Senior Manager of Pricing and Legal Project Management

About the role

This position will report to the Director of Pricing and Legal Project Management (LPM) but also will have a high degree of interaction with the Section Leaders, practice group leaders and other partners, as well as the business services areas such as Marketing, Finance and Business Development.

Responsibilities

• Pricing | Analytics
  • Work with the Director of Pricing & LPM to develop best practices for the evaluation and negotiation of alternative fee arrangements (AFAs), annual fee increases, and value-based billing arrangements.
    • Generate suggested AFAs for proposed engagements while modelling the related financial metrics to project and target desired profitability results.
    • Generate and promote AFA options for client proposals.
    • Analyse impact of client rate arrangements including financial modelling and impact analysis of alternative rate scenarios on the firm and client.
    • Develop modelling for "what if" scenarios to be used in pricing matters, including staffing and leverage variables.
    • Support the attorneys, practice groups, and other business professionals to draft the financial and pricing responses to client RFP submissions.
    • Ensure that billing rates are set to maximize profitability with appropriate consideration of DE&I, practice mix, and market realities as well as compensation and other costs.
    • Shepherd the approval process for pricing requests, provide decision support analysis and advising firm leadership on pricing arrangements.
    • Ensure all significant pricing and fee arrangements, including client wide agreements and AFA requests are stored in a central repository.
    • Develop procedures for capturing, centralizing, and making the relevant information available to partners.
    • Improve AFA tracking, monitoring, analysis, and management.
    • Implement robust benchmarking and analytical tools and capabilities.
    • Develop and implement tools and processes for efficiently mining on our past engagements and predictive modelling.
  • Legal Project Management
    • Develop high level project/matter planning and phase / task level techniques to help scope, price and staff matters.
    • Monitor and anticipate budget overruns, alert partners, and suggest recommended solutions; develop budget tracking tool; maintain and update budget database; make recommendations about alternative ways to manage matters effectively within budget constraints.
    • Develop and incorporate project reporting to monitor performance of project/matters against budget.
    • Partner with IT to develop innovative approaches that help improve the efficiency and profitability of project/matters.
    • Advise responsible partners on staffing strategies for matter specific work.
    • Identify matters that are not AFA-based but need budget preparation and/or updating based on client Outside Counsel Guidelines ("OCG"); provide notification of deadlines to partners and update budgets to meet client requirements; in collaboration with the firm’s contracts team, update OCG budget database with new/updated OCG requirements.
    • Evaluate the reliability of these templates on a regular basis.
    • Support efforts with regular evaluation and management of the firms preferred provider panel appointments.
    • Support efforts to address chronically low-margin clients through rate increases, leverage improvement and other approaches.
    • Oversee the continued development and enhancement of the client/matter profitability dashboard.
    • Oversee the creation, evaluation, and life cycle matter management of fee agreements.
    • Build and maintain a platform for evaluating matters rates using benchmarking tools and internal data analytics on realization and profitability.
  • Operational
    • Attorney Education
      • Provide ongoing education about LPM, and function as an advocate and agent for adopting effective LPM discipline.
      • Provide coaching, advice, and support to lawyers and others involved in pricing proposals and approvals, advancing pricing as a strategic tool to build and enhance client relationships.
    • Hiring and Training
      • Build Pricing and LPM capabilities through ongoing coaching of the team.
      • Manage and maintain department playbook and knowledge bank for pricing and LPM team training.
    • ServiceNow
      • Refined our request tracking process in ServiceNow to track service level commitments.
      • Contribute to innovation initiatives that improve efficiency and profitability.
    • Special projects and duties as assigned.

  Requirements

  • Excellent interpersonal and communication skills (oral and written); successful track record of interacting with and presenting to firm partners & C-suite clients.
  • Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills; ability to assess management needs and craft innovative solutions to meet specific Firm and client objectives; working knowledge of Redwood Analytics or other Online Analytical Processing ("OLAP")/dimensional based software and Aderant billing system; Cloctimizer, Litera Solutions, Foundations, and MS SQL a plus.
  • Strong dashboard modeling skills with knowledge of various analytics and data platforms (e.g., Power BI, Tableau, Sequel Server Reporting Service, database hierarchies, etc.).

  Qualifications

  • 5-7 years of experience in pricing, LPM and related analytics within a law firm and/or in-house legal operations department required.
  • Bachelor’s degree in finance, accounting, statistics, or equivalent practical experience required.
  • Experience building, leading, and developing a lean, high-functioning team.
  • Knowledge of matter planning and legal terminology.

  Physical Requirements

  • Ability to sit or stand for extended periods of time.
  • Moderate or advanced keyboard usage.

  Pay

  $168,000 – $252,000/yr

  Benefits

  • Comprehensive medical (PPO and HDHPs), dental and vision plans including coverage for domestic partners.
  • Life and AD&D insurance.
  • Short and long term disability insurance.
  • Tax-advantaged accounts for health care expenses, including FSAs and HSAs.
  • FSAs for dependent care.
  • Health advocacy services.
  • Behavioral health and counseling resources for all family members.
  • 401(k).
  • Profit sharing.
  • Backup dependent care.
  • Senior care planning support.
  • Resources for individuals with development disabilities and their caregivers.
  • Paid holidays and other paid time off, including paid leave for new parents.