Senior Legal Project Manager

King & Spalding LLP; New York (NY); On-site; USD 205,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

King & Spalding LLP seeks a Senior Legal Project Manager to lead the planning, execution, and delivery of its largest and most complex matters. You will partner with partners, matter teams, clients, and support staff to define scope, staffing, and milestones while managing budgets and timelines.

You will shape the firm’s LPM framework, implement best practices, and provide training to teams, driving efficiency and client value across multi-jurisdictional portfolios.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree required; JD or master’s preferred in a related field.
• Formal project management qualification (APMQ or PMP) preferred.
• Minimum 7+ years of legal project management or similar experience in a law firm.
• Experience mentoring a team and managing multi-jurisdictional matters.
• Strong knowledge of LPM methodologies and client service leadership.

Responsibilities

• Lead planning, execution, and delivery of complex legal matters with matter plans and milestones.
• Define scope, staffing, objectives, roles, and success measures with stakeholders.
• Develop and manage matter budgets, forecasting, and risk mitigation.
• Provide executive updates and strategic insights to partners and clients.
• Facilitate governance, meetings, and cross-group collaboration across offices and vendors.
• Support fee arrangements and outside counsel guideline management.
• Advise on staffing strategies and resource allocation for efficiency.
• Develop LPM templates, playbooks, and dashboards to improve profitability.

Skills

Interpersonal skills

Communication

Leadership

Budget management

Problem solving

Cross-functional collaboration

MS Office & BI tools

Education

Bachelor’s degree

JD or master’s in business/finance/related

Tools

Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Word

PowerPoint

Power BI

SQL

Microsoft Project

Job description

King & Spalding is a leading global law firm with a commitment to excellence, innovation, and the seamless delivery of legal services. We harness innovative technology and exceptional talent to meet the complex needs of our clients in a fast-paced and dynamic legal landscape.

The Senior Legal Project Manager will be responsible for project managing some of the Firm's largest and most complex legal matters and portfolios, working alongside practice groups, matter teams, and partners to provide strategic and operational support across project management, staffing, budgeting & fee arrangements and client communications, ensuring matters are delivered on time, within scope, and in line with client expectations. In addition, the Senior Manager will have the opportunity to shape and scale the Firm's Legal Project Management capabilities and best practices, drive meaningful improvements to legal service delivery and client service, through streamlining workflows, championing process efficiencies, and maximizing matter performance.

