The Role of a Legal Manager & Senior Legal Manager

What is the role of a Legal Manager & Senior Legal Manager? 

The roles of a legal manager and a senior legal manager have many overlapping duties and responsibilities, primarily centered around managing legal affairs within an organization and providing legal counsel and advice. The scope, strategic involvement, and leadership responsibilities of these roles are largely dependent on the needs of the organization.

Legal managers often take on this role in smaller organizations where the legal requirements are less complex. In contrast, Senior Legal Managers typically have more years of experience in corporate law and broader oversight across more complex legal matters, which is necessary in larger companies with more intricate legal needs. Senior Legal Managers are essential when there is a need for deeper expertise in specific areas of corporate law, leading to the existence of more senior legal roles within an organization. A legal manager will take on the role of a senior legal manager in smaller organizations that do not require a tiered legal system. 

What are the typical responsibilities associated with these roles? 

Though these roles may differ in their titles, they have many overlapping responsibilities that involve furthering the legal function of the company. It is important to note, however, that Senior Legal Managers will typically have more of a strategic leadership position that counsels on complex legal matters that require greater expertise and experience. The Senior Legal Manager will notably have a more significant role in shaping company-wide legal strategies and policies. However, shared responsibilities of these roles include: 

• Legal compliance: Along with ensuring that the organization complies with all relevant laws and regulations, these roles are also tasked with monitoring and updating the company on any changes in legislation. 
• Budget management: These individuals are ensured with the task of developing and managing the legal department's budget. This can also include evaluating the feasibility of bringing in new legal technology into the department to help with daily work. 
• Dispute resolution: They are responsible for managing and resolving legal disputes and litigation involving the company and liaise with external legal counsel when necessary. 
• Policy development: Creating, implementing, and managing legal policies and procedures is an integral part of this role to ensure the advancement of legal within the organization. 
• Legal advice: These roles provide legal advice to various departments within the organization and assist in decision-making by identifying potential legal risks. They must also suggest mitigation strategies to subdue any potential risks to the business. 
• Risk management: The role of legal manager and senior legal manager is responsible for identifying, assessing, and mitigating legal risks that could negatively impact the company's operations or reputation.

Both roles share these core responsibilities, but the Senior Legal Manager position typically comes with greater strategic involvement, leadership expectations, and overall responsibility within the organization.

How can technology help these roles advance? 

As companies experience growth in all parts of the business, legal must scale their services to keep pace. However, with headcounts plateauing across legal teams, workloads are at an all time high for individuals within these roles. Additionally, they are expected to develop new skills beyond traditional legal expertise like technological proficiency and business acumen to meet evolving business and legal requirements. Legal technology tools become a critical part of enhancing their productivity and better serving the business, leading to more opportunities for them in the future. 

Legal workflow automation tools, for example, can streamline workflows and automate repetitive administrative tasks, allowing legal professionals in these roles to focus on more complex and high-value work that feels fulfilling. When paired with a legal front door software, it allows legal to meet the business where it lives, whether that be in Slack, Teams, email, or elsewhere. Legal intake allows users to directly submit their request and capture them in a single platform, eliminating the need to manually triage and assign requests. A legal front door can help route requests automatically, based on matter type, lawyer expertise, capacity, and business unit. By connecting workflow and intake, it is easy to automate routine tasks for contract generation This allows legal managers and Senior Legal Managers more time to work on interesting tasks. 

How can Checkbox help? 

Checkbox offers a legal intake solution that does intake from anywhere in the business, be it Slack, Teams, email, or other places where the business lives. Checkbox can help Legal and Senior Legal Managers provide visibility into legal workload & performance data to identify areas for improvement. 

Discover how Checkbox can help by exploring our interactive demo to see the benefits firsthand.