Enterprise Operations Outside Counsel & Legal Manager

At IBM, work is more than a job – it’s a calling:
To build. To design. To code. To consult. To think along with clients and sell. To make markets. To invent. To collaborate. Not just to do something better, but to attempt things you’ve never thought possible. Are you ready to lead in this new era of technology and solve some of the world’s most challenging problems? If so, lets talk.

As the Outside Counsel & Legal Spend Manager, you will support vendor governance, pricing strategy, and conflict of interest management, ensuring optimal performance and alignment with global legal operations. Working directly with the Head of Outside Counsel & Legal Spend Management, you will have a focus on promoting and implementing the initiatives of the department, including:

• On-hand support to quickly draft RFPs, suggest the most appropriate pricing models, select the most appropriate firms, drive negotiation and post-RFP logistics.
• Vendor Management & Governance:
  Support overseeing law firms, ALSPs, subscription vendors, and eDiscovery providers. Lead onboarding, renewals, and exits. Support contract negotiations and performance reviews.
• Global Pricing Strategy:
  Execute pricing benchmarks and drive global rate card adoption. Provide output to the Head of Outside Counsel & Legal Spend Management to make accurate and timely decisions on pricing.
• Conflict of Interest Oversight:
  Transition COI management into Legal Ops. Develop tech-enabled COI tracking and conduct compliance audits.
• Analytics & Reporting:
  Analyze vendor usage, pricing trends, and attorney engagement. Prepare reports and analyses related to legal spend, vendor performance, and operational metrics.
• Support with Panel Management:
  Tracking law firm value-adds, volume discounts, secondee requests etc.

Bachelor's Degree

Master's Degree

• Bachelor’s degree in Law, Business Administration, or a related field.
• Proven experience in vendor or relationship management, preferably within a legal context.
• Strong understanding of legal services, law firm operations, and the legal industry landscape.
• Excellent negotiation, communication, and interpersonal skills.
• Ability to analyze financial data and legal billing practices effectively.

• Familiarity with legal technology systems for RFP, Matter Management, and e-Billing, etc.
• Strong organizational skills with the ability to manage multiple relationships and projects simultaneously.
• Proficient in using relationship management software and tools.

IBM Corporate Headquarters (CHQ) team represents a variety of functions such as marketing, finance, legal, operations, HR, and more, all working together to solve some of the world’s most complex problems, help our clients achieve success and build collaborative work environments for IBMers.

In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.

Being an IBMer means you’ll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you’ll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on-going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can-do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach…