Legal Process Designer
About us
Birketts is a full service, UK Top 50 law firm. With a heritage spanning 160 years, we have more than 700 lawyers and legal professionals and over 600 staff based in Bristol, Cambridge, Chelmsford, Ipswich, London, Norwich and Sevenoaks. We advise businesses, government and public sector organisations and individuals in the UK and internationally across four principal practice groups: Real Estate, Corporate Services, Dispute Resolution and Private Client.
We are defined by our Next Level Law proposition. We work with our clients as a proactive partner, horizon scanning and thinking ahead to the changes, challenges or opportunities that they may face.
Next Level Law is also applied to our people. Our collegiate culture means everyone is encouraged to achieve their next level in everything they do. RollOnFriday recently ranked us as the 6th best law firm to work at in 2026.
With our ambition to succeed, comes a strong desire to make a positive contribution to the communities we serve, and we are committed to delivering the objectives set out in our ESG strategy. Diversity plays an integral part in all that we do, with female partners comprising 45% of our partnership.
The work you will be doing
We are seeking a Senior Legal Process Designer to join a leading UK Top 50 law firm at an exciting stage of its legal transformation journey. This role will work closely with partners, lawyers, business services teams and technology colleagues to redesign how legal work is delivered, improving efficiency, transparency, consistency and client experience.
You will analyse current workflows, design future-state processes, identify opportunities for automation and technology enablement, and support teams through implementation and adoption. The role offers the opportunity to work on high-impact practice transformation, client-facing innovation and modern legal service delivery initiatives.
The successful candidate will bring experience in legal operations, process improvement, business analysis, consulting, legal project management or professional services transformation. Strong stakeholder management, workshop facilitation, process mapping and communication skills are essential. Experience with legal technology, continuous improvement methodologies and law firm operating models would be highly advantageous.
Main Responsibilities include:
- Analyse current legal service delivery processes across practice groups, sectors and client teams.
- Map existing as-is workflows and design practical to-be processes that reduce friction, duplication and operational risk.
- Identify bottlenecks, hand-off issues, rework, unnecessary variation and opportunities for standardisation or automation.
- Create clear process maps, standard operating procedures, playbooks, templates and process documentation.
- Embed continuous improvement disciplines into legal teams, balancing efficiency with quality, regulatory obligations and client expectations.
- Support firm-wide transformation initiatives that modernise how legal services are scoped, resourced, delivered and measured.
- Design scalable operating models for repeatable legal work, complex matters, managed services and client-led solutions.
- Contribute to improved work allocation, matter planning, matter management, resource utilisation and delivery governance.
- Work with pricing, finance, project management and knowledge teams to improve predictability, profitability and transparency.
- Identify opportunities to use legal technology, workflow automation, document automation, AI-enabled tools, collaboration platforms and matter management solutions.
- Translate legal and operational requirements into clear technology requirements.
- Work with legal technologists, product owners and IT colleagues to design, test, implement and iterate practical solutions.
- Support adoption activity, including training materials, user guidance, communications and feedback loops.
- Experience of using Visio or Lucid Chart essential.
- Seek out and evaluate new technologies that can be applied to legal services, including attending external conferences and showcases.
- Facilitate workshops and discovery sessions with partners, lawyers, business services teams and, where appropriate, clients.
- Build consensus around process improvements and influence adoption through credible, evidence-based recommendations.
- Prepare concise recommendations, business cases and implementation plans for senior stakeholders.
- Act as a trusted adviser to practice leaders and transformation sponsors.
- Support client transformation projects, legal managed services opportunities and process-led service design.
- Contribute to tenders, panel responses and pitches by demonstrating the firm's operational excellence and innovation capabilities.
- Attend pitches and client meetings as appropriate.
- Arranging, hosting and facilitating hackathons or similar problem-solving forums with internal stakeholders and clients.
- Help develop repeatable propositions that improve client experience, transparency and value for money.
Please note that this job profile is not an exhaustive list of duties but merely an outline of the key components of the role. You may be required by your line manager to take on additional responsibilities when requested.
What we are looking for