Legal Operations
San Francisco • FullTime
Posted 13d ago
Remote Work Policy
On-site
Employment Type
FullTime
Categories
Applied AI Engineer
About the job
Cognition is seeking an exceptional operator to help build an AI-native legal function for an AI-native company. This role is not a traditional legal operations position; instead, you will design how Legal operates, including intake, decision-making, knowledge capture, and the integration of AI and automation to replace repetitive tasks. The objective is to create a lean, agile legal team that supports a rapidly growing company by owning systems, technology, budget, outside counsel relationships, and operational processes, ensuring high standards are maintained while operating with speed and ambition.
Responsibilities
- Design and continuously improve the operating model for the Legal department, identifying work for lawyers, automation, or elimination.
- Build intelligent intake, triage, workflow, and knowledge systems for efficient resolution of routine legal questions.
- Collaborate with technical teams to experiment with AI agents and tools to transform legal work processes.
- Develop systems to make legal support easily accessible and efficient for all company teams.
- Identify and remove friction points in legal processes by working with cross-functional teams.
- Create scalable legal processes that avoid bureaucracy.
- Measure key metrics such as speed, outcomes, friction sources, outside spend, and team time allocation to drive continuous improvement.
- Own the technology strategy for the Legal team, including systems for contracting, knowledge management, matter management, and e-billing.
- Build and deploy AI-enabled workflows to enhance the leverage of the Legal team.
- Manage the Legal team's budget, outside counsel relationships, vendors, technology, and operational planning.
- Develop strategies for engaging outside counsel versus building internal expertise, negotiating fees, and ensuring external counsel delivers high value.
- Establish operating rhythms and dashboards to track team priorities, workload, spending, and performance.
- Contribute to building a Legal team culture that emphasizes ownership, business understanding, judgment, problem-solving, and technology utilization.
Requirements
- Exceptional operator comfortable with both strategy and execution.
- Significant experience in legal operations, business operations, or a similar role managing complex organizational efficiency.
- Experience within a rapidly growing technology company is strongly preferred.
- Understanding of legal function mechanics (budgets, outside counsel, legal tech, contracting, planning, metrics) without being bound by traditional approaches.
- Deep curiosity about AI and its potential impact on professional work.
- Excellent judgment and a bias toward action, with the ability to resolve ambiguous problems.
- Clear communication skills, low ego, and effective collaboration with diverse teams.
- A builder's mindset, with an instinct to fix broken processes rather than manage around them.
- Degrees are a plus, but demonstrated building experience and thinking ability are prioritized over formal qualifications like a JD or MBA.