Senior Business Analyst - FTC

Position Summary

Reed Smith is seeking a Business Analyst to join its Global Program Management and Change Leadership team. This team is a key element of firm's broad and progressive Innovation group, which drives transformation and supports strategic business initiatives across the organization.

Business Analysts identify, define, refine, and document business processes across all areas of the law firm. Areas of focus can include HR, Finance, Marketing, Operations, and IT, as well as our litigation and corporate legal practices globally. Therefore, this role includes interpersonal investigory work to learn from dozens of people (ranging from technical to senior leadership), analysis work to understand and evolve the findings, and communications work to help others understand the results, including risk and gaps.

The results of this work are used to help our firm improve working practices, design software workflows, increase the completeness of our data, and other critical improvements.

The role frequently serves as a liaison between business and IT teams, facilitating communication and determining software objectives that align with stated and unstated business needs. As such, this role is to collaborate with stakeholders, developers, testers, and subject matter experts across the business.

Reed Smith has committed to an extended program of re-examining how it approaches traditional business operations and the provision of legal services. The firm is creating a common global platform that provides its lawyers and clients with a competitive edge, in terms of intelligence, learning, collaboration, efficiencies, and risk management. The firm has been undertaking an initial foundational phase which includes the provision of 22 new or improved business systems, the expansion of the firm's data framework to over 8 billion elements, and ongoing piloting of key Generative AI systems.

The firm invested in a data analytics COE, expanded programs in Client Value and Strategic Resourcing, and recently hired a Director of Applied AI.

As we complete this initial work, we are able to expand the application of these systems to broader business uses across the firm. We already have a significant queue of business leaders eager for results and our need for high quality data is boundless. Thus, business analysis has become critical to our work.

This role is a member of the Global Program Management and Change Leadership team. While part of the broader Innovation team, its scope of work extends across the business. The team includes expertise in change leadership, project management, and business analysis. There are also complementary resources around the firm including our Innovation Lab, Applied AI, Change Leadership, Learning & Development, IT Transformation, and the Innovation and Strategy Committee.

• Conduct business analysis activities in collaboration with the key stakeholders, drawing out the level of detail required and timing of analysis work within the context of the overall change.
• Define plans and processes to identify, track, prioritise and manage requirements and designs.
• Identify the benefits of potential solutions, including costs or business improvements.
• Engage with stakeholders and wider teams to gather feedback and opinions, gain stakeholder commitment, and encourage participation, helping others to make the best decisions to deliver the required outcomes.
• Follow set standards to efficiently store/access information and to track decisions and actions.
• Assess performance measures to identify relevant trends, highlight risks, and ensure appropriate metrics are being used to identify and continuously improve, adapting to changing situations…