The New Hot Job in Law Doesn’t Require a J.D.

In 2018, when Daniel Himmel first moved from practicing law to a job that today might be called legal engineering, it felt like a big career risk.

“I was nervous,” he said. “I thought, what is my career going to look like? Where do I go from here?”

He doesn’t feel that way anymore. As the head of legal engineering for North America at the legal tech company Legora, Himmel has hired about 70 people over the past year. They’re part of a global team of about 200 legal engineers the company has built since 2024. “We’re hiring hundreds, and competitors are hiring them, and our clients are hiring them,” he said. “It’s a true profession.”

And it’s one of the hottest jobs in the rapidly changing world of law. As artificial intelligence is becoming a bigger part of legal work, technology vendors like Legora, law firms, and in-house legal teams are all looking for people who understand both law and technology well enough to rewrite work flows and teach others how to use A.I. tools.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/31/business/dealbook/legal-engineer-ai-law.html