Legal Operations

About the role

Column is seeking its first Legal Operations specialist to redefine how a modern, AI-driven legal department operates within a regulated financial institution. This role involves transforming the legal function into a strategic advantage, moving beyond traditional legal operations to support complex, multi-jurisdictional financial products and bespoke fintech partnerships. You will work closely with the General Counsel to enhance efficiency and impact.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Design and implement the Legal Operating Model, assessing current processes and building a future-state model with urgency.
• Establish and manage operational rhythms, including intake service level agreements, approval workflows, and cross-functional handoffs with Growth, Compliance, and Finance.
• Develop key performance indicators, dashboards, and reporting to provide actionable insights into team performance, deal volume, and operational health.
• Proactively identify and resolve operational bottlenecks, implementing scalable process improvements to drastically reduce task completion times.
• Audit existing legal technology, identify gaps, and create a roadmap for tools covering intake, workflow, contract lifecycle management, e-billing, knowledge management, and AI-assisted processes.
• Design and build AI-assisted and agentic workflows using internal bank tools for dashboards, playbooks, redlining, and databases, rather than relying on numerous external vendors.
• Partner with the Bank's Business Operations team to ensure the Legal department adopts the same rigorous, tech-forward approach as other areas of the bank.
• Drive adoption, training, and change management for new tools and processes within the legal team.
• Manage the legal aspects of contract lifecycle management, including intake, routing, templates, repository, and reporting, in coordination with Growth and Finance.
• Design and continuously improve the legal intake and triage workflow, from request classification to drafting, review, and closure.
• Oversee knowledge management, ensuring playbooks, briefs, and templates are current, versioned, easily accessible, and serve as the team's authoritative source.
• Create and maintain processes for documentation management and retention, including operational guidelines, best practices, and training materials.
• Manage outside counsel operations and the legal budget.
• Review and enforce billing guidelines, audit spend, and ensure cost discipline across external legal relationships.
• Collaborate with Finance on budgeting, forecasting, and spend reporting, extracting actionable insights from legal spend data.
• Develop frameworks for strategic selection, utilization, and performance management of law firms and vendors.

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience in legal operations at a high-growth technology company or financial institution.
• A builder's mindset, applying an AI-native, first-principles approach to developing tools and systems.
• Demonstrated creativity in building legal operations engines, moving beyond standard solutions to address unique business needs and regulatory complexities.
• Hands-on experience with contract lifecycle management systems, knowledge management, and outside counsel management.
• Strong data and analytics capabilities, including the ability to create impactful dashboards and metrics for leadership and make data-driven decisions.
• Proven ability to operate effectively across functions, influencing adoption across Legal, Risk, Compliance, Finance, Engineering, and Growth without direct authority.
• Highly organized project management skills, capable of managing multiple concurrent workstreams, identifying tradeoffs early, driving accountability, and knowing when to escalate.
• A resourceful, hands-on attitude with a positive disposition, inspiring those around you to achieve results.

Practical notes

Column offers comprehensive health, dental, and vision plans, with options 100% covered for employees and dependents. Benefits include family planning and fertility support (up to $20,000 reimbursement), up to $2,000 monthly rent subsidy for those living near the SF office, FSA and HSA options, a 401k plan with self-directed brokerage, flexible time-off, 100% paid parental leave (16 weeks for birth mothers, 12 weeks for primary caregivers, 8 weeks for secondary caregivers), up to $4,500 in annual backup childcare reimbursements, catered lunches and dinners for SF employees, commuter benefits, and regular team-building events. Column participates in the E-Verify program where required by law. For accommodation requests during the application process, contact accommodations@column.com.