Manager, Legal Architecture, SMB

Clio is the global leader in legal AI technology, empowering legal professionals and law firms of every size to work smarter, faster, and more securely.

We are transforming the legal experience for all by bettering the lives of legal professionals while increasing access to justice.

We are looking for a Manager, Legal Architecture, SMB to build and lead the team that brings legal credibility to Clio's SMB sales motion (law firms with up to 200 attorneys) working remotely in Chicago
. This is a new, high-visibility function within our Sales org. You will lead a team of six Legal Architects, former practicing lawyers, who secure the legal win in deals, run tailored demonstrations of Clio's AI products, and uplevel the legal fluency of the wider Sales organization across our Velocity, Strategic, Mid Market, and Government segments.

This is a player-coach role. Your first job is to lead: hire, coach, and develop the team, set coverage strategy, manage capacity and build the operating model for a function we are expanding in real time. You will also stay hands-on where it matters most, personally leading select strategic accounts, marquee product launches, and thought leadership, so you keep your edge and model the bar for the team.

You will report to the Director of Legal Architecture.

Our Legal Architects are former lawyers embedded in our Sales Org. They partner with Account Executives selling into new customers, and expanding into existing ones, to diagnose firms' practice-of-law challenges and show how Clio solves them. Using their legal expertise, the team supports Account Executives to lead discovery sessions, deliver tailored product demonstrations and run high-impact trials with our most strategic accounts.

As Clio ships new legal AI products focusing on the practice of law, this team acts as the credible voice of the customer: immediately building trust from day one.

• Build and grow the team. Hire, coach, and develop six Legal Architects across Mid Market, Government, Velocity, and Strategic. Set the culture, the quality bar, and the career path for a new team.

• Own the coverage model. Assign coverage by motion and segment: high-touch where deal value justifies it, enablement and scale where volume is high and deals are smaller. Manage capacity against demand.

• Stay hands-on where it counts. Personally lead a small set of strategic accounts, marquee demos, and product launches. Step in on the hardest legal, ethical, and technical objections, and model the standard you expect from the team.

• Scale enablement. Own the programs that make the whole Sales org more legally fluent. Standardize reusable demos, prompt libraries, playbooks, and practice-area content so one person's breakthrough becomes the team's baseline.

• Be the voice of the lawyer. Translate field insights into product direction with Product and Engineering, and align messaging with Marketing and Enablement. Coordinate with the Enterprise Legal Architects to share learnings across customer segments.

• Run the function. Support forecasting and pipeline reviews, track the team's impact, and hold a consistent bar for quality, accuracy and vetting across every segment.

• A Juris Doctor (JD) or equivalent, with practicing experience. You have spent time in the trenches and can lead and earn the trust of other former lawyers.

• People leadership. You have managed or led a team, or demonstrated clear player-coach success, ideally in go-to-market, sales, consulting, legal innovation or legal tech role. You develop people and raise the level around you.

• A customer-facing track record. You are comfortable in discovery, live demonstrations, and high-stakes rooms, and you can navigate technical, emotional, and ethical objections with senior legal stakeholders.

• A strong AI point of view. You follow LLMs and their application to legal drafting, research, and agentic workflows, and you use AI reflexively in your own work.

• Exceptional communication and EQ. You can command a room, coach in the moment, and distill complex ideas into clear, persuasive narratives.

• Comfort building in ambiguity. You thrive in a fast-moving, high-growth environment and can scale a function while it is already running.

• Hub-based. Preference to those located in, or willing to relocate to Vancouver or Toronto. Part of your team will be remote (US based), but the Sales Org who will be your key partners are based in hub cities and in-person time with Sales Managers and Account Executives will be key. Candidates based in the US working remotely will also be considered.

• Led a legal innovation, pre-sales, or go-to-market team in legal technology.

• Built or scaled sales enablement programs from the ground up.

• Active involvement in legal innovation communities or bar association technology committees.

What you will find here:

Compensation is one of the main components of Clio’s Total Rewards Program. We have developed a series of…