What You Will Do:
Reports to the EVP & General Counsel, with dotted line reporting to the VP & Chief Compliance Officer. Serves as a trusted advisor and strategic leader responsible for enabling and creating effective global Law & Policy ("L&P") group organizational alignment. The global Law & Policy group is a multi-disciplinary team comprised of about 500 professionals on the Legal, Compliance, and EHS teams. This role is imperative to driving understanding of and engagement around the business strategy across the teams by driving operational alignment, program management, change management, issue resolution, and strategic communications and the ideal candidate is a proactive self-starter who can work independently.
This role is instrumental in planning, executing, managing and leading the L&P team's world-class operational excellence and enterprise strategic targets. Working across global functions and regions, you continually evaluate and improve alignment, adoption and transformational effectiveness, while bringing new and innovative ideas to the team in the most efficient and cost-effective manner. The operational aspects of the L&P group report directly to this role. There are approximately 10 direct reports with direct team leadership and management responsibilities.
How You Will Do It:
Strategic Planning - Shape L&P organizational strategy, develop plans, analyze data, and align goals to achieve the company's objectives
* Design, plan, execute, and implement strategic and operational initiatives in partnership with L&P leadership teams
* Lead department "right sourcing" by regularly optimizing resources to enhance effectiveness in speed, quality, and cost of delivering legal services
* Manage direct legal relationship for Global Field Operations team to deliver enterprise strategic targets
* Implement and drive enterprise A/R collection processes and standardization
Legal Technology - Lead digital transformation. Enhance existing and develop new tools enabling streamlined team collaboration and workflow automation across the L&P team and business partners
* Lead optimal utilization of technology by the L&P team through planning, selection, procurement and/or development, training, and adoption of key technology resources
* Manage system deployments, enhancements, and related process guidelines
* Improve data integrity and analytical reporting capacity
* Drive implementation and utilization of enterprise-wide Contract Lifecycle
Management (CLM) system, ensure global business team adoption of contract-repository
* Deliver Compliance technology workstreams and digital projects including management of company ChatBot, Training Calendars, and Compliance Dashboards
Outside Counsel /External Resource Management - Lead the sourcing, negotiating, and management of law firms and external service providers and support the selection process through defined processes and reporting
* Manage $100 M+ outside spend budget for law firms and other external service providers
* Plan and implement strategic outside counsel initiatives and support active law firm, consultant, and vendor usage and spend
* Lead law firm budget review processes, provide analysis and recommendations with respect to alternative fee arrangements, manage RFPs and competitive bidding process
Knowledge Management - Facilitate transparent and accessible legal process and operations information to support the L&P teams
* Own enterprise Compliance Training and Communications to deploy regular company-wide training assignments
* Manage information governance program for all L&P-related content and information
* Drive L&P training with Continuing Legal Education resources
* Track trends in in-house legal department best practices, and collect relevant benchmarking to inform department initiatives
Project & Process Management - Manage L&P projects from inception to completion
* Define and drive strategic and operational initiatives with on-time and on-budget results
* Directly manage identified projects to support the strategic objectives of the L&P functions
* Implement effective Change Management programs and procedures
* Drive employee engagement surveys and implement wholistic action plans to improve team effectiveness
Financial Planning - Prepare and manage accurate legal budgets, forecasts, and monitor spend
* Assist with the development of the legal budget, business cases and other funding requests for L&P initiatives
* Capture full matter costs to aid in active spend management and monitor operational costs for improved budget forecasting accuracy
* Identify and track metrics, KPIs, and operations reporting to better inform decision-making, including matter and work product analyses
What We Look For:
* 10+ years of experience, five or more specifically in corporate leadership roles with demonstrated excellent communication, project management and leadership skills
* Possess confidence and maturity to interact with all levels of the organization with the ability to maintain confidential or sensitive information, as well as influence with and without authority
* Ability to quickly gather and synthesize information from a variety of sources; aptitude for translating complex topics and issues into broadly understandable messages to employees with the skill to build relationships within the team, across departments, and external stakeholders
* Experience in organizing and directing multiple teams and departments, manage and develop direct reports, as well as planning and leading strategic initiatives
* Strong project management skills, ability to multitask and lead problem solving efforts, excellent organizational skills
* Understanding of technical systems and tools utilized by law departments to efficiently manage its provision of legal services, including contract and knowledge management systems, matter management, e-billing, and e-discovery tools
Johnson Controls, Inc.
Jan 17, 2025