Director of Academic Programs / Academic Programs Manager

$100,000 – $280,000
Full-time
Cambridge, UK / Washington, DC / Remote
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Applications close on November 1, 2026

About LawAI

The Institute for Law & AI (LawAI) is an independent think tank that researches and advises on the legal challenges posed by artificial intelligence. We believe that sound legal analysis will promote security, welfare, and the rule of law. We engage in three core activities: independent legal research and analysis; consulting for governments, academia, and industry; and field-building through fellowships and events.

We have grown from roughly 28 to 40 staff between 2025 and 2026 and plan to grow by 1.5x again in 2027.

Recent accomplishments include:

  • Our Director served in a legal advisory role to the European AI Office on the General-Purpose AI Code of Practice, and testified before the European Parliament. In the US, we briefed Congressional staff and state legislatures on AI regulation, and our memos on the proposed federal moratorium were widely circulated and reported on.
  • Recently we published several pieces of research, including Law-Following AI in the Fordham Law Review, Architectures of Global AI Governance with Oxford University Press, and the Cambridge Commentary on EU General-Purpose AI Law.
  • Nearly 5,000 people applied to our Summer Research Fellowship in 2025, seven times as many as the year before. Former fellows and scholars now work at the European AI Office, the UK AI Security Institute, leading AI labs, and in academia.
  • We brought together more than 200 participants and 50 experts, including Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio, across our flagship events: the Summer Institute on Law and AI, the Cambridge Forum on Law and AI, and the Workshop on Law-Following AI.

Our research is split among three teams: US Law & Policy, EU Law, and Legal Frontiers. You can learn more about LawAI on our website, alongside our recent publications, our 2025 Annual Report and an overview of our workstreams and research directions.

What we value at LawAI

We put our mission first to realize our ambitious goals for impact, following our operating principles: rigorous and actionable in our work, curious and humble in how we think, and kind and clear in how we communicate.

About the role

The Legal Frontiers team at the Institute for Law & AI (LawAI) is building a new Academic Programs team to expand our academic reach. The Academic Programs team will support researchers, both early-career and established, in constructing and executing on research agendas aimed at promoting security, welfare, and the rule of law in the age of advanced AI. The team will also help integrate these researchers into a broader intellectual community to support more rigorous and vibrant public and academic discourse on law and AI.

We already run several programs, events, and initiatives with the aim of identifying, attracting, and connecting talented researchers with the relevant expertise and motivation to work on the most important questions at the intersection of law and AI. We then provide them with the support, knowledge, and infrastructure to do so. The Academic Programs team will formalize this cluster of work and build the capacity to expand it. 

We are hiring at two levels to scale this new team quickly as LawAI grows. The Director of Academic Programs will work closely with our Managing Director of Research, Cullen O’Keefe, to define the team’s strategy, develop high-level goals, review our existing programming, and decide which new or expanded programs to run. The Director of Academic Programs will also be responsible for building out the team over time so that we can scale our academic programming. The Academic Programs Manager will help deliver excellent academic programs by designing and implementing core tasks, such as program design and execution, related communications, talent management (including headhunting and participant selection), events management, logistics, and analytics. Applicants may apply for both roles.

About the Academic Programs Team

The Legal Frontiers team runs a number of programs aimed at recruiting and supporting researchers—both early-career and established—who want to improve and contribute to law and policy scholarship around large-scale risks and opportunities arising from transformative artificial intelligence. Examples of our current programs of this nature include:

The new Academic Programs team within Legal Frontiers will own these projects, helping to maintain, improve, and expand them as we seek to scale our impact. The Academic Programs team will also be encouraged to help implement and scale other ambitious programs that support impactful scholarship on law and transformative AI. Examples of new activities that the Academic Programs team might undertake include:

  • Running a grantmaking program to identify and support external researchers working on valuable projects
  • Helping researchers incubate ambitious new projects through fiscal sponsorship
  • Launching a curated guest blog program with paid contributions from leading scholars
  • Developing educational materials—such as recorded lectures, online courses, reading lists, and curricula—to help students and others learn about important ideas
  • Hosting a recurring closed-door virtual workshop to enable scholars to strengthen their research projects
  • Supplying dedicated computational resources to scholars doing valuable empirical research on AI systems
  • Building and owning a Research Communications team to help market our first-party publications and ensure that they meet high standards for form and style

Responsibilities

Director of Academic Programs

The Director of Academic Programs will lead the Academic Programs team. The Director will translate organizational objectives into concrete programs and build a team capable of delivering those programs at scale. The exact scope of responsibilities will depend on the qualifications and experience of the candidate. That said, we expect most versions of this role would involve the following responsibilities:

