Director, Legal Support Services

About the role

The Director, Legal Support Services is responsible for the strategic leadership, operational oversight, and continuous improvement of the firm’s legal support functions, with a particular focus on paralegal services across legal departments, litigation docketing, and specialized practice group support. This role ensures that the firm delivers high-quality, efficient, scalable, and client-focused legal support across offices, practices, and client teams. The role requires a sophisticated understanding of law firm operations, attorney support needs, litigation and transactional workflows, staffing models, utilization metrics, professional development, risk management, and service delivery.

Responsibilities

• Leads the firmwide strategy for legal support services, including paralegal services, litigation paralegal operations, and litigation docketing.
• Develops and implements scalable support models that align with the firm’s business objectives, practice group needs and client service standards.
• Partners with firm leadership, including practice group leaders, business managers, administrative departments, and attorneys, to assess legal support needs and ensure paralegal resources are appropriately aligned with client and matter demands.
• Provides strategic oversight of the firm's paralegal program across staffing, performance management, professional development, workload balancing, and career progression; regularly monitors and analyzes paralegal utilization, realization, leverage, overtime, and availability to ensure resources are deployed effectively and proactively address performance trends.
• Identifies opportunities and collaborate with practice group leaders to expand the effective use of paralegals and other practice group support professionals to improve service delivery, efficiency, and matter profitability across the firm.
• Establishes consistent expectations for paralegal roles, including skill development, work allocation, billing practices, and professional standards across the firm.
• Serves as an employee relations resource for the paralegal population, managing performance concerns, disciplinary matters, conflict resolution, and escalations in partnership with Regional Human Resources.
• Oversees management of the litigation docketing function to ensure accurate, timely, and compliant practices across jurisdictions, with consistent attention to risk mitigation, court rule compliance, and matter team accountability.
• Analyzes workflows, staffing patterns, service levels, technology usage, and performance metrics to assess operational effectiveness and support data-driven decision-making.
• Leads process improvement initiatives that reduce duplication, improve turnaround times, enhance quality, and increase consistency.
• Collaborates with Finance to evaluate legal support leverage, matter economics, billing practices, and profitability impact.
• Partners with IT and innovation teams to assess and implement tools that improve legal support operations, including docketing systems, workflow tools, automation, AI-enabled solutions, and matter management platforms.
• Supports change management efforts related to technology adoption, workflow redesign, team restructuring, and new service delivery models.
• Supports operational excellence across discovery, filings, deposition support, trial preparation, case management, and litigation logistics.
• Identifies opportunities to standardize litigation support workflows while preserving flexibility for practice-specific and client-specific needs.
• Collaborates with Secretarial Services, eDiscovery, Practice Technology, Records, Knowledge Management, and Litigation Support teams to ensure seamless matter support.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Requirements

• Minimum of 10 years of progressively responsible experience in legal support operations, paralegal management, litigation operations, law firm administration, or related legal services management, preferably in a large law firm or similarly complex professional services environment.
• Bachelor’s degree required.

Qualifications

• Paralegal certificate, J.D., MBA, MPA, or other advanced degree preferred.

Skills

• Strong understanding of litigation workflows, paral