- Employment
- Full Time
- Experience
- Senior
- Published
- Apply before
- 4 Nov 2026
- Listing views
- 93
- Application actions
- 2
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The role, at a glance.
This Strategic Project Lead role owns the design, validation, and operationalization of legal AI pilots for frontier-model customers. The position combines legal subject-matter expertise with project leadership, translating customer objectives into feasible workflows, expert requirements, quality standards, and scalable delivery plans. It requires a JD or equivalent legal degree, legal practice or research experience, and at least two years of experience leading complex initiatives. The role works closely with attorneys, legal experts, researchers, customers, and Appen's global delivery organization while managing confidentiality, privilege, and jurisdictional considerations.
Role DNA
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Pace & Pressure
4/5Autonomy Level
5/5Communication Load
5/5Salary analysis
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Core skills
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Sample interview questions
I would first define the intended model use case, target legal jurisdiction, success metrics, data constraints, and decision-makers. I would then convert those requirements into a pilot plan covering source materials, legal-expert profiles, annotation or evaluation methodology, quality thresholds, timelines, risks, and cost assumptions before aligning the plan with the customer and delivery teams.
I would establish a documented intake and review process that classifies material by sensitivity, confirms rights and permitted uses, and excludes privileged or restricted content unless authorized controls are in place. I would also apply access controls, redaction or de-identification where appropriate, jurisdiction-specific requirements, and clear escalation paths to legal counsel.
I would assess the pilot results against pre-agreed quality, feasibility, cost, and turnaround targets, then document the repeatable operating model. This would include standard operating procedures, expert qualification criteria, training materials, QA sampling plans, tooling requirements, capacity forecasts, and governance metrics for continuous improvement.
I would make the trade-offs explicit by tying each request to agreed success criteria, risk level, delivery impact, and ownership. Through concise status reporting and structured decision meetings, I would seek alignment on the highest-value path and promptly escalate decisions that exceed the team's authority or create unacceptable legal or quality risk.
The metrics would depend on the use case, but I would typically include legal-expert agreement rates, rubric adherence, factual and citation accuracy, issue-spotting completeness, jurisdictional correctness, turnaround time, rework rate, and defect severity. I would pair quantitative metrics with calibrated expert review to ensure the measures reflect substantive legal quality rather than only operational throughput.
About this role.
Appen’s Strategic Project Management team is central to the company’s growth strategy, partnering with leading AI companies and frontier model developers to deliver the data that makes models work. As Strategic Project Lead – Legal, you will run strategic legal pilots and research projects for legal AI model training and evaluation, from initial scoping through to operationalization. This is a hands-on role bridging customer objectives, legal expertise, and Appen’s global delivery capability.
Your Impact
You will own the success of frontier legal AI pilots, taking emerging use cases to validate projects that meet defined standards for legal quality, feasibility, and cost.
Your judgement will shape how case law, contracts, statutes, regulatory filings, and legal reasoning are used for model training and evaluation, with appropriate consideration for privilege, confidentiality, and jurisdictional requirements.
Across Appen’s global delivery organization, you’ll establish the workflows, expert requirements, quality standards, and operational blueprint needed to move successful pilots into scalable programs.
Success in this role will create legal AI pilots that meet their defined success criteria, trusted partnerships with Researchers and Customers, and proven approaches that can be operationalized across future legal programs.
What You Bring
- JD or equivalent law degree, with 2+ years in private practice, in-house, legal research, or regulatory and compliance work.
- 2+ years leading complex projects, operational workflows, or subject-matter initiatives.
- Strong communication and stakeholder-management skills when working with attorneys, legal experts, researchers, and customers.
- Comfortable working in a fast-paced environment.
Nice to Have
- Experience working with AI/ML companies, AI labs, or data annotation and evaluation projects.
- Experience managing legal, technical, or data-intensive projects.
- Familiarity with legal research, contract analysis, litigation, regulatory/compliance work, or other complex legal workflows.
Why You’ll Love Working Here
At Appen, we foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and excellence. We value curiosity, accountability, and a commitment to delivering the highest quality AI solutions for frontier models.
You’ll work on complex challenges that shape the future of AI across industries and geographies, alongside talented people in a culture that values humility over ego. You’ll have the flexibility to deliver in a way that works for you and your team, supported by tools, resources, and development opportunities to continue to build your capability over time.
About Appen
Appen has been a leader in AI training data for over 30 years. We specialise in human generated data to train, fine tune, and evaluate models across generative AI, large language models, computer vision, and speech recognition. Our AI assisted data annotation platform and global crowd of more than 1 million contributors in over 200 countries support model pre training, supervised fine tuning, evaluation and benchmarking, safety and red teaming, and multilingual global expansion.
Compensation
Additional Information
Annual salary information is not provided for this position. Explore salary ranges for similar roles in our Salary Directory ›
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