Senior Legal Counsel, Global Legal Services

About The Team

The mission of the Global Legal Services (GLS) team is to enhance the Legal organization’s support for Workday by focusing on simplicity, speed, scale, and skills, thereby accelerating strategic growth and improving the customer experience. The team’s focus areas include developing business strategy for the Legal organization and operational alignment with larger Workday initiatives. Additionally, the team leads groundbreaking efforts in process optimization, resourcing, and risk management, while enabling operational efficiencies in technology management and data harmonization.

The GLS team also focuses on developing skills‑based training for the organization and providing solutions through effective project management, strategic analytics, vendor management, and budget coordination.

The Legal Compliance and Corporate Affairs organization seeks a highly motivated Senior Legal Counsel to join our Global Legal Services Center of Excellence. This role will play a key part in driving transformation in the legal department through establishing contracting standards, streamlining complex processes, leveraging AI to improve department efficiency, driving change management communication, and enhancing, streamlining, and curating resources used by the department to operate  role demands a unique blend of high‑energy project management, critical thinking, and the integrity to lead high‑stakes initiatives independently.

• Supporting the development and maintenance of transactional infrastructure governance policies and processes.
• Collaborating with cross‑functional teams in Legal, Sales, and Business Technology to implement process and technology solutions.
• Engaging with cross‑functional teams continuously to gather feedback for improvement to processes, templates, and tools and align contracting processes with broader business objectives.
• Mapping work streams and department processes, identifying complexity, effort and risk.
• Leveraging business expertise to implement process improvements and serve as a trusted advisor for business users.
• Proactively participating in organizational change and launch support processes, aiding change management and support enablement.
• Leading negotiations for enterprise‑level agreements (SaaS, procurement, non‑disclosure, etc.).
• Drafting and reviewing redlines to Workday commercial contracts, coordinating with cross‑functional teams during contract review cycles, providing guidance on commonly requested edits, non‑standard terms, policies, copies, questions, etc.
• Contributing to model development and deployment of AI solutions for the legal department.

• J.D. Degree and membership in at least one state bar.
• 7+ years of experience as a practicing attorney in a law firm or in‑house/public sector legal department.
• 5+ years of experience in modern contract drafting.
• 5+ years of experience with contract lifecycle management (CLM) concepts and technology.

• Systems Architecture:
  Strong understanding of CLM platforms and integrations with enterprise ecosystems; hands‑on experience with Salesforce and Conga CLM is highly desirable.
• AI & Data Literacy:
  Proactive interest in AI solutions and ability to demonstrate how AI can be applied to data analysis and willingness to contribute to model development and deployment.
• Process Optimization:
  Ability to identify, test, and leverage digital tools to streamline legal operations and drive business efficiency.
• Legal Contracts or Operations
  
  Experience:
  
  Experience working in a legal department, particularly with customer contracts or process and operations (strongly preferred).

• Pragmatic
  
  Risk Management:
  
  Creative approach to legal hurdles—balancing thinking outside the box with a practical, business‑first approach to risk.
• Agile Methodology:
  Experience working in agile environments, specifically collaborating with cross‑functional teams to meet iterative goals.

• Executive Presence:
  Exceptional ability to distill complex legal information into clear, tech‑enabled presentations for…