Legal Program Services Lead – Vice President

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Job Overview

Be a Legal Innovator. Drive Transformation. Lead with Impact.

Job Description

Are you a strategic, results-oriented leader passionate about transforming the legal function through innovation? Join our Analytics & Information Management (AIM) organization as the Legal Program Services Lead (VP - C13) and play a pivotal role in enabling legal operational excellence and driving strategic transformation across the enterprise. In this high-impact role, you will oversee a portfolio of complex, regulatory and business-critical legal initiatives, ensuring Citi’s Legal Department remains agile, efficient, and at the forefront of industry change.

This highly visible and impactful leadership position offers the opportunity to shape the future of our legal operations and risk management practices. As a recognized thought leader with a deep understanding of legal processes and a proven ability to influence senior stakeholders, you will spearhead strategic initiatives that empower the Legal function to identify opportunities for improvement and achieve unprecedented levels of efficiency and effectiveness.

You will lead cross-functional projects across legal, technology, data, and vendor professionals, fostering a culture of innovation and collaboration while leveraging your exceptional program management and problem-solving skills to deliver impactful solutions. This is your chance to create a legacy, drive meaningful change, and make a lasting impact on a world-class organization.

The role is to support design & delivery of large-scale transformation projects for Legal COO that involves significant use of data, analysis & AI. This role reports into the group under Legal COO, that leads design & delivery of key transformation projects. This role involves understanding and representing requirements and objectives from different Legal & Business Teams, and working with Technology and Analytics teams to design and deliver solutions.

Responsibilities:

• Strategic Vision & Alignment: Work with senior leaders across the organization to define legal requirements for major initiatives and ensure each program aligns with broader business and Legal strategy. Advocate for innovative ideas and proposals that drive continuous improvement and advance the Legal function’s strategic goals.
• Program Portfolio Leadership: Establish and manage a portfolio of multiple legal projects (spanning regulatory remediation, business-mandatory, and strategic transformation initiatives) running in parallel. Provide strategic project management leadership across all initiatives, ensuring clear scope, objectives, and success criteria for each.
• Program Governance & Delivery: Drive adherence to standardized program management processes, methods, and delivery principles across all legal initiatives, including rigorous tracking of Risks, Assumptions, Issues, and Dependencies (RAIDs). Oversee multiple legal workstreams through to successful conclusion, designing approaches that ensure disciplined execution and timely delivery of results.
• Change Management & Adoption: Ensure change management principles are applied and understood by all impacted stakeholders for every implementation. Develop communication and training strategies that facilitate smooth adoption of new processes or systems, enabling lasting change in the organization.
• Stakeholder Partnership & Leadership: Operate as the Legal Program Services lead interfacing with diverse stakeholders, fostering strong relationships with Global Legal Solutions partners and senior Legal stakeholders. Lead the facilitation, coordination, and arbitration of cross-functional topics across programs, driving consensus and issue resolution with Senior Management.
• Planning & Risk Management: Develop and maintain detailed project plans with clear milestones and success metrics (KPIs), including accurate estimates of timelines, budgets, and resource requirements; and provide regular progress updates to senior leadership to ensure transparency and accountability. Proactively manage risks and changes, communicating adjustments through appropriate governance channels so that all stakeholders remain informed and aligned.
• Innovation & Automation: Identify and implement opportunities to leverage automation and AI technologies to streamline legal processes and workflows. Explore and pilot emerging tools (including Generative AI) to enhance legal analysis, reporting, and decision-making, positioning the Legal function at the forefront of innovation.
• Analytical Problem Solving & Business Analysis: Collaborate with Legal SMEs and business units to gather, analyze, and document requirements, creating Business Requirement Documents (BRDs) and process maps using industry-standard analysis techniques.
• Process Improvement & Design: Map current (“as-is”) vs. future (“to-be”) business processes to identify gaps and opportunities for improvement. Model different scenarios and analyze the impacts of proposed changes, summarizing options and recommendations to drive data-driven decision-making.
• Technology & Vendor Coordination: Partner with internal technology teams and external vendors to implement legal technology solutions, ensuring they meet business requirements and quality standards. Liaise between Legal, Tech, Data, and vendor teams to guarantee successful delivery of systems and services, and to swiftly resolve any execution issues.

Qualifications:

• Experience: 15+ years of progressive experience in program/project management, legal operations, or related fields, with a proven track record of leading and executing successful large-scale initiatives. Experience managing complex regulatory or transformation projects in a matrixed, global organization is highly desirable.
• Industry Knowledge: Deep understanding of the financial services industry, including the regulatory and legal landscape, and how legal functions operate within a large global bank. Familiarity with risk & control frameworks and regulatory remediation in banking is a plus.
• Strategic Thinking: Exceptional strategic thinking skills with the ability to identify opportunities to drive innovation and create a compelling vision for the future of legal operations. Able to balance long-term strategic objectives with near-term execution plans.
• Analytical Skills: Outstanding analytical and problem-solving capabilities with a talent for translating complex data and information into actionable insights and decisions. Comfortable analyzing process metrics, legal spend data, and operational performance indicators to inform strategy.
• Program Management Expertise: Demonstrated expertise in project/program management methodologies and tools (e.g., Agile, Waterfall). Able to manage multiple concurrent projects and workstreams, prioritizing effectively and ensuring on-time, on-budget delivery. Strong knowledge of change management and process improvement techniques.
• Technology & Innovation Skills: Experience with automation tools and techniques to improve process efficiency. Familiarity with AI technologies (including machine learning or generative AI) and their potential applications in legal operations and service delivery. Proven ability to drive innovation and adapt emerging technologies to business needs.
• Communication & Influence: Exceptional communication (written and verbal), interpersonal, and presentation skills. Able to clearly convey complex information to both legal and non-technical audiences. Proven ability to influence senior stakeholders, build consensus across functional teams, and serve as a trusted advisor to executives.
• Thought Leadership: Demonstrated thought leadership in legal operations, program management, or related fields. Ability to articulate a clear vision for legal transformation and inspire others to embrace new approaches and solutions.
• Leadership Skills: Strong leadership skills, with experience in collaborating with cross-functional or matrix teams and fostering a culture of innovation and collaboration. Adept at coaching and developing talent, and leading by example with a high degree of professionalism and integrity.
• Education: Minimum: Bachelor’s degree in Business, Law, Technology, Analytics, or a related field. Preferred: Advanced degree (MBA, JD, or related field) or professional certifications in project management (PMP/Prince2), process improvement, or technology.

Join us and be a catalyst for change in the world of legal services and innovation. This job description provides a high-level review of the types of work performed; other job-related duties may be assigned as required.

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Job Family Group:

Decision Management

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Job Family:

Business Analysis

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Time Type:

Full time

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Most Relevant Skills

Please see the requirements listed above.

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Other Relevant Skills

For complementary skills, please see above and/or contact the recruiter.

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