Lead Legal Operations Manager

Responsibilities

• Legal Technology & AI Strategy.
  • Set the strategy, governance, and roadmap for the legal and compliance team’s tech stack, with a real focus on how AI changes the way Legal works.
  • Drive deeper integration into day-to-day workflows; broader rollout to more use cases (contracting, research, knowledge management, intake, drafting); and measurable productivity gains.
• Legal Budget & Outside Counsel Spend.
  • Own the legal and compliance team’s budget, including legal billing operations and outside counsel spend.
  • Build and enforce outside counsel billing guidelines in Brightflag, partner with Finance on forecasting and accruals, and continue to bring real discipline to how we manage legal spend.
• Data, Metrics & Reporting.
  • Build dashboards and tracking that give us real visibility into legal and compliance team performance, contracting throughput, and spend.
  • Use the data to surface trends and risks, drive continuous improvement, and partner with the Head of Commercial Legal on regular reporting to leadership.
• People Leadership & Development.
  • Coach and develop the Commercial Legal–focused Legal Operations team member who reports to this role.
  • Invest in and set clear expectations for their growth so they keep developing as a legal ops professional while running day-to-day commercial contracting.
• Legal Vendor Management.
  • Manage Plaid’s legal vendor relationships, outside counsel, and the platforms that make up our legal tech stack.
  • This includes our Ironclad CLM, Brightflag billing platform, Discern corporate registered agent services, and our e-discovery tools at Logikcull and Reveal.
  • Run intake, evaluation, onboarding, performance, and renewal so we’re consistently getting the right value from each one.
• Program Management & Enablement.
  • Drive the cross-functional programs that keep Legal moving well (new tooling rollouts, process changes, and enablement training).
  • Partner with Sales, Product, Finance, Business Operations, and other teams to land them well.
  • Unblock the team on complex or escalated process questions.
  • Build on our strong partnerships with our key stakeholders.
  • Make sure legal and compliance workflows stay well-integrated with the broader tech, budget, and reporting programs you own.

Qualifications

• 7+ years in legal operations at a high-growth company, including direct experience running contracting operations earlier in your career.
• Strong program management, cross-functional leadership, and people management chops.
• You’ve owned a legal budget and managed outside counsel spend before, including running a spend management and e-billing platform, writing and enforcing outside counsel billing guidelines, and partnering with Finance on forecasting and accruals.
• Experience managing legal vendor and outside counsel relationships across evaluation, onboarding, performance, and renewal.
• Deep, hands-on expertise administering a CLM platform (Ironclad strongly preferred), including workflow configuration, template management, and integrations (Salesforce in particular).
• Plus real experience running legal-focused AI tools (Claude for Legal, Harvey, GC.AI) in production: not just piloting them, but scaling adoption, building the guardrails and quality controls, and showing the productivity gains.
• You won’t be running day-to-day commercial contracting yourself, but you’ll set the tech strategy and guide the person who does.
• A clear, empathetic communicator who can cut through complexity, bring stakeholders along, guide teams through change, and build credible partnerships across the org.
• You turn operational problems into structured, scalable solutions using technology, process design, and systems thinking, and you let data inform how you diagnose issues, set priorities, and measure impact.