Legal Operations Associate

The Legal, Compliance, Audit, Risk and Sustainability (LCARS) team at Verisk is seeking a Legal Operations Associate with a primary emphasis on legal spend management. This role will be responsible for supporting efforts to optimize the budget, spend, and financial processes related to Verisk’s Legal Department. The best candidate for this position will be detail-oriented and possess both a passion and experience in vendor and outside counsel (OC) management, financial analysis, negotiation, and process improvement. The Legal Operations Associate will work closely with the Head of LCARS Operations, Legal, Finance, Accounts Payable, Strategic Sourcing & Procurement (SSP), outside counsel and alternative legal service providers (ALSPs), Legal vendors, and other departments to track and manage legal costs as well as identify and implement cost-saving opportunities. In addition to the Associate’s focus on legal spend, other duties and responsibilities may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Participate in and contribute to contracting optimization; supporting efforts to streamline and enhance Verisk’s sell-side contract lifecycle management processes
• Generally implement and support processes and solutions that enable Legal, Compliance, Audit, Risk and Sustainability (LCARS) to efficiently execute its day-to-day operations; beyond legal spend management and contracting optimization, enable LCARS team members to focus on their craft and serve customers more effectively by applying the best and right-sized business and technical practices to the delivery of LCARS services
• Participate and partner in requirements gathering and problem-solving with internal stakeholders to contribute towards solutions and recommendations to meet desired departmental and organizational objectives
• Assist in evaluation of technologies and underlying process requirements to assess future needs and make recommendations; identify scalable tools and implement them. Also, drive the use of technology and automation systems to improve department operations.
• Support LCARS learning and development, including inform management of recurring issues or when additional team training may be required; also, develop and coordinate training for LCARS team members on relevant topics and systems
• Support and facilitate the establishment and use of metrics, KPIs, OKRs, and success criteria across operations, activities, projects, and efforts
• Facilitate and enhance knowledge management through maintaining resources on the intranet, Sharepoint and Teams
• Participate in various special LCARS projects and perform other duties as assigned

• Bachelor’s degree and/or the following equivalent work experience: 
  • Preferably 4 to 5+ years of experience (no less than three years) in business operations for an in-house legal department or law firm, with particular exposure to and knowledge of e-billing, outside counsel management, and legal spend.
• Demonstrates superior initiative and ensures strict confidentiality at all times
• Excellent analytical skills, with commitment to continuous improvement
• Highly organized and detail oriented, with the ability to work on multiple projects; possess a  consistent track record of managing to project plans, timelines and deadlines
• Stellar problem-solving abilities to understand team member pain points and troubleshoot as challenges arise
• Superb communication skills; communicates clearly and is effective with verbal and written communications; adapts communication style to needs of the audience
• Committed team player, with experience in building trust, a strong rapport and collaborative relationships (including with team members in legal, compliance, audit, sales, sales operations, IT, finance, and more)
• Quick and motivated learner, desirous to jump in and take on new challenges to improve work product
• Tech savvy, ideally possessing experience with legal technology systems, including legal e-billing / legal spend platforms (SimpleLegal), Oracle, as well as CLM and CRM systems. Familiar with Smartsheet and Microsoft 365 suite of applications (i.e., Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint, Teams, Forms, Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI)
• Experience with designing, developing, documenting. mapping, and implementing processes and workflow improvements