Product Owner - Legal Documents

The Service Excellence Services Team (SES)

The SES team was initially created in 2018 to focus on working with legal teams and clients to develop our outward facing technology solutions and further increase our innovation offering. We at Eversheds Sutherland understand the need to ensure the fundamentals are delivered across the firm, but also that there will be a growing need to look at emerging and innovative technology to allow the firm to continue to deliver a quality service to our clients. The team focuses on how we can improve the service we deliver to our clients across the firm, whether that’s through the use of technology, innovation or process improvements.

Main Purpose of Role

The product owner acts as a key member of the SES team supporting the delivery of the legal documents solutions team strategy. The product owner will use their expertise, knowledge and hands on experience to both raise awareness and ensure the adoption of relevant solutions for our business whilst focussing on delivering an excellent client service.

On a day-to-day basis, the product owner will take responsibility for how we drive value from our key technology solutions across the firm. This includes but is not limited to document automation, e-signature and AI document review tools. They will be working closely with our practice group legal technologists to understand business needs, working with and managing our suppliers to help ensure the solutions meet our needs, identify new uses to support our legal teams and define product roadmaps.

They will also be involved in driving awareness campaigns, understanding and improving our current technology usage, as well as defining good processes and governance for the use of the solutions.

Stakeholder management, at all levels of seniority, and communication will be integral in helping to succeed in this role. You will be expected to engage with various stakeholders such as our legal teams, legal technologists, IT business relationship managers, and suppliers, to understand how we can make better use of our technology solutions and drive value.

Primary Responsibilities of the Role

• Reporting to the solutions manager, the product owner will support the delivery of our legal document technology solutions strategy in line with the SES firm-wide strategy.
• Leads and supports on projects within the legal document solutions workstream to achieve the team’s objectives.
• Driving the awareness and adoption of legal tech solutions and ensuring that they are embedded in day to day practice.
• Takes a proactive role in upskilling stakeholders in tech solutions across the practice groups in line with the SES strategy. The product owner will need to develop detailed knowledge of the solutions and how these can be applied to legal work.
• Manages a high and complex workload. This will include the management of team sprints in relation to project and development work.
• Uses analytical skills to report on the team’s tech solutions usage to relevant stakeholders to better understand adoption, adoption gaps as well as barriers to adoption.
• Builds excellent relationships within all areas of the business and clients. Working collaboratively with them to understand their requirements alongside any challenges in order to deliver a legal technology solution that is fit for purpose.
• Deploys agile project management methodologies as well as IT best practice to provide an excellent and efficient service to all stakeholders
• Assists with any upgrades, integrations or configurations of existing tech solutions ensuring that all relevant stakeholders are communicated with in advance to minimise disruption and maximise usage.