Public Interest Law Expert (Civil / Environmental)

Role Overview

Mercor is partnering with leading AI labs on Project Atlas - an initiative to build realistic enterprise environments that frontier AI agents are trained and evaluated in. We're seeking experienced public-interest attorneys from major legal-aid organizations, public-interest law firms, and government offices (e.g., Legal Services Corporation grantees, ACLU, NRDC, Earthjustice, Public Counsel, state AG offices, DOJ Civil / ENRD) to recreate the digital workspaces they run every day and design the tasks that genuinely challenge state-of-the-art AI.

You'll bring your expertise in civil-rights, civil-legal-aid, consumer protection, environmental, or impact litigation to build a high-fidelity environment that mirrors the tools, files, and case-management workflows of a serious public-interest practice - and then author tasks grounded in the matters you actually handle today.

Key Responsibilities

- Build a realistic digital workspace centered on the Drive folders you use day-to-day - the intake notes, case-summary memos, pleadings, advocacy letters, policy briefs, grant reports, amicus drafts, and email threads that reflect how you actually organize your work - with some representation of the platforms that support it (e.g., Westlaw / LexisNexis, Clio / MyCase, Socrata / ArcGIS Hub)


- Design multi-step tasks grounded in your real workflows that require navigating multiple apps, files, and stakeholders in a way that meaningfully challenges frontier AI agents


- Collaborate with other public-interest attorneys in your field to design the environment, shape task scope, and review each other's scenarios for realism and rigor


- Work asynchronously with research teams to refine task designs and evaluation criteria for public-interest-law agent benchmarks


- Contribute to frontier AI research and benchmarking - the work you produce directly informs how leading labs train and evaluate the next generation of AI systems

Ideal Qualifications

- JD and active bar admission


- 3+ years of full-time public-interest experience at a major legal-aid organization, public-interest law firm, state AG / DOJ office, or impact-litigation nonprofit


- Background in one or more areas such as:


- Civil-rights or civil-legal-aid (housing, family, immigration, public-benefits)


- Environmental law (CAA, CWA, NEPA, CERCLA, environmental-justice)


- Consumer-protection or affirmative enforcement


- Impact litigation or amicus / policy advocacy


- Administrative / rule-making advocacy


- Day-to-day use of Westlaw / LexisNexis, Clio / MyCase, and Socrata / Esri ArcGIS Hub


- Strong analytical thinking and writing - able to translate public-interest workflows into structured task specs

Compensation Note

- Task Completion Pay: Competitive and based on task quality (~$1,750 - $2,150 per completed task, subject to change as the project evolves)


- Performance Bonus: Top performers receive a weekly bonus incentive on top of their per task rate!


- Hourly Opportunity: Top performers may be invited to transition to an hourly compensation model based on sustained quality and throughput.