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Position Summary
Davis Polk is looking for an Innovation Specialist for its Knowledge Management & Innovation (KM) team who will report to the Manager of Knowledge Management and will play a critical role in ensuring that firm personnel effectively utilize KM tools and resources. This position involves supporting the firm’s legal knowledge management and practice innovation agenda by evaluating and coordinating practice-focused technology solutions, managing vendors and pilots, tracking the innovation pipeline and budget, and partnering with internal stakeholders to bring secure, well-governed tools into day-to-day practice. The ideal candidate will have several years of experience in a technology-enabled role in a law firm or professional services environment, strong analytical and project coordination skills, comfort working with both lawyers and technical teams, and a proactive, organized approach to moving innovation initiatives from idea through evaluation and implementation.
Essential Duties And Responsibilities
Typical responsibilities include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Monitor the legal technology landscape, sharing relevant trends and insights with the team to inform the innovation roadmap and practice‑focused opportunities.
- Maintain a clear view of the firm’s internal technology landscape and innovation pipeline by tracking ideas, opportunities, and active initiatives from intake through evaluation and implementation, helping to avoid duplication and focus effort on the highest‑value work.
- Assess external technology solutions, including functionality, usability, integration needs, and key risks, and coordinate with internal stakeholders to ensure alignment with practice requirements.
- Manage vendor relationships by acting as day‑to‑day liaison, coordinating product demonstrations and proofs of concept, monitoring agreed deliverables, and facilitating issue resolution to support successful outcomes.
- Coordinate technology pilots by supporting planning, execution, and monitoring, including scheduling activities, tracking objectives and milestones, and ensuring that defined success criteria are captured and shared with relevant stakeholders.
- Document current‑state and future‑state workflows, use cases, and user journeys to support solution design, pilot planning, and implementation decisions.
- Collaborate with innovation specialists to monitor the ongoing performance and usage of deployed tools to identify enhancement opportunities, redundancies, or retirement candidates.
- Support innovation and technology governance processes by coordinating required reviews (e.g., information security, privacy, risk) and tracking approvals needed for pilots, contracts, and rollouts.
- Maintain standardized onboarding frameworks for new tools, including intake requirements and rollout playbooks, to support consistent and secure implementation.
- Track the innovation budget, monitoring spend and commitments across tools and projects and supporting budget planning for future fiscal years and initiatives.
- Support the innovation team with technology adoption by partnering with practice groups to plan and execute tool rollouts, coordinating training, gathering user feedback, and helping to address adoption challenges.
- Contribute to change management efforts by supporting communication and engagement plans for new tools (e.g., key messages, launch communications, stakeholder briefings) that clearly articulate value, expectations, and impact on existing workflows.
Qualifications/Position Requirements
- High level of comfort with technology and curiosity about legal tech and emerging tools; ability to quickly learn new systems and explain their value in plain language.
- Familiarity with legal technology or KM tools (e.g., document management systems, search platforms, workflow / automation tools, legal AI tools) is strongly preferred.
- Proven ability to analyze workflows and business needs, document processes and use cases, and translate them into clear requirements for technology evaluations and implementations.
- Experience evaluating technology solutions (e.g., demos, proofs of concept, vendor comparisons) and summarizing findings and recommendations in a structured, decision-ready format.
- Comfort with basic project management practices (workplans, milestones, dependencies, risk/issue tracking).
- Ability to bring structure to ambiguous problems, prioritize effectively, and move work forward.
- Comfort working within governance frameworks and budget constraints, including tracking commitments over fiscal years.
- Experience supporting change initiatives (e.g., new tools, new processes, or policy changes), including stakeholder engagement, communications, and feedback gathering.
- Demonstrated ability to work directly with professional services stakeholders with little or no supervision.
- Detail-oriented and organized, with a disciplined approach to documentation, follow-up, and process consistency.
- Self-starter who can work independently, manage competing deadlines, and know when to escalate issues or decisions.
- Excellent written communication skills.
- Flexibility in daily schedule for purposes of responding to attorney requests and ability to work outside normal business hours as needed.
Education And/or Experience
- Bachelor’s degree required, with a degree in business, information systems, legal studies or a related field preferred.
- 3+ years of experience in a technology-enabled role such as innovation, knowledge management, legal operations and/or legal technology.
- Experience working in a large law firm or professional services firm required.
Compensation
The expected base salary for this position ranges from $140,000 - $160,000. Salary offers are based on a wide range of factors including relevant skills, training, experience, education, anticipated assignment, and, where applicable, licensure or certifications obtained. Market and organizational factors are also considered. Davis Polk offers a competitive salary and comprehensive benefits package.