  • Lead the strategic direction and aims of the Academic Programs team, ensuring it evolves in line with the growth of the Legal Frontiers team, the broader organization of LawAI, and the long-term priorities of both. Although the Academic Programs team will report to the Legal Frontiers team, its projects and scope are likely to be of use and run parallel to other teams within LawAI. 
  • Review and assess the impact of our existing programming, and decide whether to expand, adapt, or retire programs.
  • Identify, scope, and execute new projects, initiatives, and scaling opportunities for the Academic Programs team in line with strategic priorities and aims. 
  • Build and nurture relationships with academic institutions, external researchers and experts, and aligned organizations and teams to support the Academic Programs talent pipeline, partnerships, and reach. 
  • Grow, develop, and performance-manage the Academic Programs team, strengthening the capability, accountability, and professional growth of team members. As the Academic Programs team grows, manage and understand the needs of a variety of roles that may span both operations and research.

Depending on the configuration of the team as it grows, the Director may need to also take on aspects of the Manager scope below. 

Academic Programs Manager

The Academic Programs Manager will be a key founding member of the Academic Programs team. The Manager will bring an operational perspective to the design of high-level programming, then help translate that vision into ambitious and well-run programs. We expect that the role will primarily consist of the following:

  • Understand LawAI’s overall mission and how Academic Programs contribute to it. Apply that understanding to design choices in academic programming.
  • Juggle, progress, and deliver multiple projects at once. Oversee projects from end-to-end and be able to prioritize and make decisions based on your understanding of strategic priorities and operational constraints. 
  • Build, optimize, and manage the processes for identifying, attracting, and selecting researchers—both early-career and established—for programs, events, and initiatives run by the Legal Frontiers team and LawAI. Understand the relevant profiles and tailor the processes to suit. Working with our Talent team, optimize pipelines to reduce time burdens on our team members while maximizing throughput and accuracy. Review talent profiles to identify the most promising candidates for our programs.
  • Evaluate the effectiveness of programs by planning and carrying out impact analyses, including identifying key metrics and collecting and analyzing data.
  • Organize the logistics of running in-person and online events associated with our programs, for example, researching and booking venues, planning event schedules, coordinating with participants and speakers, and handling day-of logistics.
  • Ensure that program participants have an excellent experience across multiple dimensions, including operations, professional networking, career development, and overall wellbeing. The Manager will work closely with our Finance, Operations, Talent, and Communications teams to delegate tasks when possible while remaining responsible for overall program success.
  • Design and implement core tasks, such as related communications, events management, logistics, and analytics.

LawAI is growing quickly, and the role will change as the team does. We hire for the ability to take on new kinds of work, form an independent view, and adjust when priorities shift, rather than for a fixed match to the list above.

Who might be a good fit

For both roles, you may be a great fit if you:

  • Have familiarity with Legal Frontiers’ workstreams, and the broad remit of each of LawAI’s teams. You are willing to become conversant with the concept of Law-Following AI, the broader literature on legal alignment of AI systems, and the range of risks that AI agents pose to the rule of law—including abuse of government power, erosion of accountability, and concentration of power. You are motivated to engage substantively with the open questions in the Law-Following AI research agenda (see Part VI of the Fordham Law Review article), and bodies of work in new and growing workstreams. You are able to communicate the work of Legal Frontiers and LawAI to academic audiences across a variety of fields, and can convey complex concepts in an accessible and nuanced way.
  • Want to find and support the researchers working on the questions relevant to ensuring that advances in AI are beneficial and safe for the public. You are motivated to seek out promising talent and to support research that could have real implications for security, welfare, and the rule of law, including by shaping how AI agents are integrated into the legal order. In addition to understanding the kind of research that LawAI and the Legal Frontiers team is excited to invest in, you have or are able to develop judgment about which research areas and questions are worth seeking out and pursuing. 
  • Stay calm and steady during periods of growth, pressure, and ambiguity. You are comfortable with stretch periods and are able to make decisions and remain a steady hand under stress. You can identify and understand where gaps need to be filled, and are willing to step in and help with lower-level operations when capacity is constrained. You are able to scale operations without losing what makes the team work well.

In addition, you may be a great fit for the Director of Academic Programs role if you:

  • Have operated at executive or director level and have been responsible for team and organizational performance. You are comfortable weighing trade-offs and making sure decisions are actually implemented. You can bear high-level, strategic aims in mind while being able to guide operational detail and day-to-day decisions. 
  • Can engage thoughtfully with legal and policy scholarship. While you don’t need to be a legal or policy researcher yourself, you do need to be capable of deep engagement with scholars and scholarship to identify high-value projects. We think that the impact of superficially similar projects can diverge dramatically; part of your job will be to help distinguish between them. 
  • Can build strong and trusting relationships with academics, lawyers, law students, and policy professionals. Ability to engage deeply with scholarship, as described above, will also help you represent LawAI well to our external stakeholders and uphold LawAI’s reputation as a leading venue for careful thought. You are comfortable engaging with academic, government, and non-profit sectors at multiple levels. 
  • Care about building a team that lasts, and think about the team and organization as a whole. You understand that clear structure and good discipline are what allow ambitious, high-quality work to happen. You are comfortable holding strategy, budgets, people, and day-to-day operations together and seeing how they connect. 

