By KIM BELLARD
I once again have to thank The New York Times for introducing me to a new concept. Sarah Kessler wrote about the rise of “legal engineering” – for which, it turns out, one doesn’t have to be either a lawyer or an engineer.
Their role is to help integrate A.I. into the practice of law, whether at law firms or companies. That sure sounds like a prudent, if possibly belated, idea – and one suspects we’re going to see such “engineers” in other fields. I certainly hope that healthcare is one of them, sooner rather than later.
Irene Liu, the executive director of the A.I. initiative at Stanford Law School, explained the job to Ms. Kessler thusly: “If you were to just put it into an equation, it’s law plus technology plus business process.” That Venn diagram gets pretty small very quickly.
Mary O’Carroll, the C.E.O. of LegalEng Consulting Group, also explained the role to Ms. Kessler: “You don’t necessarily need a giant pyramid of lawyers anymore. People who have this kind of skill set don’t have to have a J.D., and they don’t have to be software engineers, but there’s business process re-engineering, or this M.B.A. type skill, that I think is really necessary.”
Ms. Kessler notes that they are sometimes referred to as “knowledge and innovation counsels,” “innovation attorneys,” or “legal applications engineers,” which may illustrate that the role is both new and evolving.
If you’re considering why this role is important, note that the 2026 Legal Industry Report from 8am found that 69% of legal professionals report personally using Generative AI (GenAI) tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude for work-related purposes, up from 31% a year earlier.
Ms. Liu’s Law AI Initiative joined Stanford Law School’s Executive Education to launch the Stanford Legal Engineering Academy in September, a two-week residential program for intensive training in AI strategy, implementation, governance, and organizational transformation, starting in the summer of 2027. Adam Sterling, associate dean of executive education and strategic partnerships, said the program was “designed to prepare participants to act as chief AI leaders within their organizations, whether or not they hold that formal title.”
“Using an AI tool is not the same as understanding how to redesign work around it,” said Julian Nyarko, professor of law and co-director of the Stanford Law School AI Initiative. “The leaders who will be most effective in this transition will be able to assess where the technology adds value, recognize its limits, and translate that understanding into new workflows, services, and organizational structures.”
Howard Glazer, a longtime partner at Ropes & Gray who became its head of practice A.I. about a year ago, told Ms. Kessler: “In the old days, there was technology and there was law. And as long as my email worked, I didn’t have to talk to people who dealt with the technology. But now we actually provide our service and provide our product using the tools.” More to the point, he added: “‘Legal engineer’ kind of makes it sound like someone made it up. But it’s not. It’s a role which the current environment just screams for.”
Legal tech firm Legora , which describes itself as “the agentic operating system for legal work, supporting lawyers in research, review, and drafting across complex matters,” claims to have some 200 legal engineers. “We’re hiring hundreds, and competitors are hiring them, and our clients are hiring them,” David Himmel, Legora’s head of legal engineering for North America, told Ms. Kessler. “It’s a true profession.”
She reports that legal AI firm Harvey, which describes itself as “the operating system for legal and professional services,” has similarly grown its team of legal engineers to over 200.
Legora profiled Ricardo Anaya, whom it described as its founding legal engineer for the U.S. He recalled: “By the time I came to Legora, I’d been the lawyer, been the client, and worked on the product side. That’s basically the job description for a legal engineer, though nobody called it that yet.”
Mr. Anaya has found that there is often a gap between introducing an AI tool and its use. “The gap wasn’t knowledge,” he said. “It was that we were teaching the tool, not their work…Most adoption problems are diagnosis problems, and diagnosis doesn’t happen over video. That’s why we go to them. Meeting lawyers where they are is a critical part of the job.”
If your industry has complicated workflows, you’re going to use AI. If it has lots of arcane knowledge, you’re going to use AI. And, of course, if people in it care about making money, you’re going to use AI. If your industry doesn’t yet have its version of a legal engineer to help master this transition, it will.
Two years ago I wrote about the need for more engineers in healthcare, noting that most people who present themselves as “healthcare engineers” are focused on designing, building, and operating healthcare facilities, although some felt it was (or should be) “involved in all aspects of the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and management of illness, as well as the preservation and improvement of physical and mental health and well-being, through the services offered to humans by the medical and allied health professions.”
If they were doing all that, healthcare wouldn’t be quite the mess it is today, with all parties seeing the system as dysfunctional. Healthcare needs its version of legal engineers – perhaps clinicians, perhaps not, but certainly people who understand how clinicians practice, how the system “works,” and enough about AI to see where and how it can add value.
Again, that Venn diagram gets small quickly.
I’d note that the American Medical Association (AMA) has launched the AMA Center for Digital Health and AI, and named the well-respected Jennifer Goldsack to head it up. Still, it is under the AMA’s umbrella, and its own description says it “educates and supports physicians, and gives them a voice in how technology is used to enhance the patient and clinician experience,” so if we’re looking for radical system reforms or even putting patients first, we may need to look elsewhere.
I remember when healthcare first started discovering the internet and “eHealth” became a thing. Then mobile came along and “mHealth” was the catchphrase. Smart people pointed out we’d know when healthcare had truly adopted to the new technologies when things just became “health” again. Same with AI.
We need legal engineers and their equivalents now to help us transition to the AI world, but we’re going to get to the point when AI is so baked into everything that we won’t have distinct roles like them.
Kim is a former emarketing exec at a major Blues plan, editor of the late & lamented Tincture.io, and now regular THCB contributor
