Senior Manager, Legal Operations

White & Case•Los Angeles, CA

41d

About The Position

This Senior Manager role is a unique opportunity to drive significant change within the Firm's dynamic Tech Disputes practice by enhancing client service, operational efficiency, and process innovation. The position is integral to supporting one of the Firm's key client portfolios, combining leadership in legal operations, complex financial analysis, and collaboration with the client's in-house legal operations team and the Firm's legal teams. As a key member of the Firm's global Legal Project Management (LPM) team, the Senior Manager will oversee legal operations across disputes and compliance matters for technology-focused clients. The role involves managing end-to-end delivery of critical matters, with an emphasis on portfolio management, operational excellence, and local counsel oversight across jurisdictions. This includes streamlining processes, improving reporting accuracy, ensuring regional compliance, and driving client-facing innovation in tools like Power BI dashboards. The Senior Manager will contribute to client portfolios by addressing tailored operational needs, guiding global local counsel teams through complex invoicing and reporting requirements, and leading strategic financial analysis on fees, budgets, and profitability. They will work across functions such as Pricing, Finance, Technology, Accounts Payable, Billing, and Business Development to ensure seamless alignment with client expectations. This role requires a professional with demonstrable expertise in legal operations and project management, particularly in managing high-value, multi-jurisdictional portfolios within professional services or legal environments. Success will depend on the ability to manage a high volume of bespoke analysis, identify trends across client relationships, and implement effective solutions to optimize legal operations workflows. The Senior Manager will also mentor junior team members, contribute to the Firm's Legal Operations and LPM growth strategies, and actively participate in innovation initiatives to implement practical tools, processes, and best practices. Strategic relationship-building with legal teams, local counsel, and clients is critical, as is the ability to confidently present operational insights during leadership and client meetings. The success of this role will be measured by its impact on strategic client management, the enhancement of local counsel operations, and contributions to the Firm's Tech Disputes practice. The Senior Manager's ability to optimize processes, deliver high-quality insights, and implement change will transform the legal operations capabilities of the team while promoting service and operational excellence across the Firm's most critical client relationships.

Requirements

Experience of Legal Project Management required
Significant experience of managing project teams and supporting complex, multi-jurisdictional matters in a dedicated project management capacity including experience of working with global legal teams
Experience of change management
Knowledge and proficiency in extranets, ebilling software, online data rooms, collaboration tools, legal tech and SharePoint sites; proficiency in the use of Microsoft Office products including Excel, Powerpoint, Visio, Project and Power BI
Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills
Ability to manage multiple priorities with "can do" attitude, work cross-functionally, and meet tight deadlines
Strong interpersonal and communication skills, able to interact at all levels including with senior business stakeholders to negotiate and persuade in order to achieve successful outcomes
Understanding of law firm financial and performance metrics and ability to analyze financial reports of varying levels of complexity, providing financial analysis with a focus on delivering value to clients
Problem solver
Willing to challenge and question assumptions
Ability to work well under pressure and manage/prioritize workload
Advanced organizational and time management skills
A project leader
Flexible and resilient with ability to change and adapt in a fast moving, detail-oriented environment
Sensitivity to cultural differences across project teams
A strong academic record, preferably of graduate level (Law Degree or other relevant Post Graduate Degree an advantage).
Formal project management qualification essential, for example APMQ or PMP
5 years relevant work experience including client facing roles

Responsibilities

In collaboration with Legal Operations and LPM leadership, develop and strengthen the Firm's legal operation/LPM capability and pipeline of work, influencing Partners and lawyers to adopt LPM principles on their matters
Operational management and co-delivery of legal projects/matters by
arranging Kick-Off Meetings, Project Team Meetings and Steering Meetings, ensuring attendees, standing agenda, record keeping and circulation are appropriate to the meetings' purpose
defining and validating project scope, not simply management of scope
defining and tracking timelines, milestones, deliverables, assumptions and dependencies at the outset
financial/budget management on projects/matters
tracking progress and escalating changes in scope, time and/or budget to project stakeholders and ensuring effective corrective action is implemented, where required
implementing effective risk and issue identification and management strategies, providing options for mitigation or resolution that reflect client priorities
leading post project review and Lessons Learned workshops to contribute to ongoing process improvements
Use of appropriate project management tools and techniques including drafting of all project-related documents and project artefacts such as project approach, project plans, schedules, action trackers, availability trackers, correspondence trackers, risk logs, status reports
Implement and ensure effective communication strategies are in place and acting as the interface, where appropriate, to project specific stakeholders including our Clients, lawyers in other practice areas and offices, external and opposing counsel and third party vendors
Provide LPM guidance on best practices, tools, techniques, roles and responsibilities
Collaborate with legal teams to identify the most cost effective and level of resources available
Collaborate with legal teams to draft and submit budget proposals; and with support from the Finance team, track and analyse actual project costs against budget and proactively address budget variances
Build relationships and foster a collaborative approach between the Firm's legal teams, local counsel, and Clients on matter workstreams
Focused on lean principles and use of innovation and business process mapping, contribute to continuous improvement of the LPM Team's processes including project management methodology, governance, training for legal teams and LPM best practice; and support of the change management of implementing these
Management of concurrent matters across a portfolio to provide operational oversight with a focus on legal operations strategies for the Tech Disputes practice
Manage local counsel across jurisdictions to ensure alignment on invoicing, reporting, and compliance with client-specific requirements, monitoring trends across client portfolios to identify strategic opportunities and areas for standardization
Line management of junior team members, as required
Support LPM leadership with LPM collateral for bids, tenders and pitches to portray LPM as an innovative way in which to deliver legal services
Contribute to the development and delivery of LPM training content for Firm lawyers, local counsel, and Clients
Identify opportunities to cross-sell LPM services in our global business
Be seen as a key contact point for Partners and senior stakeholders for LPM globally and build relationships and foster a collaborative approach to working with clients and across all departments
Comfortable with presenting on relevant topics at Senior Leadership meetings and Client meetings.

Benefits

White & Case LLP offers a comprehensive suite of benefit programs to all eligible employees, including medical, dental, and vision insurance, life and disability coverage, 401(k) retirement savings, vacation time, and leave programs (including parental leave). Exempt roles are also performance bonus eligible.

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