US Patent Attorney — Prosecution & Litigation

About the Role Mercor is partnering with a leading AI lab to train frontier models on high-quality legal reasoning data. We're hiring US patent attorneys with prosecution and/or litigation experience for a focused evaluation project. You'll review model-generated work product on patent matters, judge its quality, and mark legal, technical, factual and citation errors directly in the materials.

What You'll Do

• Review patent-related outputs (prosecution and/or litigation work product) and assess their quality against defined dimensions

• Annotate inline, flagging legal, technical, factual, claim-construction and citation errors

• Provide clear, well-reasoned explanations for each judgment

• Complete all assigned reviews within the review window

• Attend a short onboarding session before kickoff

You're a Good Fit If You

• Are admitted to practice in at least one US state (active bar membership)

• Have 3+ years of US patent practice — patent prosecution (drafting/prosecuting applications before the USPTO) and/or patent litigation (infringement, validity, claim construction)

• For prosecution work: are registered to practice before the USPTO (patent bar, registration number)

• Hold a technical or scientific degree (engineering, computer science, life sciences, chemistry, physics or similar)

• Hold a J.D. from an ABA-accredited law school

• Write clearly and pay close attention to detail

Bonus Qualifications

• USPTO registration number (patent bar)

• Experience at an AmLaw 100 firm or a leading patent boutique

• Federal Circuit or district-court patent clerkship

• Prior data annotation, AI evaluation or legal-benchmark experience, including prior legal AI projects with Mercor

Role Highlights

• Time commitment: approximately 12–15 hours total, within a defined review window

• Immediately required

• You must complete all required reviews, as the project design depends on every attorney finishing the full set

We consider all qualified applicants without regard to legally protected characteristics and provide reasonable accommodations upon request.

Contract and Payment Terms

• You will be engaged as an independent contractor.
• This is a fully remote role that can be completed on your own schedule.
• Projects can be extended, shortened, or concluded early depending on needs and performance.
• Your work at Mercor will not involve access to confidential or proprietary information from any employer, client, or institution.
• Payments are weekly on Stripe or Wise based on services rendered.
• Please note: We are unable to support H1-B or STEM OPT candidates at this time.

About Mercor

Mercor partners with leading AI labs and enterprises to train frontier models using human expertise. You will work on projects that focus on training and enhancing AI systems. You will be paid competitively, collaborate with leading researchers, and help shape the next generation of AI systems in your area of expertise.