Senior Pricing Manager

Wilson Sonsini•San Diego, CA

1d•Remote

About The Position

Wilson Sonsini is a premier legal advisor to technology, life sciences, and other growth enterprises globally, representing companies from start-ups to multibillion-dollar corporations, as well as their financial advisors. The firm has approximately 1,100 attorneys across 17 offices worldwide. The Pricing & Legal Project Management (LPM) team provides strategic financial and commercial insights, including the creation and management of alternative fee arrangements, development of pricing strategies, and application of creative approaches to business problems impacting client acquisition and retention. These efforts aim to enhance operational efficiency, client satisfaction, and firm profitability. The Senior Pricing Manager will lead and manage pricing requests, overseeing a team of analysts, and ensuring client and attorney responsiveness. This role involves presenting sophisticated pricing recommendations that balance market competitiveness with firm financial targets, maintaining existing processes, and driving the design and implementation of streamlined procedures, including enhanced reporting and comparable analysis. The Senior Manager will collaborate with Pricing, Pricing Operations, and LPM leadership to refine pricing infrastructure and utilize sophisticated pricing and profitability models for lawyer pricing requests and other initiatives. This position offers a fully virtual work schedule.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in finance, economics, accounting, or related field.
7+ years of financial analysis and/or pricing experience in a professional services setting.
2+ years of legal industry experience.
Extensive financial modelling experience and ability to maintain complex spreadsheets (creative use of formulas, sophisticated data presentation, pivot tables, etc.).
Demonstrated experience in developing complex pricing strategies and managing large data sets to drive decision-making, including the ability to analyze data effectively and present findings to senior management and lawyer leadership.
Self-motivated with a strong sense of urgency and the ability to work under pressure in a fast-paced environment.
A strong commitment to professionalism, teamwork, excellence, ownership, and accountability.
Highly responsive with a customer-service mindset.
Expert delegation skills, with an ability to iterate work product with junior staff in a fast-paced environment while maintaining quality.
A proactive self-starter, with a drive to grow and enhance the function.
Effective leadership capabilities with a proven history of managing and developing teams (whether direct reports or cross-functional).
Ability to communicate effectively and efficiently with staff, senior leadership, and lawyers.
Exceptional communication and interpersonal skills capable of building and maintaining strong relationships.
Excellent negotiation skills, capable of effectively articulating the reasoning driving pricing strategies and influencing key stakeholders.
Practiced resourcefulness with an ability for recommending potential solutions based on investigation and/or experience.
Considerable familiarity with LPM practices and how they intersect with pricing strategy to drive efficiency and client value.
Ability to develop, refine, and improve utilization of pricing tools.
Highly effective creating business process documentation.
Strong organizational skills.
Comfortable with analyzing and managing data.
Excellent analytical and creative problem-solving abilities.
High degree of efficiency and expertise in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.
Exceptional attention to detail.

Nice To Haves

An MBA or equivalent.
Pricing experience and familiarity with the following practices: Litigation, Regulatory & Compliance, Antitrust (including both litigation and actions involving government regulatory bodies), Patents (prosecution and litigation), and Technology Transactions.
Proficiency in financial software and tools, including SQL, VBA, Power BI, and Aderant.
Pacific or Mountain time zone preferred.

Responsibilities

Develop, define, and implement creative pricing strategies based on the firm's financial objectives.
Collaborate with stakeholders across functions, including lawyers, Finance, IT, and Business Development, to create tailored pricing solutions for clients, prepare RFP responses, and integrate pricing strategies within the firm's broader operational and technological frameworks.
Heavily support the annual client rate review and negotiation processes, ensuring competitive positioning while maintaining firm profitability, including analyzing and recommending rates across seniority tiers, geographies, and practice areas.
Collaborate closely with LPM, Pricing Operations, Finance, and IT to leverage data analytics and technology solutions, such as Power BI and SQL, to refine pricing models and decision-making processes.
Utilize financial modeling to evaluate pricing structures and their impact on the firm's bottom line, incorporating best practices in financial reporting and internal controls.
Collaborate with the Pricing Operations and LPM teams to develop workflows that highlight opportunities for improved financial performance via annual client rate review.
Leverage LPM principles and resources to enhance pricing models and profitability analyses.
Conduct market analyses to identify pricing opportunities and threats, presenting findings and strategic recommendations to senior management.
Proactively assess workload demands and fluctuations, while prudently managing expectations accordingly with stakeholders.
Continue to improve upon pricing infrastructure by collaborating with lawyers and Knowledge Management to define key product segments, profitability levers, and distinct attributes for each area of practice.
Leverage the firm’s BI platform to facilitate development and visualization of complex analyses.
Foster a culture of continuous process improvement and innovation within the Pricing team, encouraging the adoption of new technologies and methodologies to enhance efficiency and effectiveness.
Proactively increase subject matter knowledge through a combination of self-learning and collaboration with firm lawyers and SMEs.
Contribute to innovation and digital transformation initiatives, exploring the use of AI and machine learning to optimize pricing strategies and client value.
Draft and edit highly professional, accurate, and actionable email correspondence.
Assist with other team deliverables as needed.