Legal Program Manager - OCM & Spend

About the Role

OpenAI is seeking an experienced Legal Program Manager to be an operational leader as part of our growing Legal Operations team. Reporting to the Head of Legal Operations, you will have the greenfield opportunity to design, build, and scale the operational infrastructure that will enable the legal department to support the company's growth. In this foundational role, your initial and primary focus will be on creating a world-class outside counsel management (OCM) program and instilling rigorous financial discipline across all legal spend. You will be a strategic partner to the Finance team and a key leader in transforming the Legal department into a highly efficient, data-driven, and value-oriented business partner.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

In this role, you will:

• Outside Counsel & Vendor Management (OCM):

  • Develop, implement, and manage a comprehensive outside counsel management program, including strategic sourcing, selection, performance evaluation, and consolidation.

  • Design and deploy sophisticated pricing models and alternative fee arrangements (AFAs) to drive cost predictability and maximize value from our law firm partners. Develop firm panels and implement an RFP process for lower risk, repeatable work.

  • Establish, maintain, and systematically enforce outside counsel billing guidelines and standardize firm engagement/onboarding processes.

• Financial Management & Planning:

  • Own the legal department's P&L and implement legal budget QBRs; you will be responsible for all budgeting, forecasting, accruals, and financial reporting in close partnership with the Finance team and Legal budget owners

  • Analyze legal spend data to identify key trends, drivers, and opportunities for cost savings and process improvements.

  • Develop and manage matter-level budgeting processes to ensure financial discipline.

• Legal Technology & Systems:

  • Lead the management and enhancement of existing OCM and matter management systems to ensure critical matter data is synced across Legal.

  • Manage Legal’s current intake/ticketing solution broadly servicing the company wide inquiries; identify opportunities for automation and implement.

  • Co-develop the long-term technology roadmap for the legal department, including legal team process transformation and adoption of internal tools

• Process Optimization & Analytics:

  • Establish and track key performance indicators (KPIs) and build dashboards to provide leadership with actionable insights into legal operations and spend.

  • Standardize and streamline core legal workflows to improve efficiency and service delivery to the business; develop integrations to ensure data consistency

You’ll enjoy this role if you:

• A minimum of 15+ years of experience in legal operations, with a demonstrated track record of building and scaling the function in a high-growth technology environment.

• Deep, hands-on expertise in managing multi-million dollar legal budgets and developing sophisticated outside counsel management programs from the ground up.

• Proven success in negotiating aggressive fee arrangements (AFAs) and driving significant, quantifiable cost savings without sacrificing quality.

• Strong technical acumen with experience leading the end-to-end implementation of core legal systems (e.g., e-billing, CLM, matter management).

• An ownership mentality and the ability to thrive in a fast-paced, ambiguous environment; you are a strategic thinker who can also execute with a high degree of precision.

• Exceptional communication and project management skills, with the ability to build trust and collaborate effectively with stakeholders across Legal, Finance, IT, and executive leadership.

• A Bachelor's degree is required; a JD or MBA is strongly preferred.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity. 

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable law, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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