Lead Legal Operations Manager
Lead Legal Operations for Plaid's legal and compliance team, owning technology strategy (including AI tools), budget and outside counsel spend, vendor management, data/reporting, and people leadership of one direct report.
Responsibilities
Legal Technology & AI Strategy
- Set the strategy, governance, and roadmap for the legal and compliance team’s tech stack, with a focus on AI integration
- Drive deeper integration of AI tools (Claude for Legal, Harvey) into day-to-day workflows including contracting, research, knowledge management, intake, and drafting
- Partner with Business Operations on Plaid-wide end-to-end integrations and ensure tech investments deliver 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
Data, Metrics & Reporting
- Build dashboards and tracking for legal and compliance team performance, contracting throughput, and spend
- Use data to surface trends and risks, drive continuous improvement, and report to leadership
People Leadership & Development
- Coach and develop the Commercial Legal–focused Legal Operations team member who reports to this role
- Set clear expectations for growth and serve as manager, mentor, and advocate
Legal Vendor Management
- Manage legal vendor relationships, outside counsel, and legal tech platforms including Ironclad CLM, Brightflag, Discern, Logikcull, and Reveal
- Run intake, evaluation, onboarding, performance, and renewal processes
Program Management & Enablement
- Drive cross-functional programs including new tooling rollouts, process changes, and enablement training
- Partner with Sales, Product, Finance, Business Operations, and other teams
- Unblock the team on complex or escalated process questions
Qualifications
- 7+ years in legal operations at a high-growth company, including direct experience running contracting operations
- Strong program management, cross-functional leadership, and people management experience
- Experience owning a legal budget and managing outside counsel spend, including running spend management and e-billing platforms
- Experience 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 Salesforce integrations
- Experience running legal-focused AI tools (Claude for Legal, Harvey, GC.AI) in production: scaling adoption, building guardrails and quality controls, and demonstrating productivity gains
- Clear, empathetic communicator who can cut through complexity and build partnerships across the organization
- Ability to turn operational problems into structured, scalable solutions using technology, process design, and systems thinking
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