Director of Client Success

Sweet James LLP; Newport Beach (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k)

Health insurance

Paid time off

Vision insurance

Job summary

Sweet James Accident Attorneys is seeking a Director of Client Success to own and transform the client journey from intake through settlement. You will diagnose the existing experience, map the journey, and identify gaps, then design and lead new client-facing teams and an operating model with clear metrics and escalation paths.

The role requires 8+ years of leadership in CX, a proven builder mindset, and a track record of driving measurable improvements.

Qualifications

• 8+ years building and leading customer success, customer experience, or customer service teams.
• Builder: stood up a team or function from scratch or rebuilt underperforming one.
• Metrics oriented: defined CX metrics and built reporting.
• Operating model experience: designed roles, processes, service standards, and escalation paths.
• Hands-on with escalations: managed high-stakes customer escalations.
• Independence: defined strategy from ambiguous mandate with minimal direction.
• Fluency in CX best practices: journey mapping, VOC programs, service recovery, tiered support.

Responsibilities

• Diagnose the baseline: map the end-to-end client journey and analyze attrition, complaints, and review data.
• Design the operating model: define the client experience strategy, roles, handoffs, service standards, and escalation paths.
• Build and lead the teams: rebuild existing client-facing teams or stand up new ones, including hiring and training.
• Own the metrics: define client experience metrics, build reporting, and iterate based on results.
• Build the escalation system: create mechanisms to surface unhappy clients and route escalations.
• Partner across the firm: work with attorneys, case management, settlement, accounting, and regional office leaders to align client-facing work.

Skills

CX leadership

Builder mindset

Metrics driven

Operating model design

Escalation management

Independence

Voice of customer

Salesforce

Tools

Salesforce

Job description

Sweet James Accident Attorneys is a rapidly growing, AI-powered personal injury firm based in Orange County, CA. In less than a decade, we've built a nationally recognized brand and a proprietary AI and automation stack that make us one of the largest and most efficient providers of legal services in the country. Our growth runs on a culture of excellence, compassion, and results: Our team is committed to exceptional client experience and to supporting one another in a fast-paced, collaborative environment. We invest in our people, encourage professional growth, and provide meaningful opportunities to build rewarding careers while making a real impact in our clients' lives.

The role

This is our first dedicated client experience leadership hire. Our clients come to us at one of the hardest moments of their lives, and their case can run for many months across intake, treatment, negotiation, settlement, and disbursement. Each stage is handled by a team built for that stage, resulting in a fragmented client experience.

As Director of Client Success, you'll own that journey. Your first mandate is diagnostic: Spend your first weeks mapping the client journey as clients actually experience it, analyzing the data behind client attrition and complaints, and interviewing employees and current and former clients to establish a baseline, name the gaps, and recommend what to do about them. Your second mandate is to build: Rework our client-facing roles (e.g., our settlement concierge team), either by rebuilding what exists or standing up and leading new teams from scratch, and design the operating model, metrics, and escalation paths that keep clients informed and cared for from the day they retain us to the day they receive their settlement.

You will report to the Managing Partner of Pre-Litigation and work across attorneys, case management, settlement, and accounting teams, as well as our offices outside California. You will have the mandate to change how client-facing work is organized and be held accountable for the results.

Responsibilities

• Diagnose the baseline: Map the end-to-end client journey, analyze attrition, complaint, and review data, and interview staff and current and former clients to produce a baseline assessment of our client experience, its gaps, and prioritized recommendations.
• Design the operating model: Define the client experience strategy and the roles, handoffs, service standards, and escalation paths that deliver it at every stage of the case.
• Build and lead the teams: Rebuild existing client-facing teams (e.g., settlement concierge) or stand up new ones (e.g., a client success function that monitors the client relationship across the journey and intervenes early), including hiring, training, and day-to-day leadership.
• Own the metrics: Define the client experience metrics that matter (e.g., client satisfaction, complaint rate, response times, attrition), build the reporting behind them, and use the results to pilot, measure, and iterate on what you have built.
• Build the escalation system: Create mechanisms that surface unhappy clients before they leave (e.g., early-warning signals drawn from case and communication data, proactive check-ins at high-risk stages) and routing that ensures every escalation is captured, assigned to the right person, and resolved on time, with visibility into what was handled and what was not.
• Partner across the firm: Work with attorneys, case management, settlement, accounting, and regional office leaders so client-facing changes fit how cases are actually worked, and ensure client communications operate within the professional-responsibility rules that govern a law firm, under attorney guidance.

Qualifications

Required

• 8+ years building and leading customer success, customer experience, or customer service teams, including direct management of people and managers.
• Track record as a builder: You have stood up a team or function from scratch or rebuilt one that was underperforming, and can describe what you inherited, what you changed, and what happened.
• Metrics orientation: You have defined customer experience metrics, built the reporting behind them, and managed teams against them.
• Operating model experience: You have designed and refined roles, processes, service standards, and escalation paths for a customer-facing organization.
• Hands-on with escalations: You have personally managed high-stakes customer escalations and can describe how you resolved them.
• Independence: You can define a strategy from an ambiguous mandate, prioritize ruthlessly, and execute with limited direction.
• Fluency in customer experience best practices (e.g., journey mapping, voice-of-customer programs, service recovery, tiered support models).

Preferred

• Experience in a start-up or rapidly scaling environment where you built the function while the business grew around it.
• Experience in a regulated or professional-services setting (e.g., legal, healthcare, financial services) where customer communications carry compliance constraints.
• Experience serving consumers in high-stress, high-stakes situations rather than business-to-business accounts.
• Comfort working directly in customer relationship management or case-management data (e.g., Salesforce) to answer your own questions.

Who succeeds here

You are a builder who is comfortable being handed a problem rather than a plan. You would rather spend a few weeks understanding how clients actually experience us than start reorganizing on day one, and once you have the picture, you move fast, iterate quickly, and scale what works. You hold yourself and your teams to measurable outcomes and treat a client's worst day as the moment that matters most.

You are also comfortable operating inside a law firm: Attorneys own the legal advice, and you own the experience around it. You know how to earn the trust of people who have run their teams a certain way for years, and you can change how work gets done without leaving clients confused about who is looking after them.

• 401(k)
• Health insurance
• Paid time off
• Vision insurance

Sweet James is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applicants of every background and do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law.

We will consider qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records in accordance with the California Fair Chance Act and applicable local law.