Specialist, Innovation

Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP (including its associated entities) is an elite global law firm with world‑class practices across the board. Clients know they can rely on Davis Polk for their most challenging legal and business matters. Our approximately 1,000 lawyers located in 10 offices in the world’s key financial centers and political capitals collaborate seamlessly to deliver exceptional service, sophisticated advice and creative, practical solutions.

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Davis Polk is looking for an Innovation Specialist for its Knowledge Management & Innovation (KM) team who will report to the Manager of Knowledge Management and will play a critical role in ensuring that firm personnel effectively utilize KM tools and resources. This position involves supporting the firm’s legal knowledge management and practice innovation agenda by evaluating and coordinating practice‑focused technology solutions, managing vendors and pilots, tracking the innovation pipeline and budget, and partnering with internal stakeholders to bring secure, well‑governed tools into day‑to‑day practice.

The ideal candidate will have several years of experience in a technology‑enabled role in a law firm or professional services environment, strong analytical and project coordination skills, comfort working with both lawyers and technical teams, and a proactive, organized approach to moving innovation initiatives from idea through evaluation and implementation.

Typical responsibilities include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Monitor the legal technology landscape, sharing relevant trends and insights with the team to inform the innovation roadmap and practice‑focused opportunities.
• Maintain a clear view of the firm’s internal technology landscape and innovation pipeline by tracking ideas, opportunities, and active initiatives from intake through evaluation and implementation, helping to avoid duplication and focus effort on the highest‑value work.
• Assess external technology solutions, including functionality, usability, integration needs, and key risks, and coordinate with internal stakeholders to ensure alignment with practice requirements.
• Manage vendor relationships by acting as day‑to‑day liaison, coordinating product demonstrations and proofs of concept, monitoring agreed deliverables, and facilitating issue resolution to support successful outcomes.
• Coordinate technology pilots by supporting planning, execution, and monitoring, including scheduling activities, tracking objectives and milestones, and ensuring that defined success criteria are captured and shared with relevant stakeholders.
• Document current‑state and future‑state workflows, use cases, and user journeys to support solution design, pilot planning, and implementation decisions.
• Collaborate with innovation specialists to monitor the ongoing performance and usage of deployed tools to identify enhancement opportunities, redundancies, or retirement candidates.
• Support innovation and technology governance processes by coordinating required reviews (e.g., information security, privacy, risk) and tracking approvals needed for pilots, contracts, and rollouts.
• Maintain standardized onboarding frameworks for new tools, including intake requirements and rollout playbooks, to support consistent and secure implementation.
• Track the innovation budget, monitoring spend and commitments across tools and projects and supporting budget planning for future fiscal years and initiatives.
• Support the innovation team with technology adoption by partnering with practice groups to plan and execute tool rollouts, coordinating training, gathering user feedback, and helping to address adoption challenges.
• Contribute to change management efforts by supporting communication and engagement plans for new tools (e.g., key messages, launch communications, stakeholder briefings) that clearly articulate value, expectations, and impact on existing workflows.

• High level of comfort with technology and curiosity about legal tech and emerging tools; ability to quickly learn new systems and explain their value in plain…