Why partnership isn't the only prize in Big Law's AI era
As AI transforms legal practice, more lawyers are moving into legal tech roles, redefining what a legal career can look like.
Contents
For most lawyers, the career path was paved from day one: secure a training contract, qualify, rise through the ranks and, with hard work and a little luck, make partner. Others may take slightly different turns along the way, perhaps moving in-house, into government or academia.
As artificial intelligence reshapes how legal work is delivered, a growing number of lawyers are stepping off those traditional tracks and into new roles at legal technology companies.
From legal engineers and applied legal researchers to customer success and product specialists, a new ecosystem of roles has emerged for lawyers who want to stay close to the substance of legal work while helping to transform the way legal services are delivered.
To understand the shift from the inside, we spoke with leaders across the legal tech ecosystem including Alex Fortescue-Webb at Legora, Katie Burke at Harvey, Harry Borovick at Luminance and A&O Shearman partner Francesca Bennetts, as well as former litigator turned legal engineer Victoire Courtenay.
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The rise of the legal engineer
If there’s one title that defines the shift, it is “legal engineer”.
At legal tech companies like Harvey, Legora and Luminance, legal engineers sit at the intersection of law, technology and client delivery, typically bringing at least a few years of law practice experience, either in-house or at top-tier law firms.
Alex Fortescue-Webb, global head of legal engineering at Legora, describes them as the “main change agents” for customers. Their job is to help law firms and in-house teams deploy AI effectively, whether that means building bespoke use cases, running training sessions, or advising on how to structure a firm-wide AI rollout.
“They enable clients to accelerate how sophisticated their use of AI is, how much impact AI has and what the ROI is,” he explains.
You don't need to be a software engineer.
Crucially, no one expects legal engineers to be software developers, and no coding is required.
“You don’t need to be a software engineer,” Fortescue-Webb says. “You need to understand how large language models work, how the platform works, and how to translate legal needs into that environment.”
In practice, that means being able to fill in the gaps when a partner says: “I want to draft an S-1. Here are some precedents.” A legal engineer must understand the steps the lawyer has not articulated and configure the technology accordingly.
Variety, variety, variety
The role itself can look quite different from company to company, and from client to client.
At Harvey, legal engineers exist on both sides of the client relationship. Some work alongside sales teams, joining calls with prospective customers to demonstrate what the platform can do. Others sit on the post-sales side, focusing on implementation, training and long-term client success.
Victoire Courtenay, a former litigation associate at Jones Day who spent six years in practice before joining Harvey last year, works on the sales side.
“I work with the sales team to join them on calls with customers who are interested in hearing more,” she explains. “Then we have legal engineers on the post-sales side who continue that relationship, providing training and insights.”
Beyond legal engineering, applied legal research teams sit inside product and engineering. Their role is to translate real-world legal workflows into product design, ensuring the technology aligns with how lawyers operate.
Katie Burke, COO at Harvey, says: “They bridge the gap between engineering and the day-to-day of law, making sure that as our engineers are building, what we create reflects how lawyers actually work.”
A different kind of progression
One of the most notable differences between law firms and legal tech companies is career progression. In a law firm, the structure tends to be pyramidal, with steady advancement that is competitive and tightly defined. In tech, it tends to be more fluid.
At Legora, there is a structured seven-level career framework for legal engineers, with clear expectations at each stage. But the broader environment is very different.
“The top of the pyramid concept doesn’t really exist,” Fortescue-Webb says. “The space is exploding and that creates a huge amount of opportunity.”
If you perform well, the progression is inevitably faster in a high-growth tech company than it is in a law firm.
Harry Borovick, general counsel at Luminance, makes a similar point. “If you perform well, the progression is inevitably faster in a high-growth tech company than it is in a law firm,” he says. “The amount of people you meet at legal tech companies who are still deep in their 20s, managing large teams and doing complex work for some of the biggest businesses in the world, is amazing.”
The trade-off is predictability. At a law firm, you can often map out your next five or ten years, more or less. Burke describes it as moving from a ladder to a jungle gym. “New opportunities emerge every single day, but the very clear ladder of inputs to outputs is no longer there.”
