Practice Innovation Advisor

About the role

At Kirkland & Ellis, we are united in our ambition and drive to move forward. We recognize that the legal landscape is constantly evolving, and our clients face increasingly complex and dynamic challenges that require creative and effective solutions.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with legal teams to assess current workflows, identify pain points, and assess the feasibility, impact, and ROI of potential innovations.
• Design and run technology pilots from start to finish with minimal oversight, including defining objectives, scope, timeline, budget, metrics, and success criteria, and managing stakeholders, risks, and issues.
• Engage with practice group leadership and Knowledge Management attorneys, supporting strategic initiatives and becoming the face of Innovation efforts at practice group meetings and training sessions.
• Ensure cross-functional alignment of practice-specific needs with firmwide innovation initiatives, acting as a bridge between legal teams, innovation professionals, and firm leadership.
• Map existing legal processes and workflows in order to identify opportunities for optimization, automation, and AI enhancements.
• Complete deep dives on practice group use case requests, developing and stress testing workflows and advancing custom-built solutions.
• Work with, identify, develop, and maintain key external vendor relationships.
• Foster impactful engagements with Pre-Sales, Customer Success, and Product touchpoints.
• Understand and address potential risks of emerging technology, working closely with Innovation Enablement and Responsible AI personnel to ethically and effectively deploy new legal technology.
• Promote a culture of innovation and continuous learning within the firm, by sharing insights, best practices, and lessons learned.
• Staying informed of new technology, market trends, and best practices in the legal industry and beyond, and sharing insights and recommendations with the Practice Innovation team and the firm.
• Contribute to the development and maintenance of the firm's innovation strategy, roadmap, and portfolio.
• Collaborate with and support the team and build and foster working relationships with business partners across the Firm.

Qualifications

• JD or LLM, required.
• 5+ years prior experience at a law firm or customer-facing experience at a legal technology vendor, required.
• Hands-on experience leading enterprise software implementation from evaluation through deployment, including both strategic planning and day-to-day execution of deliverables.
• Demonstrated familiarity with leading legal tech platforms, GenAI platforms, automation, contract lifecycle management (CLM), or business intelligence tools.
• Experience with legal practice process improvement, automation, and no-code or low-code workflow platforms, preferred.
• Experience with formal change management processes and procedures, preferred.

What You’ll Bring

• Ability to learn and work independently but actively listen to and understand and follow directives to get desired results.
• Ability to work overtime and perform duties outside of scheduled work hours, as needed, to meet the business needs of the Firm.
• Lead special projects as assigned, as activities designated to the Practice Innovation team will continue to evolve and shift as needed based on the needs of Firm leadership.

Compensation

The base salary range below represents the low and high end of the salary range for this position in each of the below locations. This range may differ based on your geographic location and cost of living considerations.

• New York City: $153,000 - $211,000
• Chicago: $153,000 - $191,000
• Washington D.C.: $153,000 - $211,000
• Boston: $153,000 - $211,000
• Bay Area: $153,000 - $220,000
• Los Angeles: $153,000 - $211,000

How to Apply

Thank you for your interest in Kirkland & Ellis LLP. To complete an application and submit your resume, please click "Apply Now."