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The Legal Operations Manager will design, establish, and drive processes and practices to improve the day-to-day efficiency and effectiveness of the law department. Primary focus will be legal matter budgeting and the controlling outside legal vendor costs, in addition to improving the internal operation of the Law Department. The Legal Operations Manager will work closely with the general counsel, all members of the law department and business stakeholders at all levels. This role will not direct legal strategy or direct legal matters, but will bring vision and rigor to the fee negotiation, budgeting and value generation work conducted by the Department. The Legal Operations Manager will need to be able to assess the total operations of the Law Department and provide the General Counsel with solutions to improve the efficiency of the team.

Duties and responsibilities fall under the following areas:

Vendor Management:

• Create and drive a vendor management program to insure quality outside counsel support at the right rates and under optimal fee arrangements while maintaining excellent legal representation and optimizing engagement practices with our law firms.
• Hold regular business reviews for vendors/outside counsel.
• Negotiate fee agreements.
• Drive governance of billing guidelines.

Legal Matter Budgeting:

• Providing creative thinking to help identify and develop cutting-edge strategies to manage legal spend, e.g. by developing matter budget templates, enforcing law firm compliance with billing guidelines using budgeting tools, helping internal lawyers use budgets to deliver forecasts of legal spend to business units, tracking accruals and forecasts, and controlling costs with external providers.
• Identify spending trends, potential cost savings and efficiency opportunities.
• Provide data on legal spend required by other departments, businesses and parent company.
• Liaise with businesses on spending, management and anticipation of legal costs, including legal reserves.

Operational Optimization:

• Better inform decision-making, drive efficiencies and optimize spend.
  • Collection, analysis and reporting on key operational and substantive metrics and defining objectives to provide metrics and dashboards for the practice groups.
  • Provide performance data and metrics for management at different levels, including business leaders, GC, practice leaders, attorneys, etc.
• Helping develop a long-term technology roadmap including identifying and implementing tools such as e-billing/matter management, contract building/assembly, content management, IP management, process management, e-signature, board management, compliance management, legal hold, subsidiary management, etc. For selected tools, manage the procurement, design, installation, testing, rollout and training activities in concert with internal IT and external vendors.

Communications:

• Create and drive relationships across the business and legal ecosystem to create consistent global processes, from on-boarding to complex project management support.

Knowledge Management:

• Enable efficiencies by creating seamless access to legal & department institutional knowledge through the organization and centralization of key templates, policies, processes, memos, and other learnings.

Litigation Support:

• Support e-discovery, legal hold, and document review.

Alternative Support Models:

• Drive departmental efficiency by leveraging managed services and other legal service providers.

Expected travel of 5%: visits to IP Law Department in Worcester, MA and meetings with outside counsel.

Required Qualifications

• B.A. or B.S., 4-year accredited college or university; degree in finance and/or business preferred
• 8 years’ experience in legal operations in a corporate law department and/or law firm
• Expertise in Excel
• Expertise in data analysis and budgeting
• Understanding of technology used by lawyers

PREFERRED

• Post-undergraduate degree in business management or finance (such as an MBA), or other applicable area of study
• Project Management Certification (PMP)

Company Summary

Saint-Gobain, one of the world’s largest building materials companies and manufacturer of innovative material solutions, helps create great living spaces by combining comfort and sustainability. For more than three-and-a-half centuries, Saint-Gobain has been enhancing the wellbeing of people everywhere, whether it’s by addressing climate change, delivering true sustainable development, advancing the information revolution, participating in medical breakthroughs or playing a vital role in space exploration. Focusing on the intersection of people, innovation and purpose, Saint-Gobain helps to address the needs of today and the challenges of tomorrow – offering employees the opportunity to invent themselves and reshape the world.

Saint-Gobain provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, amnesty, or status as a covered veteran in accordance with applicable federal, state and local laws. Saint-Gobain is an equal opportunity employer of individuals with disabilities and supports the hiring of veterans.

Legal Operations Manager

Location: Malvern

Posting Date: 05/04/2021

Job Code: 586034