No billable hours
For many lawyers, the idea of a world without billable hours is both exciting and unsettling. You go from measuring your value primarily in billable hours to measuring it in impact.
Courtenay describes the freedom that comes with a deliverables-focused culture.
Being able to close my laptop and grab a coffee with my manager without worrying about missing an email or hitting my targets was a welcome freedom.
“It was a new feeling of not having to justify how you’re spending your time. Harvey focuses on deliverables, whether that takes you half an hour or three hours,” she says.
“Being able to close my laptop and grab a coffee with my manager for a catch up without checking my phone, worrying about missing an email or hitting my targets was a welcome freedom.”
Who makes the jump?
The stereotype might be that lawyers move into legal tech because they want to escape private practice, but those inside the industry say that is not enough.
“Wanting to get out isn’t a good enough reason to get in,” Borovick says.
For many, the motivation is less about leaving law and more about improving it. The lawyers who thrive tend to share a few traits: curiosity about technology, frustration with inefficiencies in traditional practice, and a desire to help modernise the profession.
That mindset reframes the move not as a departure from the profession, but as an evolution within it. Burke doesn’t see moving into legal tech as a fundamental career switch.
“They still get to use their formal training, but they apply it in a different context, one that acknowledges the tradition and precedent on which the legal industry is built, while giving them a chance to use their creativity and be part of transforming the industry,” she says.
No experience required
Many of those joining legal tech companies have a few years of law practice behind them, whether in private practice or in-house, though some join straight from university or law school.
At Luminance, Borovick says the entry point depends on the role. Legal analyst positions are frequently filled by recent law graduates as the work is more structured and the company provides more formal training. The company also hires recent graduates into sales and go-to-market roles for those that decide not to pursue qualification.
“Some of our most successful sales professionals are people we hired straight out of university with law degrees,” he says.
Some of our most successful sales professionals are people we hired straight out of university with law degrees.
By contrast, legal engineer, customer success and implementation roles tend to require more experience. These positions are often filled by ex-lawyers who have gained sufficient experience to draw on a deeper understanding of workflows, client expectations and commercial realities.
Niche specialisms can be an asset too. As platforms expand, expertise in areas like tax, real estate, wills and trusts or compliance becomes increasingly valuable. Supporting firms at scale requires lawyers who understand the nuances of particular practice areas.
The move into legal tech is not confined to junior associates or mid-level lawyers. Earlier this year, Mike Schmidtberger, former executive committee chair of Sidley Austin, joined AI-native law firm Norm Law embracing the “future”. The firm is powered by AI platform Norm Ai, which has raised more than $140 million to date, with backing from Blackstone, Bain Capital, Vanguard and Citi.
Law Firm | Trainee First Year | Trainee Second Year | Newly Qualified (NQ) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Addleshaw Goddard | £52,000 | £56,000 | £100,000 |
| Akin | £60,000 | £65,000 | £174,418 |
| A&O Shearman | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Ashurst | £57,000 | £62,000 | £140,000 |
| Baker McKenzie | £56,000 | £61,000 | £145,000 |
| Bird & Bird | £48,500 | £53,500 | £102,000 |