This role reports to the Director of Pricing and Legal Project Management and have line management responsibility for other team members.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Lead the planning, execution, and delivery of complex legal matters and client portfolios by developing and maintaining matter plans, (including timelines, milestones & deliverables), performance trackers, status reports, and communication plans.
• Partner with attorneys, clients, business services personnel, and other stakeholders to define matter scope, objectives, staffing needs, roles, responsibilities, workstreams, and key success measures.
• Develop, monitor, and manage matter and portfolio budgets, including spend tracking, forecasting, timelines, deliverables, scope changes, budget revisions/issues; identify risks/bottlenecks and escalate concerns appropriately; and recommend practical mitigation or corrective actions.
• Serve as a senior point of contact for partners, matter teams, clients, and key internal stakeholders, providing consolidated updates, executive summaries, strategic insights, and recommendations across matters and portfolios.
• Facilitate matter governance and collaboration, including kick-off meetings, project team meetings, steering meetings, agenda development, follow-up tracking, and coordination across practice groups, offices, external counsel, vendors, and clients.
• Support fee arrangement and client outside counsel guideline management by helping prepare summaries, communicate and monitor the implementation thereof, across matters and client portfolios.
• Advise partners and matter teams on staffing and resource allocation strategies, balancing capacity, expertise, leverage, workload, and client requirements to support efficient and effective matter delivery.
• Develop, refine, and promote LPM methodologies, templates, playbooks, workflows, reporting tools, dashboards, and best practices to improve consistency, scalability, efficiency, and profitability across the Firm.
• Contribute to business development and client relationship efforts by supporting pitches, RFP responses, client presentations, LPM collateral, and opportunities to demonstrate innovative and efficient legal service delivery.
• Evaluate, implement, and optimize LPM technology, data analytics, benchmarking, matter management, collaboration, and reporting tools that enhance project delivery, budget visibility, decision-making, and client service.
• Provide LPM training, coaching, and change management support to partners, associates, clients, and business services professionals to encourage adoption of project management tools, processes, and best practices.
• Supervise, mentor, and develop legal project managers, analysts, or junior team members, including onboarding, workload management, performance feedback, professional development, recruiting support, and knowledge sharing.
• Serve as a day-to-day coach and resource for team members, providing guidance on matter management, stakeholder engagement, budgeting, and client communication.
• Help build and mature the LPM function by influencing adoption, expanding the pipeline of LPM work, championing knowledge sharing and continuous improvement, defining operating standards, supporting global consistency, and fostering a collaborative, high-performing team culture.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s degree required; JD or master’s degree in business, finance, accounting, or a related field preferred.
• Formal project management qualification is preferred, for example APMQ or PMP.
• Minimum of 7+ years of legal project management, legal operations, or practice management experience within a law Firm environment.
• Prior experience managing or mentoring a team, including performance management and professional development responsibilities.
• Significant experience of managing project teams and supporting complex, multi-jurisdictional matters in a dedicated project management capacity including experience of working with global legal teams.
• Strong knowledge of legal project management methodologies, approaches and processes.
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills, able to interact at all levels including with senior business stakeholders to negotiate and influence in order to achieve desired outcomes and build trusted relationships across all levels of the Firm and client organizations.
• Strong commercial acumen and financial analysis skills, including the ability to prepare analyses, provide valuable insight and recommendations.
• Excellent leadership, organizational, and problem-solving skills with the ability to manage multiple priorities.
• Flexible and resilient with ability to change and adapt in a fast moving, detail-oriented environment.
• High level of proficiency across Microsoft suite of products (Excel Word, PowerPoint, SQL, Power BI, Project, etc.) and artificial intelligence tools such as Co-pilot and Harvey.
• Ability to protect and maintain confidential and sensitive information.

The firm offers a generous total compensation package with bonuses and raises awarded in recognition of individual merit-based performance.

All full-time Business Services employees may participate in King & Spalding's comprehensive benefit program including health and wellness plan, life and disability insurance, flexible spending accounts and a health savings account, a 401(k) plan, profit sharing plan, and a substantial Paid Time Off (PTO) program.

Pay Transparency Range:

• Atlanta, GA: The anticipated full-time annualized salary range is $165,000 - $217,000
• Chicago, IL: The anticipated full-time annualized salary range is $175,000 - $230,000
• Washington, DC: The anticipated full-time annualized salary range is $195,000 - $240,000
• New York, NY: The anticipated full-time annualized salary range is $205,000 - $250,000

The salary offer will be contingent upon various factors, including but not limited to, relevant experience, internal equity, market data, job location, and other job-related factors permitted by law.

In general, employers are not permitted to make unsolicited neutral statements about criminal background checks before a conditional offer, including statements noting the employer's compliance with laws protecting applicants with criminal histories such as "Applicants' criminal history will be considered consistent with the requirements of the New York City Fair Chance Act".

King & Spalding LLP (K&S) is committed to providing equal employment opportunity to all applicants and employees in full compliance with all state, federal, and local laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, genetic information, age, disability or any other status protected by applicable law.

We are proud of our remarkably cohesive culture, which now encompasses more than 2,500 lawyers and business professionals worldwide. We seek to attract and develop the very best talent to work with us.

King & Spalding advances leading companies' complex legal and business interests in more than 160 countries. Collaborating across an integrated platform of transactional, litigation and regulatory talent in 24 offices globally, we work to understand and achieve our clients' business objectives.