Innovation Enablement Program Manager (Innovation Engineering)

About Kirkland & Ellis

At Kirkland & Ellis, we don’t just meet the standard for legal excellence — we set it. Our culture is built on teamwork, ingenuity and an unwavering commitment to continuous growth. We tackle the most sophisticated legal challenges with bold ideas and innovative solutions, powered by the exceptional experience and ambition of our 7,000+ people, including 4,000+ attorneys, across 23 offices worldwide. Our dedicated professionals share our lawyers’ commitment to excellence and show up each day to do meaningful work that helps drive global business, investment and innovation forward.

What You’ll Do

You are energized by the opportunity to work at the intersection of emerging technology and the practice of law.  You have a program management and/or project management background with a keen eye for programmatic approaches to support scaling the building and adoption of AI solutions at every step of the product lifecycle to transform the delivery of professional services to achieve high client impact.  Comfortable operating in fast‑moving, evolving environments, you take pride in enabling others while ensuring new tools and processes are implemented responsibly and effectively.

• Impact. Reporting to the Director of Responsible AI, you will join a highly collaborative team of directors, advisors, program managers, data scientists, and AI developers working to orchestrate a new era of innovation and impact at the crossroads of technology and law.  You’ll play a critical role in shaping how attorneys, business professionals and clients develop and adopt best-in-class tools and workflows. 
• Cross-functional collaboration.  You will collaborate closely across Innovation, attorneys, IT, Risk, and Security teams to support, develop and execute on programs that enable responsible, ethical, and sustained assessment, development, and adoption of new tools and processes that deliver measurable value to attorneys and clients. You will build trusted relationships with attorneys and administrative colleagues to drive alignment and support for the Innovation program’s initiatives.
• Innovation Engineering-focused.  You’ll serve as a key contributor supporting Innovation Engineering’s priorities, projects, and programs.  You will focus on driving programmatic initiatives to support the AI Advisory Services and Applied Innovation teams focusing on building and development of data-enabled solutions and capabilities. 
• Support Product Development: Working closely with Innovation Engineering, you will provide operational support to Innovation Engineering’s development, testing, and rollout of end-to-end AI workflows, AI/ML solutions, and playbooks, ensuring that dependencies and success measures are clearly managed. 
• Attorney Training and Change Management Support: As a key member of the Innovation Enablement team supporting AI adoption initiatives, you will contribute to the ongoing delivery of clear, compelling communications and training that ensure attorneys understand, adopt and sustain use of the Innovation program’s capabilities in compliance with the Firm’s policies and attorney ethical obligations. You will support the development of change management plans that support the rollout of new technologies, processes, and workflows. 
• Monitoring & Analysis: Support the collection and synthesis of stakeholder feedback and success metrics to evaluate ROI, refine processes, and enhance Innovation program outcomes. Help maintain user adoption metrics and generate reporting for Innovation and Practice Group stakeholders.
• Innovation Operational Support: 
  • Work closely with Innovation leadership to execute, streamline and modernize operational tasks critical to the success of the Innovation program. This may include maintaining the repositories of templates, standard operating procedures, training curriculum, scripts and playbook items across various data repositories to ensure Innovation teams are leveraging current and best practices at all times. 
  • Support communication and collaboration among the Innovation team, ensuring key decisions are documented and executed and assisting with preparation for in-person working sessions. 
  • Manage inbound communications and requests from attorney and administrative stakeholders to Innovation through expedient responses and/or triage to appropriate resources within Innovation.

What You’ll Bring

• Minimum of 5-7 years of relevant experience in project management, program management, legal ops, or similar operational, cross-team coordination within a professional services organization, law firm or client-facing vendor environment.
• Experience supporting technology teams, such as developers, data scientists, prompt engineers, and/or lawyers or other professional service providers working in high pace environments.
• Experience supporting change initiatives such as technology implementations, process improvements, training and development, or product/service launches from strategic planning, development, and adoption.
• Demonstrated enthusiasm for leveraging emerging technologies to transform operations and established workflows, ideally in a legal or professional services context.
• A desire to tackle open-ended problems and support rapidly evolving initiatives, using strong critical thinking, problem solving, and resourcefulness to drive progress and create standardized processes.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills with the ability to collaborate and influence across stakeholder types, including attorneys and administrative leadership.
• A high degree of professionalism, accuracy, accountability and organizational skills, with the ability to manage multiple priorities and stakeholder demands independently.
• Proficiency in MS Office, with data analysis experience preferred (Excel, Power BI or similar). 
• Experience with workflow automation, GenAI, CLM platforms or other legal tech solutions preferred.
• Bachelor’s degree in a related field.

Compensation

The base salary range below represents the low and high end of the salary range for this position in Chicago. This range may differ based on your geographic location and cost of living considerations. At Kirkland & Ellis, we consider compensation more than just a base salary. We offer an exceptional range of flexible benefits including comprehensive healthcare, paid time off, and retirement. We also offer personal support and tailored learning and development opportunities all designed to help you realize your full potential both in life and at work.

Compensation Range:

Chicago: $175,000 - $191,000

How to Apply

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Equal Employment Opportunity

All employment decisions, including the recruiting, hiring, placement, training availability, promotion, compensation, evaluation, disciplinary actions, and termination of employment (if necessary) are made without regard to the employee’s race, color, creed, religion, sex, pregnancy or childbirth, personal appearance, family responsibilities, sexual orientation or preference, gender identity, political affiliation, source of income, place of residence, national or ethnic origin, ancestry, age, marital status, military veteran status, unfavorable discharge from military service, physical or mental disability, or on any other basis prohibited by applicable law. #LI-Hybrid #LI-SM1

Salary : $175,000 - $191,000