Director of Practice Engineering

Cooley is seeking a Director of Practice Engineering to join the Innovation team.

Position summary: As the leading technology law firm in the world, Cooley is determined to become a leader in the digital practice of law. The Director of Practice Engineering will be responsible for developing, leading, and implementing the technology aspects of Cooley's digital practice strategy, and is responsible for creating, managing, and deploying software products to create competitive differentiation for Cooley's world leading legal practices. Specific duties and responsibilities include, but are not limited to, the following:

Position responsibilities:

Practice digitization leadership and strategy:

• Help define the vision and roadmap for the firm's practice technologies in conjunction with the innovation leadership team
• Oversee and manage a portfolio of software products including off-the-shelf and custom solutions to develop a coherent roadmap and drive strategic decisions on purchasing and development in conjunction with other firm stakeholders
• Establish and lead a high-performing team that produces, manages and develops custom software solutions to support business goals that becomes a magnet for product, software and legal engineering talent

Product leadership:

• Set a compelling vision for practice facing software products that align with the firm's strategic goals
• Develop a product roadmap that balances short-term deliverables with long-term innovation. The roadmap should be agile, continuously updated based on changing priorities, and transparent to stakeholders
• Ensure that prioritization process for individual projects is done based on business value, user feedback, technical feasibility, and practice requirements
• Collaborate with senior leadership to allocate resources (budgets, staff, tools) efficiently across various software products in the portfolio, ensuring high-impact areas receive appropriate attention
• Drive innovation by incorporating AI and machine learning in a data-first manner to automate legal processes and improve efficiency in collaboration with the data team

Software development:

• Supervise the development of a world-class engineering capability with high coding standards, sound design principles, with long-term scalability planning in mind
• Establish and maintain a team that can ensure consistency in coding practices across the team and as applicable across projects by setting up procedures such as code reviews, pairing sessions, and continuous learning initiatives as appropriate
• Ensure active management of technical debt, act as liaison with business leaders and engineering leads to strike a balance between building new features and maintaining or improving existing codebases
• Collaborate with senior leadership to create and maintain an engineering roadmap that aligns with the firm's long-term product goals. Ensure that technical strategy is aligned with the overall business vision and legal practice goals
• Partner with HR to recruit top-tier software engineers, architects, and technical leads. Focus on building a diverse and inclusive team with a balance of expertise in full-stack development, DevOps, and legal vertical specific technology

Legal engineering and automation:

• Oversee the development of legal knowledge assets into content optimized for use by both practitioners and legal automation technologies in collaboration with legal practice groups
• Drive the engineering of content with an "automation-first" mindset to develop a comprehensive pipeline approach for automated software-enabled legal practice delivery
• Ensure Cooley's digitally delivered legal work product sets the standard for quality and excellence in the legal industry

Ecosystem development and strategy:

• Act as external-facing leader in the legal technology space by keeping appraised of market trends, competitors, and emerging technologies. Leverage these insights to shape the product roadmap, ensure competitiveness, and help maintain the firm's reputation as an industry leader in the field of legal technology
• Lead the scouting, evaluation and eventually development of collaboration, partnership, or potential investment opportunities for legal technology solutions that may be used by or integrate with the firm's digital solutions
• Develop thought leadership to communicate the firm's digital practice strategy to the market including to internal and external clients, represent the firm in external engagements including attending industry events, public speaking and written articles

Collaboration and stakeholder engagement:

• Collaborate with other departments including data, change management, and operational teams to drive success for the firm's practice software deployments
• Oversee the effective collaboration between lawyers at the firm and software development teams to ensure the product and software strategy and tactics align with enterprise goals
• Communicate complex engineering concepts and insights to non-technical stakeholders in a clear and actionable manner

Team building and mentorship:

• Lead a team of software engineers, product managers, and legal engineers with a focus on fostering a high-performance, collaborative, innovative, and results-driven team culture
• Establish and maintain a well-structured team with clear roles, responsibilities, and workflows to optimize productivity. Provide clear technical direction, mentorship, and career development opportunities for all team members
• Foster strong working relationships between product, software and legal engineering teams and other departments, including practice, IS, and operations, to ensure that software products meet business and user needs while maintaining high technical standards including compliance and security requirements
• Provide day-to-day supervision of direct reports, ensure compliance with assigned work hours and monitor for compliance with all firm and department policies. Manage staffing coverage, review and process time logs/time off requests
• Support business professional development and continued educational opportunities
• In collaboration with immediate supervisor and HR, participate in hiring, performance appraisals, counseling, termination and other employee lifecycle events
• All other duties as assigned or required

Skills and experience:

Required:

• After orientation at Cooley LLP, exhibit proficiency in the Microsoft Office suite, iManage and other firm applications
• Ability to work extended and/or weekend hours, as required
• Ability to travel, as required
• Bachelor's degree
• 10+ direct applicable experience (e.g., integrated legal and software development roles)
• 5+ years of management experience in relevant roles and with proven track record of effective leadership
• Experience in leading significant teams in development of legal practice focused software, preferably within experience in bringing new products to market from within a law firm environment

Preferred:

• Domain Knowledge
• Strong understanding of the legal industry, particularly around legal financial systems, legal analytics, and legal operations
• Experience in managing cross-functional projects involving engineering, data engineering, and operational business units.
• Knowledge and experience with distributed systems and organizations.

Competencies:

• Strong leadership skills
• Ability to build, manage, and mentor practice engineering and knowledge team
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to translate complex technical concepts to legal professionals and senior executives
• Ability to influence and collaborate with multiple stakeholders across various departments (legal, IS, etc.)

Cooley offers a competitive compensation and excellent benefits package and is committed to fair and equitable employment practices.

EOE.

The expected annual pay range for this position with a full-time schedule is $250,000 - $325,000. Please note that final offer amount will be dependent on geographic location, applicable experience and skillset of the candidate.

We offer a full range of elective benefits including medical, health savings account (with applicable medical plan), dental, vision, health and/or dependent care flexible spending accounts, pre-tax commuter benefits, life insurance, AD&D, long-term care coverage, backup care for children and/or adults and other parental support benefits. In addition to elective benefit options, benefited employees receive firm-paid life insurance, AD&D, LTD, short term medical benefits as well as 25 days of Paid Time Off ("PTO") and 10 paid holidays each year. We provide generous parental leave and fertility benefits. New employees will attend a detailed benefit orientation to learn more about our many benefits and resources.