Senior Manager, Outside Counsel Management

Senior Manager, Outside Counsel Management

Location:

San Jose

Employment Type:

Regular

Job Code:

A163677

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Responsibilities

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.

• 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.

Qualifications

• Minimum Qualifications:
  • Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience required
  • Significant amount of relevant experience in legal operations, outside counsel or law firm management, legal spend, legal procurement, professional services management or a related field, including within a large, complex and global corporate legal.
  • Demonstrated expertise in law firm economics, legal spend management and commercial negotiations, including rates, matter budgets, AFAs and other pricing models.
  • Experience managing or influencing complex networks of law firms, alternative legal service providers (ALSPs) and legal vendors.
  • Experience developing and implementing outside counsel programs, preferred-provider panels, RFPs, scorecards and performance-management frameworks.
  • Strong analytical and technology skills, including the ability to translate complex data into actionable business recommendations and leverage e-billing, matter management, spend analytics, automation and emerging AI capabilities.
  • Exceptional communication and relationship-management skills, with the ability to influence senior attorneys, law firm partners and cross-functional executives.
• Preferred Qualifications:
  • Advanced degree in law, business, finance or another relevant field is preferred.
  • Experience designing and operationalizing end-to-end lifecycle-management processes for external legal providers, from sourcing and onboarding through performance management, renewal and offboarding.
  • Experience leading or collaborating with global, distributed and cross-functional teams.
  • Familiarity with vendor-risk management, information security, confidentiality, data governance and compliance requirements applicable to external legal providers.

Job Information

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $144000 - $270000 annually.

Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work, and this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives, and restricted stock units.

Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Employees have day one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) savings plan with company match, paid parental leave, short-term and long-term disability coverage, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, among others. Employees also receive 10 paid holidays per year, 10 paid sick days per year and 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure).

The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.

For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Our company believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment:

1. Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;
2. Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems;
3. Exercising sound judgment.

About TikTok

TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. At TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. TikTok's global headquarters are in Los Angeles and Singapore, and we also have offices in New York City, London, Dublin, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo.

Why Join Us

Inspiring creativity is at the core of TikTok's mission. Our innovative product is built to help people authentically express themselves, discover and connect – and our global, diverse teams make that possible. Together, we create value for our communities, inspire creativity and bring joy - a mission we work towards every day.

We strive to do great things with great people. We lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make impact in a rapidly growing tech company. Every challenge is an opportunity to learn and innovate as one team. We're resilient and embrace challenges as they come. By constantly iterating and fostering an "Always Day 1" mindset, we achieve meaningful breakthroughs for ourselves, our company, and our users. When we create and grow together, the possibilities are limitless. Join us.

Diversity & Inclusion

TikTok is committed to creating an inclusive space where employees are valued for their skills, experiences, and unique perspectives. Our platform connects people from across the globe and so does our workplace. At TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. To achieve that goal, we are committed to celebrating our diverse voices and to creating an environment that reflects the many communities we reach. We are passionate about this and hope you are too.

TikTok Accommodation

TikTok is committed to providing reasonable accommodations in our recruitment processes for candidates with disabilities, pregnancy, sincerely held religious beliefs or other reasons protected by applicable laws. If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at

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