| Bristows | £48,000 | £52,000 | £95,000 |
| Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner | £55,000 | £58,000 | £125,000 |
| Burges Salmon | £49,500 | £51,500 | £76,000 |
| Charles Russell Speechlys | £52,000 | £55,000 | £93,000 |
| Cleary Gottlieb | £62,500 | £67,500 | £164,500 |
| Clifford Chance | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Clyde & Co | £48,500 | £51,000 | £85,000 |
| CMS | £50,000 | £55,000 | £120,000 |
| Cooley | £55,000 | £60,000 | £157,000 |
| Davis Polk | £65,000 | £70,000 | £180,000 |
| Debevoise | £55,000 | £60,000 | £173,000 |
| Dechert | £55,000 | £61,000 | £165,000 |
| Dentons | £52,000 | £56,000 | £104,000 |
| DLA Piper | £52,000 | £57,000 | £130,000 |
| Eversheds Sutherland | £50,000 | £55,000 | £110,000 |
| Farrer & Co | £47,000 | £49,000 | £88,000 |
| Fieldfisher | £48,500 | £52,000 | £100,000 |
| Freshfields | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Fried Frank | £55,000 | £60,000 | £175,000 |
| Gibson Dunn | £60,000 | £65,000 | £180,000 |
| Goodwin Procter | £55,000 | £60,000 | £175,000 |
| Gowling WLG | £48,500 | £53,500 | £105,000 |
| Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer | £56,000 | £61,000 | £145,000 |
| HFW | £50,000 | £54,000 | £103,500 |
| Hill Dickinson | £43,000 | £45,000 | £80,000 |
| Hogan Lovells | £56,000 | £61,000 | £140,000 |
| Irwin Mitchell | £43,500 | £45,500 | £78,000 |
| Jones Day | £60,000 | £68,000 | £165,000 |
| K&L Gates | £50,000 | £55,000 | £115,000 |
| Kennedys | £43,000 | £46,000 | £85,000 |
| King & Spalding | £62,000 | £67,000 | £175,000 |
| Kirkland & Ellis | £60,000 | £65,000 | £174,418 |
| Latham & Watkins | £60,000 | £65,000 | £174,418 |
| Linklaters | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Macfarlanes | £56,000 | £61,000 | £140,000 |
| Mayer Brown | £55,000 | £60,000 | £150,000 |
| McDermott Will & Schulte | £65,000 | £70,000 | £174,418 |
| Milbank | £65,000 | £70,000 | £174,418 |
| Mills & Reeve | £45,000 | £47,000 | £84,000 |
| Mischon de Reya | £50,000 | £55,000 | £100,000 |
| Norton Rose Fulbright | £56,000 | £61,000 | £135,000 |
| Orrick | £60,000 | £65,000 | £160,000 |
| Osborne Clarke | £55,500 | £57,500 | £97,000 |
| Paul Hastings | £60,000 | £68,000 | £173,000 |
| Paul Weiss | £60,000 | £65,000 | £180,000 |
| Penningtons Manches Cooper | £48,000 | £50,000 | £83,000 |
| Pinsent Masons | £52,000 | £57,000 | £105,000 |
| Quinn Emanuel | n/a | n/a | £180,000 |
| Reed Smith | £53,000 | £58,000 | £125,000 |
| Ropes & Gray | £60,000 | £65,000 | £165,000 |
| RPC | £48,000 | £52,000 | £95,000 |
| Shoosmiths | £45,000 | £47,000 | £105,000 |
| Sidley Austin | £60,000 | £65,000 | £175,000 |
| Simmons & Simmons | £54,000 | £59,000 | £120,000 |
| Simpson Thacher | n/a | n/a | £178,000 |
| Skadden | £58,000 | £63,000 | £177,000 |
| Slaughter and May | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Squire Patton Boggs | £50,000 | £55,000 | £110,000 |
| Stephenson Harwood | £50,000 | £55,000 | £105,000 |
| Sullivan & Cromwell | £65,000 | £70,000 | £174,418 |
| Taylor Wessing | £52,000 | £57,000 | £115,000 |
| TLT | £44,000 | £47,500 | £85,000 |
| Travers Smith | £55,000 | £60,000 | £130,000 |
| Trowers & Hamlins | £47,000 | £51,000 | £85,000 |
| Vinson & Elkins | £60,000 | £65,000 | £173,077 |
| Watson Farley & Williams | £51,500 | £56,000 | £107,000 |
| Weightmans | £36,000 | £38,000 | £70,000 |
| Weil | £60,000 | £65,000 | £170,000 |
| White & Case | £62,000 | £67,000 | £175,000 |
| Willkie Farr & Gallagher | £60,000 | £65,000 | £170,000 |
| Withers | £47,000 | £52,000 | £95,000 |
| Womble Bond Dickinson | £43,000 | £45,000 | £83,000 |
Rank | Law Firm | Revenue | Profit per Equity Partner (PEP) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DLA Piper* | £3,130,000,000 | £2,500,000 |
| 2 | A&O Shearman | £2,900,000,000 | £2,000,000 |
| 3 | Clifford Chance | £2,400,000,000 | £2,100,000 |
