Senior Manager, Conflicts Attorneys

Century City, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Orange County, Palo Alto, San Francisco, Washington, D.C.

Gibson Dunn is a leading global law firm, advising clients on significant transactions and disputes. Our exceptional teams craft and deploy creative legal strategies that are meticulously tailored to every matter, however complex or high-stakes. The Firm’s work is distinguished by a unique combination of precision and vision.

Based in any U.S. office, the Senior Manager, Conflicts Attorneys (U.S.) will lead the Firm’s U.S.

-based team of Conflicts Attorneys and oversee the day‑to‑day operation of the conflicts clearance function for new clients and new matters across the Firm’s U.S. offices. The Senior Manager will serve as a senior escalation point for complex and novel conflicts of interest questions arising under U.S. professional responsibility rules and will interface directly with the Firm’s partners regarding approval of new matter requests.

The Senior Manager will continue to personally handle the most complex and sensitive clearances while building, training, and leading a growing team, with the balance of the role shifting toward leadership as the team develops. The Senior Manager will also be responsible for the operational health of the U.S. function — workload allocation and coverage, turnaround and service levels, precedent and template libraries, training programs, and the continued development of the Firm’s conflicts and ethical screening technology — and will handle additional assignments from the Firm’s General Counsel and Legal Operations team.

This role reports to the Director, Conflicts Attorneys & Assistant General Counsel.

• Supervising the U.S. Conflicts Attorneys team, including day‑to‑day workload allocation, queue and escalation management, and coordination of coverage across U.S. time zones.
• Coordinating daily handover with the international conflicts team to ensure continuous coverage of the global clearance queue and consistent treatment of matters spanning U.S. and non-U.S. offices.
• Providing mentoring, training, and ongoing performance feedback to Conflicts Attorneys and Resolution Analysts, and participating in goal setting, annual reviews, and hiring for the team.
• Serving as the senior point of escalation for complex, novel, or high‑sensitivity conflicts of interest issues, and exercising independent judgment on clearance decisions within delegated authority.
• Analyzing conflict of interest reports for new Firm representations to identify potential conflict problems and ensure new matters and attorney hires are compliant with the Firm’s conflict and risk management policies and procedures.
• Resolving conflict of interest issues, including negotiating and obtaining necessary waivers and drafting ethics wall memos, related to the Firm’s clearance of new clients and new matters.
• Analyzing information provided with new matter requests for compliance with Firm policies and applicable rules of professional responsibility, and reviewing and editing draft engagement letters for compliance with same.
• Proactively communicating with partners, practice leadership, and Firm management regarding complex conflicts issues, including issues with the potential to affect firm‑wide risk.
• Overseeing review of client outside counsel guidelines and the assessment of the Firm’s ability to comply, and escalating problematic terms to the Office of General Counsel.
• Consulting with partners, the Office of General Counsel, and information governance to create and maintain effective screening restrictions and monitoring the ongoing integrity of ethical screens.
• Developing, documenting, and maintaining the Firm’s conflicts policies, procedures, precedent…