About the Role:
We are seeking an experienced Senior Manager, Vendor & Law Firm Management to lead the strategic, commercial and operational management of TikTok Legal’s relationships with outside counsel, alternative legal service providers (ALSPs) and other strategic legal vendors.
Reporting to the Global Head of Legal Operations, this role will build and lead a world-class global outside counsel and legal vendor management program.
The Senior Manager will develop the frameworks, processes, data, technology-enabled workflows and commercial strategies needed to optimize external legal spend, provider performance and service delivery.
This role requires a commercially savvy, analytically rigorous operator who can build trusted relationships with senior attorneys and law firm partners and turn data into better decisions and measurable results.
Key Responsibilities:
Outside Counsel Strategy & Panel Management
- Develop and manage a global Outside Counsel Management Program with Legal leadership and Practice Leads.
- Define strategies for using law firms and ALSPs, including preferred counsel programs, panel structures, and practice-area and geographic coverage.
- Establish frameworks for allocating external legal resources and advise on firm selection, relationship strategy and resource allocation.
- Manage preferred-firm and strategic-provider relationships through structured governance and executive business reviews.
- Standardize provider onboarding, engagement, evaluation and offboarding.
Commercial & Legal Spend Management
- Lead commercial management of outside counsel and strategic vendors, including rate negotiations, matter budgets, fixed fees, AFAs, volume arrangements and other pricing models.
- Analyze spend, rates, matter economics and utilization to improve cost, predictability and resource allocation.
- Strengthen budgeting, forecasting, accruals and spend visibility.
- Deliver savings, cost avoidance and greater value while protecting quality and legal outcomes.
- Develop benchmarks and market intelligence for commercial and rate negotiations.
Competitive Sourcing & RFPs
- Lead sourcing and RFPs for outside counsel and legal services with Practice Leads and Procurement.
- Develop sourcing strategies, RFP materials, evaluation criteria, pricing analyses and recommendations.
- Evaluate firms consistently across quality, economics, capabilities, technology, innovation and demonstrated value.
- Provide analysis for sourcing and resource-allocation decisions.
Provider Performance & Value Management
- Build a scalable framework to measure and improve provider performance.
- Develop scorecards, KPIs and business reviews covering quality, responsiveness, staffing, efficiency, budget performance, innovation and value.
- Gather structured feedback from attorneys and Practice Leads and convert insights into management actions.
- Lead strategic reviews with key firms and vendors.
Legal Vendor Lifecycle & Operations
- Own the provider lifecycle from sourcing and onboarding through engagement, renewal and offboarding.
- Create standardized processes, playbooks, guidelines and governance.
- Build technology-enabled workflows for intake, sourcing, onboarding, engagement, billing, performance management and offboarding.
- Partner with relevant functions to implement controls for vendor risk, information security, confidentiality, data handling and compliance.
Billing, E-Billing & Financial Controls
- Partner with Legal Finance and technology teams to strengthen billing and e-billing operations.
- Establish and maintain Outside Counsel Guidelines and billing standards with Legal leadership.
- Monitor compliance and reduce billing leakage, non-compliance and inefficient spend.
- Improve invoice workflows, accruals, forecasting and spend reporting with Finance and e-billing teams.
- Use billing and matter data to improve pricing, staffing, matter management and provider performance.
Data, Analytics & Executive Reporting
- Build a data and reporting framework for outside counsel and vendor management.
- Develop dashboards covering spend, rates, matter volumes, budgets, forecasts, savings, panel utilization and provider performance.
- Turn complex data into clear insights and recommendations for Legal leadership.
- Establish KPIs and benchmarks for decisions about external legal resources.