| 4 | Hogan Lovells | £2,320,000,000 | £2,400,000 |
| 5 | Linklaters | £2,320,000,000 | £2,200,000 |
| 6 | Freshfields | £2,250,000,000 | Not disclosed |
| 7 | CMS** | £1,800,000,000 | Not disclosed |
| 8 | Norton Rose Fulbright* | £1,800,000,000 | Not disclosed |
| 9 | HSF Kramer | £1,360,000,000 | £1,400,000 |
| 10 | Ashurst | £1,030,000,000 | £1,390,000 |
| 11 | Clyde & Co | £854,000,000 | Not disclosed |
| 12 | Eversheds Sutherland | £769,000,000 | £1,400,000 |
| 13 | Pinsent Masons | £680,000,000 | £790,000 |
| 14 | Slaughter and May*** | £650,000,000 | Not disclosed |
| 15 | BCLP* | £640,000,000 | £790,000 |
| 16 | Simmons & Simmons | £615,000,000 | £1,120,000 |
| 17 | Bird & Bird** | £580,000,000 | £720,000 |
| 18 | Addleshaw Goddard | £550,000,000 | £1,000,000 |
| 19 | Taylor Wessing | £526,000,000 | £1,100,000 |
| 20 | Osborne Clarke** | £476,000,000 | £800,000 |
| 21 | DWF | £466,000,000 | Not disclosed |
| 22 | Womble Bond Dickinson | £450,000,000 | Not disclosed |
| 23 | Kennedys | £428,000,000 | Not disclosed |
| 24 | Fieldfisher | £385,000,000 | £1,000,000 |
| 25 | Macfarlanes | £371,000,000 | £3,100,000 |
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The pay
Compensation is also part of the draw. A legal engineer job posting in New York at Harvey, requiring three years of law experience, lists a base salary and bonus range of $270,000 to $320,000. An applied legal researcher role offers compensation of up to $220,000 for candidates with three to seven years of experience.
Some roles offer compensation competitive with mid-level associates at US Big Law firms, essentially matching the Cravath scale. In many cases, equity is layered on top, giving employees a stake in the company’s growth. In high-growth companies, those equity stakes can become meaningful if valuations rise or an exit event materialises, adding a level of upside to traditional law firm compensation.
Geographic mobility
Geographic mobility is increasingly part of the proposition too. Legora plans to launch an internal exchange programme enabling legal engineers to rotate between offices, supporting career development while fostering “cross pollination” across jurisdictions to maintain consistent best practices.
While local legal expertise still matters, Fortescue-Webb notes that the “best legal engineers are able to flex quite a lot between jurisdictions, because the way clients deploy AI is often quite similar, even if the governing law is different.”
If you’re someone who wants to be on-the-go and onsite with customers, the global opportunity is significant.
Harvey has facilitated both short-term travel stints and long-term relocations for some of its legal engineers. Burke says: “If you’re someone who wants to be on-the-go and onsite with customers, the global opportunity is significant.”
The global footprint of a fast-scaling legal tech business can offer a level of mobility that is harder to achieve in traditional law practice. Law firms have long offered secondments and international transfers, and for many lawyers those remain valuable routes to gain cross-border experience. But those opportunities are typically time-bound, tied to specific business needs or client relationships, and in some cases shaped by local qualification requirements.
The unintentional pipeline
Even without holding a dedicated innovation or tech title, law firm associates are often pulled into pilots, training sessions and platform implementations as firms adopt new technologies.
During a third-party platform implementation, many people within an organisation are involved, and it's often their first hands-on exposure to the product, testing features and helping shape use cases.
This can also be an unintentional pipeline of its own into legal tech companies as that proximity can spark interest in the other side of the industry.
