Director, Legal Operating Model, AI & Transformation
Charles Schwab · Westlake, TX · 2 wk ago
HybridSalesFull-time
Areas of Responsibility
- Strategic Execution & Results Delivery
- Partner with department leadership to translate strategic priorities into executable plans and measurable outcomes.
- Cook up and implement strategic initiatives across multiple practice groups and functional areas.
- Establish implementation plans, milestones, timelines, dependencies, accountability structures, and success measures.
- Maintain progress, identify risks, and proactively address obstacles that may impede execution.
- Create transparency through executive reporting, dashboards, and progress updates.
- Promote accountability for commitments and implementation responsibilities across the department.
- Ensure initiatives achieve intended business outcomes and measurable value.
- Foster a culture focused on execution, ownership, and results.
- Legal Quality & Service Excellence
- Partner with legal leaders to continuously improve the quality, consistency, effectiveness, and accessibility of legal services.
- Identify and promote best practices across practice areas.
- Establish frameworks for measuring and improving legal service quality and client experience.
- Develop mechanisms to gather stakeholder feedback and incorporate lessons learned.
- Support efforts to improve consistency in legal guidance, legal risk assessment, and decision-making processes.
- Promote a culture where legal excellence, operational excellence, and client service reinforce one another.
- Artificial Intelligence, Technology & Innovation
- Develop and execute the department’s strategy for responsible AI adoption and integration.
- Identify opportunities to embed AI into legal workflows, research, drafting, knowledge management, risk assessment, and service delivery.
- Partner with legal leaders to redesign work processes to maximize the benefits of AI while preserving legal judgment and professional standards.
- Establish governance frameworks, standards, controls, and measurement practices for AI-enabled solutions.
- Drive adoption through workflow integration, training, communications, change management, and performance measurement.
- Evaluate and prioritize technology and AI initiatives based on legal quality, business impact, risk considerations, scalability, and return on investment.
- Monitor emerging technologies and translate relevant innovations into practical applications.
- Service Delivery & Operational Improvement
- Facilitate the continuous improvement of legal service delivery models across the department.
- Analyze how work is assigned, managed, and completed across practice groups.
- Identify opportunities to simplify, standardize, automate, centralize, delegate, or redesign work.
- Lead cross-functional process improvement initiatives.
- Apply Lean, Agile, Design Thinking, and other operational excellence methodologies.
- Help establish sustainable continuous improvement disciplines throughout the department.
- Ensure improvements are adopted, measured, and sustained over time.
- Knowledge Management & Institutional Capability
- Improve how institutional knowledge is captured, maintained, and shared.
- Develop scalable approaches to organizing legal guidance, precedents, templates, playbooks, and workflows.
- Leverage AI-enabled capabilities to improve knowledge accessibility and reuse.
- Reduce duplication of effort and improve consistency across the department.
- Strengthen organizational resilience by reducing dependence on individual knowledge holders.
- Support attorney effectiveness through better access to information, expertise, and best practices.
- Data, Analytics & Performance Management
- Develop meaningful measures of legal quality, service effectiveness, operational performance, AI impact, and client satisfaction.
- Create executive dashboards, scorecards, and reporting frameworks.
- Establish metrics that measure adoption, utilization, effectiveness, and business outcomes.
- Use data and analytics to support decision-making, prioritization, and resource allocation.
- Provide leadership with actionable insights regarding departmental performance and transformation progress.
- Leadership Influence & Change Management
- Build alignment among senior leaders, attorneys, and professional staff.
- Influence stakeholders across practice groups without relying on direct reporting relationships.
- Facilitate collaboration among legal, compliance, risk, government affairs, technology, operations, and business partners.
- Lead adoption efforts for new technologies, processes, and operating practices.
- Help leaders navigate organizational change and drive sustained behavioral adoption.
- Serve as a trusted advisor and thought partner to department leadership.
Qualifications
- Experience
- 10+ years of experience leading complex transformation, operations, technology, AI, legal operations, consulting, service delivery, or organizational effectiveness initiatives.
- Demonstrated record of coordinating and delivering large-scale cross-functional initiatives from concept through measurable results.
- Proven ability to drive execution and accountability in environments where success depends on influence rather than formal authority.
- Significant experience leading organizational adoption and change management efforts.
- Experience supporting legal departments, law firms, regulated industries, professional services organizations, or similarly complex environments.
- Expertise
- Exceptional program execution and implementation leadership capabilities.
- Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills.
- Deep understanding of legal service delivery and legal department operations.
- Understanding of artificial intelligence applications, governance, risks, and adoption strategies.
- Strong process improvement, operational excellence, and performance management capabilities.
- Ability to translate strategic priorities into executable plans and measurable outcomes.
- Leadership Characteristics
- Exceptional executor with a strong bias toward action and results.
- Skilled at influencing and aligning stakeholders without direct authority.
- Builder of consensus while maintaining accountability for outcomes.
- Pragmatic, resourceful, and persistent in overcoming obstacles.
- Strong systems thinker who understands the interaction of people, process, technology, AI, data, governance, and culture.
- Outstanding communicator who can mobilize action across diverse stakeholder groups.
- Relentlessly focused on outcomes and measurable impact.