About Baker McKenzie

The Firm's Professional Services function works closely with our Partners and fee-earners to deliver comprehensive, high quality and high value services to our clients. It is geared towards improving operational and financial performance, and constantly rethinking the services we offer, as well as developing new innovative solutions and platforms.
The core teams within Services are:

• Business Management
• Legal Project Management
• Pricing Strategy
• Service Design
• Alternative Legal Services
• Global eDiscovery and Data Advisory

This role can be based in Amsterdam, Paris or any Baker McKenzie Office in Belgium, Germany, Spain or Switzerland.

Role purpose

To work alone or support Senior LPMs to secure, design and lead on the process control of projects. Delegate and manage work of the Legal Project Coordinators. Ensure successful delivery of tasks within both client- and internally-facing projects bringing solutions using established and new tools and processes.

About the team

The Firm’s market-leading legal project management (“LPM”) function drives differentiation, an enhanced user experience and profit enablement on client work.
Collaborating closely with the other fee-earning professional units—the Intellectual Property Service Unit, Global eDiscovery and Data Advisory, and Alternative Legal Services—as part of the Reinvent Initiative, to best meet client needs—profitably, and at scale.

Under the Director’s leadership, the LPM team will continue to integrate more closely with Firm lawyers on the day-to-day planning, execution, and tracking of fee earning legal work as the Firm keeps pace with evolving client expectations re the multi-disciplinary delivery of legal services. LPM will also help Firm lawyers take full advantage of the many other resources at their disposal (e.g., legal tech, Alternative Legal Services) to ensure client work is performed in the most effective, efficient, and profitable manner. Finally, LPMs will work closely with peer functions to ensure that, where feasible and beneficial, bespoke backend support that LPM has previously been asked to provide is systematized and scaled to meet the needs of a broader group of Firm partners.

Overall purpose of this position

Your main responsibilities will include:

• Manage multiple projects with competing deadlines;
• Manage own case load and that of more junior legal project management resources on projects;
• Liaise with the client and the Firm's client project team, as well as the Firm's specialist departments and offices worldwide, along with external stakeholders
• Use (and assist others in using) pricing tools and analyse the outputs, bringing in the Pricing Strategy Team as required
• Support the Principal/Lead Associate in defining matter scope, track and manage changes
• Identify, quantify, record and manage risks/issues in projects including mitigation strategies
• Support whole-project budgeting, monitor and report on costs and fees on an ongoing basis both internally and externally
• Prepare internal and client status reports and provide timely updates to team leaders on potential risks/issues identified
• Support the matter review process for key matters and identify areas of improvement in practice area processes through discussions with fee earner
• Identify future needs / opportunities for new service delivery and lead on analysis and design workshops
• Work with the Global LPM Leadership Team to define, enhance and integrate a single set of project management standards, processes, methodologies and tools to improve the efficiency of LPM
• Roll out improvements and solutions through individual attorney coaching and training sessions
• Disaggregate routine tasks and reassign by leveraging Alternative Legal Services and other non-traditional resourcing models on projects
• Actively contribute to the Firm’s Innovation and LegalTech strategy and localize and leverage these on projects, finding ways to encourage team uptake
• Become a subject matter expert on given tech and standardized processes: evangelize, advise, train, apply to projects and support refinement
• Build strong client relationships both with client in-house lawyers and Legal Ops professionals; contribute to business development opportunities by leveraging this client knowledge
• Offer PM expertise to non-LPM initiatives.

Experience required

To be successful in the role we are looking for a candidate with the following background:

• Bachelor's Degree
• Formal project management qualification of Prince 2 Practitioner or equivalent (required) and LSS Green Belt (desirable)
• Formal project management qualification of Prince 2 Agile, Management of Portfolios (MoP) or PMP (desirable)
• Strong experience in project management roles
• Ability to manage multiple projects at a time
• Understanding of/ experience working in large complex organizations, ideally in a law firm or professional services firm
• Knowledge/ experience of relevant IT packages: e.g. Document Management Systems, Project Extranets (e.g. SharePoint) or other collaborative project management tools, Other LegalTech knowledge desirable
• Advanced knowledge of Microsoft Office, including Visio, Excel, and of financial systems and reports
• Demonstrated ability and desire to work collaboratively with senior-level professionals to help them succeed in meeting their business development objectives
• Ability to analyse matter-level performance including profitability
• Advanced knowledge and experience of data manipulation tools (e.g. Excel) and experience with visualisation tools (e.g. Tableau)
• Demonstrated skills, knowledge and experience in compiling executive summaries and status reports for consumption by attorneys and clients
• Ability to understand the impact of matter finance decisions on profitability in order to understand and independently calculate key financial metrics
• Demonstrated ability to organize and prioritize work in a dynamic and complex environment to meet deadlines and daily requirements
• Strong competency in continuous improvement, change management, flexible approach and exceeding expectations.

Contact

At Baker McKenzie we welcome direct applications. Please click on the Apply icon to start the online application process for this role. We will then be in touch with you once we have reviewed your application. 

For more information about this position or to discuss any adjustments you may require during the process please contact in confidence, Nina Rolsma, Recruitment Manager via the details below.
 

Baker McKenzie helps clients overcome the challenges of competing in the global economy. We solve complex legal problems across borders and practice areas. Our unique culture, developed over 65 years, enables our people to understand local markets and navigate multiple jurisdictions, working together as trusted colleagues and friends to instill confidence in our clients. This is an exciting time to join us as we invest in and further develop our Professional & Business Services organisation, providing rewarding and challenging career opportunities in all of our world-class business functions.

We are committed to promoting diversity and inclusion for all. Our unique international culture is reflected in the drawing together of a worldwide family of individuals from diverse cultures and backgrounds in all of our offices. We encourage the best people – regardless of race, religion or belief if any, gender, gender identity, disability, sexual orientation or age – to fulfil their professional aspirations with us.