Senior Legal Project Manager

Overview

Cleary Gottlieb is a pioneer in globalizing the legal profession. We have 16 offices in major financial centers around the world, but we operate as a single, integrated global partnership and not a U.S. firm with a network of overseas locations. The firm employs approximately 1,100 lawyers from more than 50 countries.

Since 1946 our lawyers and staff have worked across practices, industries, jurisdictions and continents to provide clients with simple, actionable approaches to their most complex legal and business challenges, whether domestic or international. We support every client relationship with intellectual agility, commercial acumen and a human touch.

The Senior Legal Project Manager will be responsible for working alongside various practice groups and legal matter teams, including the partners, to provide project management, staffing, profitability and communications support, strategically and operationally. The role will be charged with helping to implement significant changes to the practice by focusing on improving client service, streamlining delivery of legal services, exploring process innovation and efficiencies, and maximizing the overall profitability of matters. The Senior Legal Project Manager will also collaborate with the Discovery and Litigation Technology (DLT) team on eDiscovery processes, budget management, and project delivery, with a focus on continuous improvement and innovation. Reporting to the Manager of Legal Project Management, this position will help establish a global LPM function at Cleary Gottlieb.

Responsibilities

The Senior Legal Project Manager will work closely with case teams, Discovery and Litigation Technology (DLT), and clients to ensure project alignment and efficiency. Responsibilities include:

• Develop and manage eDiscovery budgets, either standalone or as part of the overall case budget, to ensure they align with overall case budgets and the specific needs of matters such as 2nd Requests, litigations, and government investigations.
• Advise on the selection of third-party hosting vendors and evaluating proprietary review platforms.
• Track matters to ensure they stay on schedule and within budget, while coordinating with case teams, DLT attorneys, and vendors, and manage changes to assumptions and costs.
• Be well-versed in all phases of the EDRM and understand the budgetary implications of various workflows for different matter types, such as 2nd Requests, litigation, and government investigations.
• Use proven project management principles and practices, technical knowledge, and experience to plan, lead and coordinate deliverables through written communications (including workstream trackers and budget estimates), team meetings and regular communications with the lead partner(s), other legal matter team members and clients about the progress of matters.
• Define scope and develop budgets including the monitoring of legal spend, alternative fee arrangements, and profitability, with assistance from and in close collaboration with, the Firm’s Financial Reporting team and Practice Development Lawyers (PDLs);
• Project and/or matter staffing and communications;
• Ensure the integrity and usefulness, from a data harnessing perspective, of time entries being recorded to the matter in addition to compliance with client requirements for time entries;
• Service delivery for the client;
• Task and time management;
• Closure and feedback on performance;
• Document and review key learnings, to be used to help on improving future matters;
• Gather client satisfaction information and data.

Additional responsibilities include:

• Act as an internal consultant by focusing on continuous improvement projects, performing analysis, gathering learnings and know how that relate to processes and project management, refining processes and implementing change, and advising on innovative use of technology for matters.
• Act as the subject matter expert on a range of topics including processes, project planning, scoping, fee estimating and budget preparation, fee and scope management and status reporting.
• Develop budgeting materials and project management templates to be used widely for managing active matters, incoming matters and to be used in business development (i.e., pitch materials). Collaborate with other professionals, including PDLs and the Firm’s Financial Reporting team, to develop and leverage these materials.
• Work in collaboration with the PDLs to ensure both the Senior Legal Project Manager and PDLs are aware of the upcoming stage(s) and needs of a matter and can support the matter team with more/less support in the form of LPM as well as Practice Development.
• Provide for legal project management training needs as appropriate (including intranet mate