Due to continued success, our innovative and growing Osborne Clarke Solutions (OCS) team has an exciting opportunity for a Legal Project Manager to join them. This role will focus on delivering Legal Project Management (LPM) services to support the efficient, predictable and transparent delivery of legal work for our lawyers and clients. The role can be 4 days a week or full time, is permanent, based out of our Bristol office and working to a hybrid arrangement.
The Team
Osborne Clarke's Solutions team plays a crucial role in helping clients explore exactly how they would like legal and related services to be delivered to maximise the value to their businesses. The team is client led, developing new products and services to deliver existing services better, and to deliver entirely new services to meet growing client needs. The team operates out of the UK and Europe, with teams of ex-lawyers, and technologists across locations.
Our Solutions programme has two key goals. First, to make sure we're responding to client demands for greater value, efficiency and certainty from their lawyers, whilst maintaining the highest quality. Secondly, in helping us bring innovative ideas to the delivery of our, or our clients', current and new, services. A significant part of this innovation involves integrating AI technologies throughout our offering.
We want to ensure our lawyers have the best products and resources needed to provide the best possible service to our clients.
Key Responsibilities:
Matter & Portfolio Management:
- Support the application of LPM methodologies across key work types, matters, mandates and client portfolios (e.g. complex transactions, large disputes, multi-jurisdictional projects, managed legal services).
- Work with matter teams to define scope, deliverables, pricing, assumptions and success criteria.
- Develop budgets, timelines, resourcing plans and work breakdown structures for matters.
- Establish governance frameworks, communication plans and risk/issue registers for assigned matters.
- Monitor matter progress, track scope changes, manage risks and issues, and escalate where appropriate.
- Provide LPM support for strategic clients, panel relationships and key framework agreements.
- Implement and utilise tools and processes for matter budgeting, fee tracking and margin analysis, providing insights on matter performance and profitability.
- Collaborate with partners and BD to position LPM as a differentiator in pitches, RFPs and panel reviews, and participate in client meetings to explain delivery approach and project governance.
- Collect and act on client feedback regarding matter delivery, reporting, communication and value.
- Develop and maintain client-facing materials including project governance packs, reporting templates and dashboards.
- Contribute to process improvement initiatives by helping to map, design and refine legal workflows, and identify opportunities for standardisation, automation and use of legal technology.
- Support the maintenance of LPM frameworks, methodologies, templates and best-practice guidance, and contribute to firm-wide LPM training initiatives.
Skills, Experience & Qualifications:
Essential:
- Demonstrable experience in project management or legal project management within a law firm, professional services or similar complex environment.
- Experience managing complex, multi-stakeholder projects with responsibility for scope, budget, resources and timelines.
- Good understanding of legal service delivery, law firm economics and matter profitability drivers.
- Strong project management, stakeholder engagement and reporting, including planning, risk management skills.
- Excellent communication skills, with the ability to work credibly with partners, senior stakeholders and clients.
- Strong analytical skills; confident using data and metrics to inform decisions and demonstrate value.
Competencies & Behaviours:
- Client-centric mindset focused on delivering value, transparency and predictability.
- Commercial acumen with understanding of profitability and pricing dynamics.
- Collaborative approach, working effectively across practice groups and offices.
- Pragmatic and solution-oriented, balancing best practice with what is realistic for each matter.
- Continuous improvement mindset, always seeking ways to enhance efficiency and client satisfaction.
- Resilience and comfort working in a fast-paced environment with competing priorities.
We offer competitive salaries and generous benefits. We value the health and wellbeing of our people and our wide range of initiatives and benefits support this.
Our recruitment process
Please note that although we include closing dates for our roles as a guide, we review and progress applications on a rolling basis. At Osborne Clarke we do not make any recruitment decisions using automated decision-making.
We are committed to providing an environment where you can perform to the best of your abilities at every stage of your recruitment experience and beyond. If you require any adjustments to be made during the application stage, interview process, or when working with us, please let us know in confidence.
