Developer, Legal Information Institute

Founded in 1887, Cornell Law School is a top-tier law school, currently ranked 13th by U.S. News & World Report. We offer a 3-year JD program for about 200 students per class, a one-year LLM program for over 100 students from countries throughout the world, and a doctoral (JSD) program for about 2-3 new students per year. Cornell Law School has approximately 40 tenured and tenure-track faculty, including 20 with chaired faculty positions; and 15 clinical professors in the legal research and writing program and in clinics at the local, national, and international level. Our faculty is consistently ranked among the top in the country for scholarly productivity and influence, and has pre-eminence in many areas, including quantitative and qualitative empirical legal studies, international and comparative law, and robust doctrinal scholarship in core fields. Our school is committed to being recognized as the leader among law schools at combining inspiring theoretical, doctrinal, and experiential teaching with cutting-edge scholarship in a supportive, intellectually rich community, so that our graduates can achieve excellence in all facets of the legal profession.

The Legal Information Institute (https://www.law.cornell.edu) at Cornell Law School is the world's leading source for free legal information. Each year, we serve 30 million people from over 240 countries around the world who want to find and understand the law. Our website, established in 1992, was the thirtieth on the Web and we have been a law-and-technology leader ever since.

Our small engineering team builds fast-loading, usable, reliable applications that bring American law to people from all walks of life - lawyers, engineers, construction workers, students, disability advocates, bankers, farmers, and many, many more. We make full use of cutting-edge NLP, machine-learning, and cloud-computing technologies to support our mission.

Cornell University embraces diversity and seeks candidates who will contribute to a climate that supports students, faculty and staff of all identities and backgrounds. We strongly encourage individuals from underrepresented and/or marginalized identities to apply.

What you will do:

Reporting to the Co-Director of the Legal Information Institute (LII), the Developer will serve as a full-stack web developer focusing on maintaining, improving, and expanding the features of the full range of LII's web-based content.

Duties include:

• Improving the user experience for our pool of legal author/experts and correspondents.
• Maintaining technology- and application-spanning services that integrate our data and user experience with other providers.
• Addressing user-contributed issues from a website that serves 35 million people annually.
• Making automated-test-driven additions to legacy software, including but not limited to software for citation detection, resolution and markup; text-integrity assurance; web accessibility compliance; XML schema validation; data model quality assessment; machine learning; data science; and front-end functionality.
• Adding test coverage for legacy software at all levels of the software stack.
• Preparing requirements and specifications documents.
• Evaluating and documenting legacy software applications.
• Learn and grow as a technologist.

This gift-funded position is for a one-year term. Reappointment for an additional one-year term may be possible based on performance and funding availability.

What we need:

• Bachelor's degree and up to two years of relevant experience in full-stack development or equivalent combination of education and work experience.
• Experience with Python application development and web application development.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills to gather requirements, specify, design, code, test, debug, and document software applications.
• Ability to work quickly and effectively in a fast-paced development environment.
• Flexibility in the face of a rapidly-evolving competitive landscape.
• Responsiveness to feedback.
• Strong time management, organization skills and strong attention to detail.

We'd prefer experience maintaining legacy applications; front-end Javascript libraries; XML technologies, text processing, or Linked Data technologies; topic modeling, text-mining, or data science; and civic technology, legal information, or digital library systems. Working knowledge of web accessibility standards.

During the COVID restrictions this position will primarily work remotely. During the training phase there may be times when certain activities will take place on campus, observing all University protocols and guidelines, but this would be limited in nature until such time that the remote work restrictions are lifted.

Rewards & Benefits:

• Cornell provides great benefits that include educational benefits, access to a plethora of wellness programs, employee discounts with local and national retail brands, health care options to choose from, generous paid leave provisions: 3 weeks of vacation, 12 holidays (including end of year winter break through New Year's Day).
• Cornell has also been nationally recognized as an award-winning workplace for our health, wellbeing, sustainability, and diversity initiatives. For more information, follow the link. Benefits at Cornell.

To apply:

• To be considered, please submit BOTH a cover letter and a resume.

Visa sponsorship is not available for this position.

No relocation assistance available for this position.

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Diversity and Inclusion are a part of Cornell University's heritage. We are a recognized employer and educator valuing AA/EEO, Protected Veterans and Individuals with Disabilities. We also recognize a lawful preference in employment practices for Native Americans living on or near Indian reservations. Cornell University is an innovative Ivy League university and a great place to work. Our inclusive community of scholars, students, and staff impart an uncommon sense of larger purpose, and contribute creative ideas to further the university's mission of teaching, discovery, and engagement.