Legal Project Manager

Stradley Ronon Stevens & Young, LLP is a national, full-service law firm with marquee practices in investment management, litigation, and business. We are committed to smart growth, innovative thinking, excellence and integrity. With 225 attorneys and 180 business professionals, we proudly serve a diverse base of household-name clients, many of whom help shape the world of financial services and products, working together to produce achievements greater than the sum of our parts.

The Legal Project Manager will be a commercially-minded problem solver for process improvement, legal practice management, and fit-for-purpose selection and implementation of technology solutions. Using a wide range of skills, the LPM will serve as an internal consultant to unpack existing workflows in and adjacent to legal practice and translate business-driven ideas into operational solutions and improvements.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

Successful job applicants will be able to perform two categories of essential functions: 1) Lawyer-facing consulting; and 2) Project Management and Delivery.

CONSULTING

• Working closely with our lawyers and business professionals to

  understand the firm's business

  , identify and define needs, gather business requirements, optimize work processes, improve access to information, leverage technology and deliver tangible results.
• Manage cross-departmental business requirements gathering, scope definition, systems selection, refreshing process to align with people and technology, and managing both deployment of the solution and adoption of new processes to successful completion.
• Educates cross-functional teams on their roles and responsibilities within a project and coordinates the team's efforts to track task completion and dependencies.
• Owns development of requirement documents, cost/benefit analyses, risk analyses, affinity charts and process/workflow diagrams.
• Actively applies sound change management principles in projects, anticipating needs for and participating in planning for training and communications necessary for successful results.
• Help lawyers make better use of existing technology to deliver legal services better and faster.
• Analyze and evaluate existing systems to identify opportunities for improvements.
• Documents "as is" and "desired" state work processes to quantify impact of solutions on delivery of legal services.
• Develop and maintain relationships; build trust through results.
• Continually seeks opportunities to help the firm deepen external client relationships.
• Produce case studies and other materials showing value of work and impact on client service.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT & DELIVERY

• Able to assess and apply a project management framework (eg, agile, waterfall, etc.) that will best serve the project and stakeholders.
• Leveraging a defined methodology including templates and planning documents, ensure that all projects are delivered on-time, according to scope and within budget.
• Develop a detailed project plan to track and report on progress; remain flexible in managing and updating stages of planning as project develops and new information is absorbed.
• Coordinate and lead project meetings with assigned resources.
• Manage changes in project scope, schedule and costs.
• Measure project performance using appropriate systems, tools and techniques.
• Report and escalate issues and risks to management/project sponsor in a timely manner, with remediation proposal, and action as appropriate.
• Foster relationships with internal subject matter experts (SME) and third parties/vendors.
• Create and maintain comprehensive project documentation including charters, scorecards, project plans, communication plans, status reports, value/ROI and closeout lessons learned.
• Develop test plans and participate in associated quality assurance activities.
• Proactively manage customer expectations.
• Manage vendor relationships, service expectations and performance.
• Other duties as assigned

QUALIFICATIONS

• A minimum of five years of experience as a consultant and two years as a project manager.
• Four-year college degree required, JD or MBA a plus.
• Thorough understanding of both agile and waterfall project management principles; PMP certification is a plus.
• Previous law firm experience in lawyer-facing role(s) required.
• Highly organized, master of time and task management.
• Thorough understanding of knowledge management principles a plus.
• Comfortable presenting information and responding to questions from groups of attorneys, business professionals, and clients.
• Highly collaborative with an emphasis on flexibility and adaptability.
• Outgoing, personable, discrete and capable of being client-facing; able to engender trust.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, organizational and planning skills. Common sense required.
• Results-oriented, proactively striving for excellence in everything you do.
• Must speak concisely and convincingly and write similarly.
• High degree of proficiency with commonly used Microsoft technologies.
• Able to periodically travel to regional offices.