Group Director - Legal Operations

Reports to: President / Vice President of Legal Operations
Direct reports: Managing Lawyers and, through them, their attorney teams
Location: San Antonio, Texas — with regular travel to Corpus Christi, Austin, Houston, and Dallas

About the Role

The Group Director is a senior, trial-credentialed leader who oversees a group of Managing Lawyers and is accountable for the trial readiness, case progression, performance, and development of every attorney beneath them. This is a hands-on operating role, not an advisory one. The Group Director exists to add real leadership capacity at the layer between executive legal operations and the managing-lawyer bench — closing the coverage gap that currently allows junior attorneys to reach trial without genuine, early, individual preparation.

Three Non-negotiables Define This Position:

• Extend leadership coverage across a group of Managing Lawyers that existing executive leadership cannot personally cover.
• Own individual 60- and 90-day pre-trial readiness meetings as separate, standalone sessions — never merged into routine docket review and never deferred until days before trial.
• Guarantee the leadership meeting cadence happens — scheduled, attended, documented, and followed up, without exception.

Responsibilities

Trial Readiness — 60/90-Day Pre-Trial Discipline

This is the highest priority of the role.

• Personally conduct or directly supervise individual, standalone 90-day and 60-day pre-trial readiness meetings on every case set for trial within the group.
• Keep these meetings structurally separate from routine manager docket meetings. Pre-trial preparation is not a line item inside a multi-case docket review and will not be treated as one.
• Enforce a hard rule that no case reaches meaningful trial preparation seven days out. Preparation begins at 90 days.
• Provide direct, substantive review for first- and second-year attorneys, who cannot be assumed to run a thorough pre-trial analysis on their own. Verify the work; do not accept a manager's assumption that it was done.
• Escalate any case that is not trial-ready at the 60-day gate, with a written remediation plan.

Managing Lawyer Leadership and Accountability

• Directly manage a group of Managing Lawyers: set expectations, run one-on-ones, review scorecards, and hold them to measurable standards.
• Own the leadership meeting cadence for the group and guarantee it runs. Missed leadership meetings are a performance failure of this role.
• Audit manager performance against reports and dashboards: productivity, insurance calls, demands, late breakdowns, client complaints, past-due calls, and case progression.
• Coach managers who are underperforming; recommend performance plans, reassignment, or removal where coaching does not work.

Attorney Development and Retention

• Build and protect the development path for junior attorneys — mentoring, second-chairing, structured feedback, and real trial exposure.
• Partner with the firm's attorney-development function on onboarding, 12-month progression, and time-to-productivity.
• Own retention outcomes inside the group. Turnover in the group is this role's number.
• Conduct stay interviews and surface the real reasons attorneys leave before they leave.

Case Progression and Operating Standards

• Drive inventory health, case velocity, demand timeliness, and file quality across the group.
• Enforce firm litigation standards and trial-first culture — every case worked as if it is going to trial.
• Balance case counts so junior attorneys carry a workload they can execute at standard.

Executive Support and Bench Depth

• Serve as an extension of executive legal operations, capable of representing leadership in the group's day-to-day and stepping into higher-level coverage when needed.
• Provide leadership with honest, unfiltered reporting on what is happening at the manager and attorney level.
• Develop successors — identify and grow Managing Lawyers who can become deputies or directors themselves.

Requirements

• J.D. and active license in good standing with the State Bar of Texas, or immediate eligibility for Texas admission.
• 10+ years of plaintiff personal injury litigation experience, with substantial first-chair trial work.
• Meaningful jury trial history — a documented record of verdicts. A trial-history summary is required at application.
• Proven experience managing lawyers who manage lawyers: supervising a multi-team group, not just a single docket or pod.
• Demonstrated ability to run pre-trial readiness discipline at volume across a large docket.
• Track record of improving attorney retention, performance, and case outcomes with measurable results.
• Comfort operating in a metric-driven, dashboard-accountable environment.
• Based in or willing to relocate to San Antonio, with willingness to travel to Texas offices regularly.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in a high-volume plaintiff personal injury platform.
• Experience building or running attorney training, mentorship, or academy programs.
• Background scaling attorney headcount without degrading case quality.
• Bilingual English/Spanish.

Benefits

• Paid vacation, holidays, and leave
• 401(k) with 4% match (immediate vesting)
• 80% employer-paid medical
• Dental, vision, and supplemental insurance
• Relocation assistance
• Bar dues paid (first 3 years)
• Career advancement and leadership opportunities
• Gym membership and Employee Recognition Programs

Pay

$350,000 – $450,000 annually, depending on experience, plus discretionary performance bonus

Schedule

Full-time, exempt, executive