While tech companies acknowledge that this occurs frequently, they insist they do not actively recruit from clients. It can be a delicate line to tread with clients, but the message was clear: candidates have to make the first move and formally apply.
Fortescue-Webb said: “When we either pilot with a client or the platform is rolled out, it hugely increases the surface area of people who are experienced with Legora, and often we will get applications from clients or from people who work at our clients.”
He noted that the law firms and in-house teams are usually quite supportive because they acknowledge that this person is probably going to go do something different, whether it’s a Legora or another company.
Losing employees to a technology partner can even have some silver linings.
“Typically, companies prefer them to go to Legora because they bring with them internal knowledge about the firm, relationships and are sometimes able to facilitate the firm getting more out of the platform,” he says.
Innovation from within
Lawyers no longer have to leave practice entirely to work at the intersection of law and technology. Inside law firms, innovation roles are becoming a career track in their own right, sitting alongside traditional fee-earning paths.
At A&O Shearman, that has meant creating a dedicated Markets Innovation Group (MIG) and a network of “innovation leads” embedded within practice groups, with lawyers working alongside developers and data scientists to build internal AI solutions and, in some cases, turn them into client-facing products such as its generative AI contract platform, ContractMatrix.
Francesca Bennetts, a partner in MIG, says the result is a wider mix of roles and skill-sets within the firm, from lawyer-builders who “infuse subject matter expertise” into general-purpose AI tools, to client-facing onboarding and training functions that look increasingly like customer success.
Associates can also undertake one-to-two-week flash secondments, stepping away from client work to co-create bespoke tech solutions and later bringing that specialised knowledge back to their practice groups.
One recent NQ trainee, who read engineering at undergraduate level and then converted to law, was considering both MIG and funds for qualification. Given the firm’s focus on deep technical understanding combined with practice area-specific expertise, MIG and the funds team agreed to a new hybrid qualification with rotations between both groups.
The firm says the pilot will be monitored with a view to possibly extending it for other trainees interested in working at the intersection of law and technology.
A growing market
The market is growing exponentially, driven by both accelerating adoption and significant capital inflows. Legal tech funding has reached record levels in recent years, with investors pouring billions into the space, including an estimated $6 billion in 2025 alone.
The flagship example is Harvey, which is in talks to raise $200 million fundraise at an $11 billion valuation, according to Forbes. Legora’s most recent valuation was nearly $2 billion, and the company is reportedly in talks for new funding that could double its valuation. Canada’s Clio raised two rounds totalling $850 million. Across the legal tech market, there were more than fourteen funding rounds of at least $100 million last year.
Even major AI developers are entering the space, with Anthropic recently rolling out its own legal plug-in for its Claude Cowork enterprise product, causing a stir in the market.
Though not all stories are success stories. Robin AI’s highly publicised difficulties last year served as a reminder of market volatility. It’s not a completely dire story for talent though - while Robin cut some jobs, it was able to sell off its managed services arm and Microsoft scooped up a Robin tech team for its Word product.
The hiring push
Harvey operates in 60 countries and has grown its London office from around 10 people to more than 75 in the past year. It’s actively hiring for a variety of roles across its markets, including for its Paris office, set to open in Q2.
Legora is now more than 300 employees strong and actively hiring for legal engineers in London, New York, Houston and Bengaluru and its Stockholm HQ. The company plans to roughly double the size of the legal engineering team over the next six months.
Luminance’s legal analyst team has quadrupled in size in the last few years, and the company is actively recruiting for a variety of roles including legal subject matter experts and customer success managers, some of the job postings noting that “qualified lawyers are strongly favoured”.
On the law firm side, HSF Kramer is hiring for senior AI acceleration leadership roles across the UK and US, while a number of major firms, including Fried Frank and Simpson Thacher, are recruiting legal engineers and technologists to embed technical expertise within practice teams.
From niche to norm
As AI adoption accelerates across law firms and in-house teams, demand for people who understand both legal practice and AI deployment is set to intensify.