Finally, you may be a great fit for the Academic Programs Manager role if you:

  • Have project management, talent management, or events management experience. Our academic programs combine operational execution, talent management, and events production. You can draw on operational experience to help directly implement aspects of program production or effectively delegate the execution of that work to others, whether at LawAI or external partners.
  • Understand legal talent profiles. A large part of the role will be selecting program participants based on their professional and academic profiles. You have some familiarity with the legal talent market across our primary jurisdictions of interest (the US, the UK and other common-law jurisdictions, and the EU) and can make reasonable determinations as to the potential fit of program applicants and participants.

Desirable, but not required:

  • Leading or shaping operations in a mission-driven organization, research institute, or early-stage nonprofit
  • Scaling a small organization through a period of growth and increasing complexity
  • Building operational infrastructure from relatively early foundations
  • Existing relationships and networks within academic or legal-academic communities (e.g., law schools, PhD programs), and familiarity with academic processes and projects
  • Experience running fellowships, trainings, or events for lawyers or law students

The ideal candidate will possess many of the skills and experiences described above. However, there is no such thing as a “perfect candidate”, and we do not expect a successful hire to excel in every dimension. Above all, we are looking for people motivated to contribute to our mission. If you are on the fence about whether you are qualified, we strongly encourage you to apply.

Role details and benefits

Compensation 

The salary range for a Director of Academic Programs is $150,000 to $280,000 and the salary range for an Academic Programs Manager is $100,000 to $160,000, depending on experience and location. Candidates with exceptional qualifications may be eligible for higher compensation.

Start date

We’re ideally looking for someone who can start as soon as possible, but we’re open to waiting for the right candidate.

Time zones and location 

This is a full-time, permanent position with flexible working hours. The role involves travel 2 to 3 times a year for team retreats and conferences, typically in the United States or Europe.

We prefer candidates who can work from the LawAI offices in Cambridge, UK. We are also open to candidates who can work from our offices in Washington, DC, or those who can work remotely. We have staff working from many different countries and support flexibility where needed. However, candidates should have, or should be able to make themselves available for, significant overlap with working hours across the US and Europe. This is to enable collaboration with team members and communication with audiences relevant for the Legal Frontiers team.

Visas: We may be able to support visa applications in some instances for this role, though individual eligibility is not within our control.

Benefits

Our benefits include:

  • Flexible working hours, with in-person work encouraged from our offices in Cambridge, UK, or Washington, DC
  • 5 weeks of PTO recommended per year, plus public holidays
  • 12 weeks of paid parental leave that can be taken prior to birth or adoption and during the first year, with the option to take additional unpaid leave
  • Employer pension or matching 401(k) contribution up to 4% of your salary
  • Health insurance for employees residing in countries without nationalized healthcare
  • Generous annual reimbursement funds, including:
    • $5,000 for productivity and professional development
    • $5,000 for mental health support
    • $2,500 for equipment and office supplies
  • Supportive team culture: a friendly, open work culture that encourages feedback and close collaboration, and a team that appreciates the contributions of all team members.
  • Networking & career support: through our work at the intersection of AI, law, and policy, employees gain exposure to an exceptional network of team members and partners in the US and EU policy spaces, along with opportunities for career development and external collaborations.
  • Social connection: even as a remote-first team, we create opportunities for casual interaction and collaboration, including an annual team retreat, so you can connect with team members beyond the work itself.

Diversity

We aim to employ people with many different experiences, perspectives, and backgrounds who share our mission. We are committed to creating an environment where all employees have the opportunity to succeed, regardless of their race, religion, disability, national origin, gender, or sexual orientation.

If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, or have any other questions about applying, please contact: hiring@law-ai.org.

Referrals

This position is eligible for LawAI’s referral program, which offers $5,000 to eligible individuals who refer a candidate we hire. Full terms are here.

Please consider applying ahead of the deadline, as we review applications on a rolling basis. The role will close for applications on November 1, 2026.

application process

We may adjust these steps depending on the role and the candidate, and will tell you what to expect as we go.

  1. Submit the application form by November 1, 2026
  2. Initial screening call 
  3. A work test (~2 hours) that simulates the work you would do in the role
  4. Remote interviews and reference checks 
  5. A paid work trial of one day (remote or in person)
  6. Employment offer

We invest a lot of time in hiring because we want to build the strongest possible team. We know our process is demanding, so we pay an honorarium for the work trial, partly so that financial constraints don’t keep anyone from applying.

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