director, Global Legal Operations

Starbucks Coffee Company•Seattle, WA

2d•$165,500 - $276,000•Onsite

About The Position

As the Global Legal Operations Director, you will be the senior operating leader responsible for turning Legal strategy into disciplined execution and measurable results. You will partner closely with the Vice President, Legal Strategy & Operations, the Chief Legal Officer, Legal leadership, Finance, Procurement, Technology, and other enterprise partners to build and run a scalable, data-driven, technology-enabled operating model for a complex, multinational retail and manufacturing enterprise. You will lead the day-to-day Legal Operations function, develop a high-performing team, strengthen financial discipline and cost predictability, modernize technology and data, simplify how work gets done, and ensure transformation initiatives move from strategy through implementation, adoption, and sustained business impact.

Requirements

12+ years of progressive legal operations, business operations, transformation, consulting, finance, procurement, technology, or in-house legal leadership experience, including significant experience in a complex global organization.
Experience supporting a publicly traded company is strongly preferred.
Deep expertise in legal technology, data, analytics, process design, and automation, including matter management, e-billing, CLM, workflow automation, enterprise integrations, dashboards, and the practical application of AI or emerging technology to legal work.
Proven financial and commercial acumen, with hands-on ownership of complex legal budgets, forecasting, accruals, e-billing, outside counsel spend, vendor management, rate negotiations, matter budgets, and value-based fee arrangements.
Demonstrated ability to improve cost predictability and convert spend data into decisions and action.
Exceptional people leadership, change management, and cross-enterprise collaboration skills, with the executive presence and business acumen to influence senior lawyers and executives, challenge constructively, make decisions, and drive transformation across global teams.
Must be an operator who creates clarity, establishes accountability, removes barriers, and consistently closes the loop.
Demonstrated track record of building and improving Legal Operations capabilities, with quantifiable results such as improved forecast accuracy, reduced external spend or invoice cycle time, increased technology adoption, reduced manual work, faster process cycle times, or improved stakeholder satisfaction.
Proven people-management experience leading multidisciplinary teams across operations, technology, data, project management, and process improvement, with evidence of developing talent and raising team performance.
Demonstrated ability to move from strategy to execution. Candidates should be able to show examples of diagnosing an operational problem, designing a practical solution, implementing it, driving adoption, measuring results, and sustaining the change.
Highly effective at prioritization and portfolio management, with the judgment to distinguish urgent work from important work, stop lower-value activity, allocate resources thoughtfully, and deliver multiple complex initiatives without losing operational control.
A service-oriented leadership style combined with high standards, intellectual curiosity, sound judgment, resilience, and a bias for action.
Comfortable operating in ambiguity while creating structure, transparency, and momentum.

Responsibilities

Translate Legal and enterprise strategy into a prioritized operating roadmap with clear owners, milestones, dependencies, measures of success, and accountability.
Design, implement, and continuously improve a scalable global legal operating model, and personally drive priority initiatives from concept through implementation, adoption, and measurable results.
Run the operational discipline behind Legal budgeting, forecasting, accruals, invoice management, matter budgets, variance analysis, and spend controls.
Improve forecast accuracy and cost predictability.
Operationalize the preferred provider program through panel governance, rate and fee negotiations, value-based arrangements, matter budgeting, billing compliance, performance scorecards, and active management of firm and vendor relationships.
Own the Legal technology roadmap and rationalization of the technology portfolio.
Optimize matter management, e-billing, CLM, workflow automation, reporting, and other legal platforms; improve integration with enterprise systems; establish reliable data governance; automate manual work; and responsibly deploy AI and emerging technology where it creates measurable efficiency, insight, or risk-management value.
Simplify, standardize, and automate core Legal processes across regions.
Establish clear process ownership, service levels, controls, playbooks, and best-practice workflows.
Measure cycle time, adoption, compliance, and stakeholder experience, and use the results to drive continuous improvement across the Legal department.
Own the day-to-day performance of the Legal Operations function, including matter management, e-billing, accruals, invoice processing, vendor and law firm onboarding, reporting, records, contract operations, intake and workflows, and operational support.
Establish an operating cadence that surfaces risks early, resolves issues quickly, and gives leadership clear visibility into performance.
Lead, coach, and develop the Legal Operations team.
Clarify roles, decision rights, goals, and performance expectations; align capacity to the highest-value work; build succession and development plans; and create a culture of ownership, collaboration, continuous improvement, and follow-through.
Lead a focused portfolio of transformation initiatives with clear business cases, milestones, owners, benefits, and measures of success.
Partner with stakeholders to drive adoption, address resistance, retire legacy ways of working, and ensure new processes and tools produce sustained results rather than one-time deliverables.
Establish a concise set of KPIs and dashboards that give Legal leadership timely visibility into spend, forecast, workload, service delivery, operational risk, technology adoption, outside counsel performance, and transformation progress.
Turn data into recommendations, decisions, and accountability rather than reporting for reporting's sake.
Serve as a trusted operating partner to Legal leaders and cross-functional stakeholders.
Anticipate needs, connect work across teams, resolve operational friction, and ensure Legal Operations enables lawyers to focus on the highest-value legal and business work.

Benefits

Medical, dental, vision, basic and supplemental life insurance, and other voluntary insurance benefits.
Short-term and long-term disability.
Paid parental leave.
Family expansion reimbursement.
Paid vacation from date of hire.
Sick time (accrued at 1 hour for every 25 hours worked).
Eight paid holidays.
Two personal days per year.
401(k) retirement plan with employer match.
Discounted company stock program (S.I.P.).
Starbucks equity program (Bean Stock).
Incentivized emergency savings.
Financial well-being tools.
100% upfront tuition coverage for a first-time bachelor’s degree through Arizona State University’s online program via the Starbucks College Achievement Plan.
Student loan management resources.
Access to other educational opportunities.
Backup care.
DACA reimbursement.