The path may be less predictable, but for lawyers curious and commercially minded, legal tech is no longer off the beaten path, but an increasingly mainstream career track.
| Firm | London office since | Known for in London |
|---|---|---|
| Akin | 1997 | Restructuring, funds |
| Baker McKenzie | 1961 | Finance, capital markets, TMT |
| Davis Polk | 1972 | Leveraged finance, corporate/M&A |
| Gibson Dunn | 1979 | Private equity, arbitration, energy, resources and infrastructure |
| Goodwin | 2008 | Private equity, funds, life sciences |
| Kirkland & Ellis | 1994 | Private equity, funds, restructuring |
| Latham & Watkins | 1990 | Finance, private equity, capital markets |
| McDermott Will & Schulte | 1998 | Finance, funds, healthcare |
| Milbank | 1979 | Finance, capital markets, energy, resources and infrastructure |
| Paul Hastings | 1997 | Leveraged finance, structured finance, infrastructure |
| Paul Weiss | 2001 | Private equity, leveraged finance |
| Quinn Emanuel | 2008 | Litigation |
| Sidley Austin | 1974 | Leveraged finance, capital markets, corporate/M&A |
| Simpson Thacher | 1978 | Leveraged finance, private equity, funds |
| Skadden | 1988 | Finance, corporate/M&A, arbitration |
| Sullivan & Cromwell | 1972 | Corporate/M&A, restructuring, capital markets |
| Weil | 1996 | Restructuring, private equity, leverage finance |
| White & Case | 1971 | Capital markets, arbitration, energy, resources and infrastructure |
| Law firm | Type | First-year salary |
|---|---|---|
| White & Case | US firm | £32,000 |
| Stephenson Harwood | International | £30,000 |
| A&O Shearman | Magic Circle | £28,000 |
| Charles Russell Speechlys | International | £28,000 |
| Freshfields | Magic Circle | £28,000 |
| Herbert Smith Freehills | Silver Circle | £28,000 |
| Hogan Lovells | International | £28,000 |
| Linklaters | Magic Circle | £28,000 |
| Mishcon de Reya | International | £28,000 |
| Norton Rose Fulbright | International | £28,000 |
Law Firm | Trainee First Year | Trainee Second Year | Newly Qualified (NQ) |
|---|---|---|---|
| A&O Shearman | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Clifford Chance | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Linklaters | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Slaughter and May | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
Law Firm | Trainee First Year | Trainee Second Year | Newly Qualified (NQ) |
|---|---|---|---|
| A&O Shearman | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Clifford Chance | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Linklaters | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Slaughter and May | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
Law Firm | Trainee First Year | Trainee Second Year | Newly Qualified (NQ) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ashurst | £57,000 | £62,000 | £140,000 |
| Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner | £55,000 | £58,000 | £125,000 |
| Herbert Smith Freehills | £56,000 | £61,000 | £145,000 |
| Macfarlanes | £56,000 | £61,000 | £140,000 |
| Travers Smith | £55,000 | £60,000 | £130,000 |
| Firm | Merger year | Known for in London |
|---|---|---|
| BCLP | 2018 | Real estate, corporate/M&A, litigation |
| DLA Piper | 2005 | Corporate/M&A, real estate, energy, resources and infrastructure |
| Eversheds Sutherland | 2017 | Corporate/M&A, finance |
| Hogan Lovells | 2011 | Litigation, regulation, finance |
| Mayer Brown | 2002 | Finance, capital markets, real estate |
| Norton Rose Fulbright | 2013 | Energy, resources and infrastructure, insurance, finance |
| Reed Smith | 2007 | Shipping, finance, TMT |
| Squire Patton Boggs | 2011 | Corporate/M&A, pensions, TMT |
Law Firm | Trainee First Year | Trainee Second Year | Newly Qualified (NQ) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ashurst | £57,000 | £62,000 | £140,000 |
| Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner | £55,000 | £58,000 | £125,000 |
| Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer | £56,000 | £61,000 | £145,000 |
| Macfarlanes | £56,000 | £61,000 | £140,000 |
| Travers Smith | £55,000 | £60,000 | £130,000 |
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