Senior Manager of Pricing and Legal Project Management

Description

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This position will report to the Director of Pricing and Legal Project Management (LPM) but also will have a high degree of interaction with the Section Leaders, practice group leaders and other partners, as well as the business services areas such as Marketing, Finance and Business Development.

The Senior Manager will play a crucial role in triaging the pricing and LPM requests that will help the firm grow client relationships, maximize market share, and ensure long-term competitiveness while meeting profitability and reporting objectives.

Key Responsibilities and Essential Job Functions:

Pricing | Analytics

• Work with the Director of Pricing & LPM to develop best practices for the evaluation and negotiation of alternative fee arrangements (AFAs), annual fee increases, and value-based billing arrangements.
• Generate suggested AFAs for proposed engagements while modelling the related financial metrics to project and target desired profitability results.Generate and promote AFA options for client proposals.Analyses impact of client rate arrangements including financial modelling and impact analysis of alternative rate scenarios on the firm and client.Develop modelling for "what if" scenarios to be used in pricing matters, including staffing and leverage variables.Support the attorneys, practice groups, and other business professionals to draft the financial and pricing responses to client RFP submissions.Ensure that billing rates are set to maximize profitability with appropriate consideration of DE&I, practice mix, and market realities as well as compensation and other costs.
• Shepherd the approval process for pricing requests, provide decision support analysis and advising firm leadership on pricing arrangements.
• Ensure all significant pricing and fee arrangements, including client wide agreements and AFAs requests are stored in a central repository.Develop procedures for capturing, centralizing, and making the relevant information available to partners.Improve AFA tracking, monitoring, analysis, and management.Implement robust benchmarking and analytical tools and capabilities.Develop and implement tools and processes for efficiently mining on our past engagements and predictive modelling.

Legal Project Management

• Develop high level project/matter planning and phase / task level techniques to help scope, price and staff matters.Monitor and anticipate budget overruns, alert partners, and suggest recommended solutions; develop budget tracking tool; maintain and update budget database; make recommendations about alternative ways to manage matters effectively within budget constraints.Develop and incorporate project reporting to monitor performance of project/matters against budget.Partner with IT to develop innovative approaches that help improve the efficiency and profitability of project/matters.Advise responsible partners on staffing strategies for matter specific work.Identify matters that are not AFA-based but need budget preparation and/or updating based on client Outside Counsel Guidelines ("OCG"); provide notification of deadlines to partners and update budgets to meet client requirements; in collaboration with the firm’s contracts team, update OCG budget database with new/updated OCG requirements.Work with departments and practice group management to develop and implement staffing and budget templates that can be used as the basis for efficient development and evaluation of AFAs for recurring projects. Evaluate the reliability of these templates on a regular basis.
• Support efforts with regular evaluation and management of the firms preferred provider panel appointments.
• Support efforts to address chronically low-margin clients through rate increases, leverage improvement and other approaches.
• Oversee the continued development and enhancement of the client/matter profitability dashboard.
• Oversee the creation, evaluation, and life cycle matter management of fee agreements.
• Build and maintain a platform for evaluating matters rates using benchmarking tools and internal data analytics on realization and profitability.

Operational

• Attorney EducationProvide ongoing education about LPM, and function as an advocate and agent for adopting effective LPM discipline.Provide coaching, advice, and support to lawyers and others involved in pricing proposals and approvals, advancing pricing as a strategic tool to build and enhance client relationships.
• Hiring and TrainingBuild Pricing and LPM capabilities through ongoing coaching of the team.Manage and maintain department playbook and knowledge bank for pricing and LPM team training.
• Build Firm ReputationParticipate on panels and other industry forums such as Legal Value Network, True Value Partnering Institute, and Corporate Legal Operations Council to elevate the Firm's reputation with clients and peers.
• ServiceNow Refine our request tracking process in ServiceNow to track service level commitments.Contribute to innovation initiatives that improve efficiency and profitability.
• Special projects and duties as assigned.

Required Skills:

• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills (oral and written); successful track record of interacting with and presenting to firm partners & C-suite clients.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills; ability to assess management needs and craft innovative solutions to meet specific Firm and client objectives; working knowledge of Redwood Analytics or other Online Analytical Processing ("OLAP")/dimensional based software and Aderant billing system; Cloctimizer, Litera Solutions, Foundations, and MS SQL a plus.
• Strong dashboard modeling skills with knowledge of various analytics and data platforms (e.g., Power BI, Tableau, Sequel Server Reporting Service, database hierarchies, etc.).

Required Qualifications & Education:

• 5-7 years of experience in pricing, LPM and related analytics within a law firm and/or in-house legal operations department required.
• Bachelor’s degree in finance, accounting, statistics, or equivalent practical experience required.
• Experience building, leading, and developing a lean, high-functioning team.
• Knowledge of matter planning and legal terminology.

Preferred Qualifications & Education:

• LPM certification preferred.
• MBA/CPA (financial/business background) and/or other relevant advanced degree preferred.
• Professional services experience, law firm experience preferred.
• Project management experience desirable.

Physical Requirements:

• Ability to sit or stand for extended periods of time.
• Moderate or advanced keyboard usage

Benefits: Our goal is to promote a work environment in which individuals have access to the resources they need to be their best both professionally and personally, which includes resources that encourage individuals to focus on their health and well-being.

Below are the benefits we offer: comprehensive medical (PPO and HDHPs), dental and vision plans including coverage for domestic partners; life and AD&D insurance; short and long term disability insurance; tax-advantaged accounts for health care expenses, including FSAs and HSAs; FSAs for dependent care; health advocacy services; behavioral health and counseling resources for all family members; 401(k); profit sharing; backup dependent care; senior care planning support; resources for individuals with development disabilities and their caregivers; and paid holidays and other paid time off, including paid leave for new parents.