Practice Innovation Analyst (Chicago)

Katten is a full-service law firm with approximately 700 attorneys in locations across the United States and in London and Shanghai. Clients seeking sophisticated, high-value legal services turn to Katten for counsel locally, nationally and internationally. The firm’s core areas of practice include corporate, financial markets and funds, insolvency and restructuring, intellectual property, litigation, real estate, structured finance and securitization, transactional tax planning, private credit and private wealth. Katten represents public and private companies in numerous industries, as well as a number of government and nonprofit organizations and individuals.

Practice Innovation Analyst

Nearly 50 years ago, 24 attorneys in Chicago had a vision to create a law firm more innovative and entrepreneurial than those they had left. Their inspiration was their clients and finding even better ways to provide superb legal services and creative advice to them. Our business has evolved over the decades—but our vision remains the same. Today, Katten Muchin Rosenman is the full-service, business-oriented law firm that our founders envisioned, providing sophisticated, high-value legal services across the United States and abroad.

Our innovation team maintains that vision by exploring new process and technology solutions to modernize our client service delivery and firm operations. We infuse business design, technology, and data science into the practice of law. Under the direction of the Practice innovation Advisor, the Practice Innovation Analyst will play an active role by supporting ongoing implementations of emerging technologies throughout the firm and will be encouraged to think big to identify new opportunities to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our legal teams.

This position requires hands-on work with Katten lawyers, business professionals and key external partners with both projects and brainstorming efforts. The Practice Innovation Advisor will be responsible for project work on initiatives around the firm, as well as, gathering research, insights, trends, and best practices from the legal profession and helping us determine the problem sets of the firm where we could apply solutions.

The Practice Innovation Analyst position can be located in the Chicago or New York office. Katten offers a hybrid work model, allowing the flexibility to work both on-site and remotely on a regular basis (KattenFlex). The requirement for this position is to report to the office 2-3 days a week and otherwise on an as-needed basis.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities include, but may not be limited to, the following. Other duties may be requested and/or assigned. Essential functions are primary job duties that an individual must be able to perform successfully with or without a reasonable accommodation. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

• Collaborate with lawyers, clients, firm leadership, and operational teams, including Practice Operations, Talent, Information Technology, Marketing and Business Development, and Accounting and Finance, to grow the firm’s culture of innovation and improve the practice of law.
• Work with attorney teams, clients, and practice groups to deliver innovative client solutions and legal technologies that support the efficient management of legal matters.
• Maintain a current awareness of emerging technology tools (both generally and among law firms and legal departments) to ensure that the firm stays ahead of the curve.
• Research and evaluate tools and procedures that promote productivity and service quality.
• Develop and maintain clear and accessible training materials, user guides, and communications that support the firm’s innovation initiatives and help attorneys and business professionals adopt emerging technologies and process improvements.
• Partner with our data science team, Katten DataLAB, to find solutions to client challenges and needs.
• Build and maintain relationships with existing and potential vendors to coordinate updates of existing platforms and to identify/vet potential new platforms.
• Implement new processes, including working to integrate software in our solutions for attorneys and practice groups.
• Support team governance and operational efficiency by assisting with documentation, workflow tracking, project intake, and other processes that ensure smooth and consistent execution of innovation priorities.
• Play an active role in the coordination and execution of software pilot programs by identifying and testing use cases, scheduling trainings, gathering feedback, conducting gap analysis and more.
• Be an internal and external advocate for the innovation team and new solutions that benefit the firm and our clients.
• Build and maintain relationships with stakeholders within the firm’s practice departments to socialize the benefits of emerging technology tools, drive projects through to completion, and identify/vet potential new use cases.
• Be familiar with new products and other developments in legal innovation and software.
• Assist in our AI and Gen AI efforts.
• Manage projects under direction of the Practice innovation Advisor.

Supervisory Responsibilities

• This position has no direct supervisory responsibilities; however, has the authority to delegate work relating to innovation related tasks or projects.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• A Juris Doctor degree (J.D.) is preferred and one or more years of experience working within a large law firm or in the legal technology industry is highly preferred. The ideal candidate will also have one or more years of work experience and/or formal training in emerging legal technologies, process improvement, design thinking, and/or data science.
• Familiarity with some or all of the following:
• Legal-focused generative AI tools (such as Harvey, CoCounsel, Legora).
• Document automation tools (such as Avvoka).
• Document analysis tools (such as Draftwise).
• Collaboration platforms (such as SharePoint, HighQ, etc.); and/or Business Intelligence/ETL platforms.
• Displays intelligence, creativity, resilience, and persistence in solving varied, complex, and non-routine problems.
• Comfortable working both independently and in diverse teams.
• Displays excellent time management and project management skills to meet objectives and deadlines.
• Able to effectively distill complex information, synthesize, simplify, and present to Firm Management, attorneys, and business professionals.
• Possess excellent reading, writing, grammar, spelling, punctuation, proofreading, and formatting skills in order to interpret and analyze source data, prepare correspondence and documentation, and proofread material for grammatical, typographical and spelling errors.
• Able to perform mathematical calculations and apply mathematical concepts when computing, reconciling balances, verifying numerical data, and preparing various reports.
• Able to operate standard office equipment including computers, printers, telephones, photocopiers, scanners, calculators, facsimiles, etc.
• Able to regularly lift and/or move up to 10 pounds.

In our Chicago office, the annualized salary for this position is $70,000 to $100,000.

In our New York office, the annualized salary range for this position is $80,000 to $110,000.

Actual pay will be adjusted based on experience and other job-related factors permitted by law.

We offer an outstanding benefit package which includes: medical/dental/vision, 401k with employer contribution, parental leave, transportation fringe benefit program, back-up care option, generous paid time off policy and long-term and short-term disability policies.

Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP in an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.