Remote | Legal Research Specialist (PACER) — $65–$115/hour

We are sharing a specialised part-time consulting opportunity for experienced federal litigation professionals with frequent hands-on use of PACER and CM/ECF for federal court docket research.

This role supports an advanced AI initiative focused on evaluating how effectively AI systems perform realistic federal court research. Selected professionals will review completed AI-agent research tasks against actual dockets and records, identify procedural and retrieval errors, refine task difficulty, and help establish rigorous grading standards for PACER-based legal research.

Key Responsibilities

PACER & Federal Docket Review

• Review AI-generated research against actual PACER and federal court docket information
• Verify the correct case, court, parties, procedural posture, outcome, status, and supporting documents
• Trace docket histories across filings, motions, orders, judgments, and related entries
• Identify errors involving case numbers, party names, case status, or procedural history
• Distinguish open, terminated, transferred, consolidated, and related matters accurately

Federal Court Research

• Use PACER Case Locator and individual court CM/ECF systems appropriately
• Conduct targeted searches using party names, courts, date ranges, case types, and Nature of Suit classifications
• Account for name variants, corporate suffixes, d/b/a entities, subsidiaries, misspellings, and other search complications
• Navigate district, appellate, and bankruptcy court records
• Analyse relationships between district cases, appeals, consolidated matters, and MDL proceedings

AI Evaluation & Quality Assurance

• Review completed AI-agent research workflows for factual and procedural accuracy
• Identify plausible but incorrect answers that may escape non-specialist review
• Determine whether answers are fully supported by available court records
• Identify failures involving the wrong case, wrong court, incorrect procedural posture, or inaccessible records
• Assess whether tasks genuinely require PACER research rather than being solvable through simpler public sources

Task & Grading Development

• Refine research prompts to improve realism and technical difficulty
• Help create authentic federal docket research scenarios
• Develop and improve grading guidance for legal research tasks
• Define critical failure conditions such as incorrect case identification or reliance on sealed or restricted records
• Provide clear written rationales explaining why an answer should pass or fail

Ideal Profile

Strong candidates may have:

• At least 2 years of professional federal litigation or federal court research experience
• Frequent hands-on use of PACER and CM/ECF, typically weekly or more, in a current or recent professional role
• Experience as a litigation paralegal, docket or court clerk, legal research librarian, litigator, or comparable federal litigation professional
• Ability to read and interpret federal docket sheets fluently
• Strong understanding of procedural posture, case status, docket entries, and court structure
• Experience identifying and resolving party-name and case-search ambiguities
• Strong legal research judgment and attention to detail
• Excellent written communication and ability to explain research errors precisely

Educational Background

• A J.D. and bar admission may strengthen an application but are not required
• Experienced litigation paralegals, docket specialists, court professionals, and legal research librarians are strongly relevant
• Formal training in legal studies, paralegal studies, library science, or a related field may be helpful
• Equivalent research-intensive federal litigation experience may also qualify

Nice to Have

• Bankruptcy docket experience
• Experience with complex or multidistrict litigation
• Hands-on PACER research across multiple federal courts
• Familiarity with consolidated and related-case structures
• Experience tracing district court matters through appeal
• Knowledge of sealed, restricted, and redacted filing rules
• Experience with CourtLink, docket-management tools, or comparable legal research platforms
• Prior AI evaluation, data annotation, or structured quality-review experience

Why This Opportunity

• Apply specialised federal litigation research expertise to advanced AI evaluation
• Work with realistic PACER and federal docket research scenarios
• Help identify subtle procedural and factual errors in AI-generated legal research
• Improve the realism and difficulty of federal court research tasks
• Shape grading standards for accurate, defensible legal research
• Participate in flexible remote consulting work with competitive hourly compensation

Contract Details

• Independent contractor role
• Fully remote with flexible scheduling
• Competitive rates between $65–$115 per hour depending on expertise and project scope
• Frequent professional use of PACER and CM/ECF is required
• Work may include docket research, AI-agent evaluation, task refinement, grading-guidance development, and quality assurance
• Weekly payments via Stripe or Wise
• Projects may be extended, shortened, or adjusted depending on scope and performance
• Work will not involve access to confidential or proprietary information from any employer, client, or institution

About the Platform

This opportunity is available through 24-MAG LLC. We connect experienced professionals with remote consulting opportunities across technical, evaluation, and project-based workstreams.

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