Head of Legal Operations Advisory
Overview
A leading international law firm has built a specialist advisory practice that helps general counsel and in-house legal teams run their functions more effectively and manage risk with confidence, with a particular focus on AI. This is a fixed-term opportunity (roughly 14 months) to lead that practice across the UK and EMEA while the current lead is on leave.
The successful candidate will support the global head of the wider advisory function in delivering the team’s growth strategy and client commitments across the region, working both independently and, where mandates call for it, alongside the firm’s core legal practice teams.
Key relationships include senior leaders across the firm’s innovation and advisory functions, the equivalent APAC lead, colleagues in legal technology and emerging-tech advisory, client relationship partners, business development, the firm’s AI/innovation team, and General Counsel and risk colleagues internally; and clients, vendors and industry contacts externally.
Key responsibilities
Strategy & Leadership
- Take ownership of the UK & EMEA advisory strategy, set regional priorities, allocate resources and hit agreed commercial and client goals.
- Lead and grow the regional advisory team, building a culture geared toward collaboration, continuous learning and strong performance.
Service Development & Delivery
- Continue building out and refining a set of standardised, high-value advisory offerings (repeatable frameworks, methods and tools) that can be delivered consistently and efficiently to clients.
- Run structured, AI-enabled transformation engagements end to end — setting objectives, mobilising the right people, tracking progress and reporting on impact.
- Manage relationships with technology and third-party vendors, ensuring partnerships stay aligned to client and market needs and strengthen service delivery.
Business Development & Commercial Management
- Own a structured business-development programme, build relationships internally and externally, target priority accounts, and convert a healthy pipeline into revenue.
- Hit commercial targets for revenue, profitability and utilisation, reporting regularly to senior leadership.
- Spot and pursue opportunities to combine advisory work with the firm’s broader legal and professional-services offering, working alongside relationship partners and BD colleagues.
Market Profile & Insight
- Build the team’s external profile through thought leadership and visibility in the legal-transformation space.
- Build internal profile through relationship-building and by working with BD to share insight and surface opportunities internally.
- Keep refining a structured way of turning client and market intelligence into concrete opportunities for the practice and the wider firm.
Team Capability
- Keep the team’s capability-development programme current so the group stays ahead of developments in legal AI and transformation.
- Embed best-practice methods across engagements to keep delivery consistently high quality.
- Mentor junior team members and support managers in their own leadership development.
What we're looking for
- Substantial experience in legal operations, legal transformation consulting or a closely related advisory field.
- A track record of originating and closing commercial advisory mandates, including ownership of a revenue target and pipeline.
- Proven experience leading senior people across multiple specialist workstreams.
- Strong grasp of AI and its application to legal processes, including hands-on experience advising on adoption.
- A track record of building strong relationships with internal and client stakeholders at every level.
- Excellent consultative-selling and stakeholder skills, including at general counsel/C-suite level.
- Experience building repeatable, scalable advisory services or consulting products.
- Strong commercial acumen and analytical, creative thinking.
Also nice to have
- Experience within or alongside a law firm or professional-services environment across multiple jurisdictions.
- Legal engineering experience.
Apply for this role
We will respond personally and in confidence.
