Research Specialist (Legal Research)

Location: Chicago, Illinois, United States; full-time onsite role with occasional pre-approved overtime and rotating on-call coverage after normal business hours, weekends, and holidays.

Annual salary range for Chicago: $82,987–$103,734.

Company

King & Spalding is a global law firm providing legal services through more than 2,500 lawyers and business professionals.

What you will do

• Conduct legal, business, legislative, docket, public records, financial, and general reference research using electronic and print resources.
• Respond to routine and complex research requests from attorneys, paralegals, administrative departments, and firm leadership.
• Prepare company profiles, market and industry research, litigation histories, transaction research, and competitive intelligence reports.
• Create and maintain current-awareness alerts and tracking services for legal, regulatory, litigation, client, and market developments.
• Train attorneys and staff on research strategy, source selection, tools, best practices, and emerging technologies.
• Evaluate research, business intelligence, data analytics, and generative AI tools and improve workflows and deliverables.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree required; relevant education and professional experience may be considered in combination.
• At least two years of legal, business, corporate, academic, special library, or professional services research experience preferred; law firm experience strongly preferred.
• Proficiency with legal, business, news, docket, public records, and financial research resources, including Westlaw, Lexis, Bloomberg Law, VitalLaw, PACER, CourtLink, Capital IQ, FactSet, and Intelligize.
• Strong analytical, writing, editing, communication, client service, judgment, discretion, and deadline-management skills.
• Ability to work independently and collaboratively with attorneys, practice groups, administrative departments, and research colleagues.
• Technical proficiency with Microsoft Office, collaboration tools, workflow systems, and responsible validation of generative AI tools.

Nice to have

• Law degree, Master of Library/Information Science degree, or equivalent advanced degree.
• Law firm research experience.

Culture & Benefits

• Health and wellness plan, life and disability insurance, flexible spending accounts, and a health savings account.
• 401(k) plan, profit sharing plan, and substantial paid time off.
• Merit-based bonuses and salary increases.
• Work in a fast-paced legal environment focused on innovation, excellence, and client service.