Clifford Chance
Client & Legal Knowledge Engineer
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Company Description
Who we are
As a global law firm our work spans jurisdictions, cultures, and languages – and so do our people.
Our culture is collaborative and inclusive — where diverse perspectives are recognised and valued. Where performing to your highest ability, unlocks equal access to opportunities to learn, thrive and grow.
We combine deep legal expertise and commercial intelligence to grow, transform, protect, and defend our clients' businesses, across every critical moment.
We operate in the sectors and regions that matter to our clients. With forward-thinking insights and innovative, tech-enabled solutions that combine deep knowledge of their sectors and markets.
Join us to build connections and work with colleagues as one global team – empowering each other to be exceptional and create advantage for our clients.
Job Description
The role
The Client and Legal Knowledge Engineer sits within the Client and Legal Knowledge team and supports the evolution of the firm’s knowledge role in an AI-enabled environment. The role helps turn legal knowledge, client knowledge and expert insight into structured, governed and reusable knowledge assets that can be discovered, applied and improved across the firm.
Working across the Client and Legal Knowledge portfolio, the role will identify, shape and support practical use cases that improve how the firm captures, structures, searches, navigates and reuses trusted knowledge. This includes supporting knowledge products, platforms, enterprise search, intranet journeys, guided content experiences, taxonomy, content operations, adoption and AI-enabled knowledge initiatives.
This is a knowledge role with a strong technology component. It combines legal knowledge management, client knowledge, content architecture, product thinking and responsible use of emerging technologies to improve consistency, reuse, productivity and client service while maintaining appropriate governance and confidentiality controls.
Who you will work with
You will work as part of the Client and Legal Knowledge team, collaborating with colleagues across Knowledge Products and Platforms, client knowledge, legal knowledge, data, taxonomy, search, content architecture, adoption and knowledge operations.
You will partner with Knowledge Lawyers, client knowledge colleagues, fee earners and practice-facing knowledge teams to understand user needs and identify where trusted knowledge can be structured, automated, surfaced or reused more effectively.
You will also work with Product Managers, IT, Innovation, Risk, Compliance and other business services teams to ensure knowledge solutions are practical, secure, governed and aligned with the firm’s broader knowledge and technology strategy.
What you will be responsible for
Knowledge engineering across the Client and Legal Knowledge portfolio:
- Design knowledge models, metadata approaches and content structures that support search, AI retrieval, product development and reuse across the Client and Legal Knowledge portfolio.
- Work with Knowledge Lawyers, client knowledge colleagues, product teams and knowledge operations colleagues to identify repeatable workflows, common questions and opportunities for standardisation.
- Ensure knowledge assets are aligned with firm standards, relevant governance requirements and agreed content, metadata and taxonomy principles.
AI-enabled knowledge solutions:
- Support the development of AI-enabled knowledge experiences grounded in trusted firm content.
- Help design retrieval, prompt and workflow approaches that improve access to client and legal knowledge.
- Evaluate AI-enabled outputs from a knowledge quality, usability, confidentiality and governance perspective.
- Contribute to guidance and standards for responsible use of AI across legal knowledge products.
Knowledge Search, taxonomy and discoverability:
- Take responsibility for seeing agreed search, navigation, taxonomy and intranet improvements through from issue identification to implementation and review.
- Work with Knowledge Lawyers, product colleagues and content owners to design and maintain user-centred navigation routes, including local topic structures, practice area views, knowledge-type filters and task-based journeys.
- Apply and improve knowledge taxonomies, metadata models and content classification approaches, including local topics, knowledge types, jurisdiction, practice area, legal topic, document type and lifecycle status where relevant.
- Use search analytics, user feedback and content performance signals to identify gaps, duplication, poor findability and opportunities to improve the user experience.
- Partner with content owners to ensure intranet pages, knowledge collections and search experiences remain current, well-structured, governed and aligned with agreed taxonomy and metadata standards.
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Client and Legal Knowledge portfolio use cases and adoption:
- Identify, shape and support practical knowledge engineering use cases across the Client and Legal Knowledge portfolio, including legal knowledge, client knowledge, knowledge products, search, intranet, taxonomy, content operations, adoption and AI-enabled knowledge initiatives.
- Work with colleagues across Client and Legal Knowledge to understand common pain points, repeated requests, user journeys and opportunities to improve how knowledge is created, structured, surfaced, governed and reused.
- Translate portfolio-wide needs into clear requirements, prototypes, pilots and prioritised improvements, ensuring use cases are grounded in trusted content, clear user needs, appropriate governance and practical delivery considerations.
- Connect related activity across content, product, search, taxonomy, data, adoption and operations so that solutions are reusable, scalable and aligned with the firm’s knowledge strategy.
- Measure adoption, user satisfaction and value so that knowledge products and use cases continue to evolve with lawyer, client and business needs.
What you will do
Build the bridge between legal knowledge and technology:
- Map legal workflows and identify where structured knowledge, automation or AI can reduce duplication and improve consistency.
- Create or shape working prototypes, workflows, pilots and reusable knowledge components in partnership with product and technology teams.
- Define knowledge requirements for system integrations and ensure the right content, metadata and controls are considered from the outset.
Strengthen the knowledge foundations for AI:
- Help prepare knowledge content for AI use by improving structure, metadata, summaries, relationships and governance.
- Contribute to controlled pilots involving natural language search, RAG, knowledge assistants, drafting support and workflow automation.
- Support testing and quality review of AI-enabled knowledge outputs, including accuracy, source grounding, confidentiality and usability.
Enable a high-performing knowledge team:
- Work across Client and Legal Knowledge workstreams to connect product, content, data, search and operations activity.
- Share practical knowledge engineering methods with colleagues and help build confidence in AI-enabled ways of working.
- Produce clear documentation, guidance and updates so that new tools and processes are understood and adopted.
Develop and deliver use cases across the Client and Legal Knowledge portfolio:
- Work with colleagues across Client and Legal Knowledge to turn priority problems into practical, reusable knowledge use cases.
- Support use cases from problem definition through requirements, prototype, pilot, adoption and continuous improvement.
- Get involved hands-on in content review, taxonomy mapping, testing, user feedback analysis, documentation and implementation activity where needed.
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Be hands-on and delivery-focused:
- Take a proactive, practical approach to moving work forward - identifying what needs to be done, unblocking issues and helping the team deliver.
- Be willing to get into the detail and work hands-on across content, taxonomy, search configuration, testing, documentation, user feedback analysis, clean-up activity and operational tasks where needed.
- Work collaboratively across the team, stepping in to support colleagues and shared priorities rather than focusing only on narrowly defined responsibilities.
- Balance strategic thinking with practical execution, ensuring that ideas are translated into usable, adopted and well-governed knowledge solutions.
- Help maintain momentum on pilots, intranet improvements, taxonomy updates, search enhancements and knowledge product changes by following through on actions and driving work to completion.
Qualifications
Your experience
Experience, knowledge and capabilities:
- Experience improving knowledge search, intranet findability, guided content experiences or content discovery in a legal, professional services or enterprise knowledge environment.
- Practical experience applying or maintaining taxonomies, metadata schemas, topic structures, knowledge-type classifications, content standards or controlled vocabularies.
- Experience identifying, shaping or supporting practical knowledge, content, search, automation, intranet or AI-enabled use cases across a team, function or portfolio.
- Ability to work across multiple workstreams and stakeholder groups, translating user needs into reusable, scalable and practical knowledge solutions.
- Comfortable working at both conceptual and operational levels - from designing taxonomy, search and use-case principles through to reviewing content, testing user journeys and helping implement improvements.
Desirable:
- Experience in a global law firm or professional services environment.
- Experience with Microsoft 365, Power Platform, Azure AI, Copilot, legal AI tools or equivalent platforms.
- Experience supporting pilots, proofs of concept or product enhancements from idea through adoption.
- Familiarity with data governance, permissioned search, metadata quality, knowledge graphs, semantic search or content migration activity.
- Ability to work fluently with technical colleagues without needing to sit as a pure software engineering or data science role.
Skills and behaviours:
- Knowledge mindset: understands how legal expertise is captured, curated, reused and governed.
- Product mindset: focuses on user needs, adoption, measurable value and continuous improvement.
- Technology fluency: can work confidently with AI, automation and platform teams while keeping knowledge outcomes central.
- Commercial and client focus: recognises that better knowledge delivery improves consistency, efficiency and client service.
- Collaboration: builds trusted relationships across practice groups, Client and Legal Knowledge, IT, Innovation, Risk and Compliance.
- Judgement: balances innovation with confidentiality, information governance and the need for lawyers to remain accountable for legal outputs.
- Proactivity: spots issues and opportunities, takes ownership and is comfortable suggesting practical ways to improve knowledge discovery, content quality and user experience.
- Delivery and practical problem solving: combines strategic thinking with a willingness to get into the detail, follow through on actions and move between user needs, content detail, taxonomy, search behaviour and operational constraints to deliver pragmatic improvements.
- Team player: works generously and collaboratively, supports shared priorities and is willing to step in where needed to help colleagues and the wider Client and Legal Knowledge team deliver portfolio-wide outcomes.
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