Director, Global Legal Operations

At Johnson & Johnson, we believe health is everything. Our strength in healthcare innovation empowers us to build a world where complex diseases are prevented, treated, and cured, where treatments are smarter and less invasive, and solutions are personal. Through our expertise in Innovative Medicine and MedTech, we are uniquely positioned to innovate across the full spectrum of healthcare solutions today to deliver the breakthroughs of tomorrow, and profoundly impact health for humanity. Learn more at jnj.com

As guided by Our Credo, Johnson & Johnson is responsible to our employees who work with us throughout the world. We provide an inclusive work environment where each person is considered as an individual. At Johnson & Johnson, we respect the diversity and dignity of our employees and recognize their merit.

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We are searching for the best talent for a Director, Global Legal Operations to be based in New Brunswick, NJ.

Purpose: The Director, Global Legal Operations is a global leadership role responsible for driving operational excellence, consistency, scalability, and continuous improvement across the Global Legal Organization. The Director will lead a globally distributed team of approximately five Legal Operations Team Leads and partner with legal leadership, functional teams, and key business partners to develop and implement common operating practices, processes, tools, metrics, and service-delivery approaches across geographies.

The Director will translate Legal strategy into efficient and scalable operational practices, balancing global standardization with legitimate regional and practice-specific requirements. A central responsibility of the role is identifying opportunities to simplify and improve how work is performed, removing unnecessary complexity and friction, and establishing greater alignment across Legal teams globally.

The role will provide leadership across core Legal Operations capabilities, including strategic planning, process optimization, service delivery, financial and vendor management, data and analytics, technology enablement, knowledge management, program management, and organizational effectiveness.

You will be responsible for:

Global Legal Operations Leadership

• Lead, develop, and manage a globally distributed team of approximately five Legal Operations Team Leads, establishing clear priorities, roles, accountability, and performance expectations.
• Build the capabilities of Legal Operations leaders through coaching, feedback, development planning, succession planning, and knowledge sharing.
• Create a cohesive global Legal Operations team with consistent ways of working while recognizing appropriate regional and practice-area differences.
• Translate Global Legal Organization strategy and priorities into actionable Legal Operations plans, programs, standards, and measurable outcomes.
• Serve as a strategic partner to Legal leadership and other stakeholders on the operational effectiveness of the function.
• Establish clear governance and decision rights for global Legal Operations initiatives and drive accountability for execution.

Process Excellence & Global Alignment

• Drive continuous process improvement and global alignment across Legal, identifying opportunities to simplify, standardize, automate, or eliminate inefficient processes.
• Develop global standards, playbooks, governance frameworks, and operating procedures for priority Legal processes.
• Partner with legal practice groups and regional teams to map current-state processes, identify pain points and root causes, develop target-state processes, and lead implementation.
• Establish mechanisms to prioritize improvement opportunities based on business impact, operational pain, risk, strategic alignment, readiness, resourcing, and stakeholder support.
• Identify and scale successful practices across regions and practice groups rather than allowing duplicative processes and solutions to develop independently.
• Develop appropriate KPIs and service measures to assess cycle time, quality, cost, adoption, stakeholder experience, capacity, and operational performance.
• Lead change-management and adoption efforts necessary to ensure new processes become embedded ways of working.

Service Delivery & Operating Model

• Evaluate how Legal work is received, prioritized, resourced, routed, and delivered and identify opportunities to improve the Legal service-delivery model.
• Establish consistent approaches to intake, matter/work management, prioritization, escalation, and service levels where appropriate.
• Partner with Legal leadership to ensure work is delivered using the appropriate combination of internal resources, external providers, technology, automation, and alternative service-delivery models.
• Support workforce, capacity, and demand planning and identify opportunities to deploy Legal resources more effectively.
• Develop scalable global models that improve consistency while preserving appropriate flexibility for risk, regulatory, jurisdictional, and business requirements.

Data, Technology & Operational Insights

• Establish and maintain meaningful Legal Operations metrics, dashboards, and reporting to provide insights into performance, demand, spend, capacity, productivity, and service delivery.
• Use data to identify trends, diagnose operational issues, prioritize improvement opportunities, and measure the impact of implemented changes.
• Partner with Legal Innovation & Transformation, technology teams, and other stakeholders to identify opportunities where technology, automation, and AI can enable improved Legal processes.
• Ensure process design and technology strategy remain closely aligned so that technology enables effective operating models rather than replicating inefficient processes.
• Promote disciplined measurement of benefits, adoption, and value realization following implementation.

Program & Change Leadership

• Lead complex, cross-functional and cross-geography Legal Operations programs from strategy through implementation and sustained adoption.
• Establish clear objectives, governance, milestones, dependencies, resourcing, risks, and measures of success.
• Build alignment among stakeholders with differing priorities and influence decisions in a complex, matrixed global organization.
• Develop clear communication and change-management strategies for significant operational changes.
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement, accountability, collaboration, simplification, and operational discipline across the Legal organization.

Requirements/Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree required.
• Minimum of 8 years of progressive Legal Operations experience, with substantial experience supporting an in-house corporate legal function or similarly complex legal organization.
• Demonstrated people-management experience, including direct responsibility for leading, coaching, developing, and assessing professional employees and/or people leaders.
• Demonstrated experience leading global or multi-regional teams, programs, or operating models.
• Significant experience leading process improvement, process standardization, and organizational change within a Legal or professional-services environment.
• Demonstrated ability to identify operational problems, design practical solutions, implement changes, and measure resulting business impact.
• Strong knowledge of Legal Operations disciplines, including several of the following: strategic planning, legal technology, data and analytics, service delivery, knowledge management, project/program management, and organizational effectiveness.

• Demonstrated experience evaluating, implementing, and driving adoption of AI and Legal technology solutions (such as matter management, e-billing/spend management, contract lifecycle management, workflow automation, and generative AI tools) to improve Legal processes, including a working understanding of responsible-use, data privacy, and governance considerations.

• Proven experience leading complex initiatives across functions, geographies, and senior stakeholder groups in a large, matrixed organization.
• Strong analytical capabilities with demonstrated ability to use operational data to drive decisions and measure performance.
• Strong program and project management capabilities with demonstrated success moving complex initiatives from strategy through implementation.
• Demonstrated change-management capability, including stakeholder alignment, communications, adoption, and implementation.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills with the ability to communicate complex operational issues clearly to senior leaders and diverse stakeholder groups.
• Demonstrated ability to influence without direct authority and create alignment among teams with differing objectives and priorities.
• Ability to operate effectively in a fast-moving, global environment and manage multiple strategic priorities simultaneously.
• Willingness to work across global time zones and travel periodically as required.
• Master's degree, MBA, JD, or other relevant advanced degree preferred.
• Experience within a large global corporate legal department, particularly within a highly regulated industry such as healthcare, pharmaceutical, medical device, financial services, or another complex multinational environment preferred.
• Experience directly managing managers or team leads across multiple geographies preferred.
• Experience with Legal Operations frameworks preferred.
• Experience with legal matter management, e-billing, spend management, contract lifecycle management, knowledge management, workflow, analytics, or other Legal technology platforms preferred.
• Experience with Lean, Six Sigma, Agile, process-mapping, or comparable continuous-improvement methodologies preferred.
• PMP, Lean Six Sigma, Agile, change-management, or similar professional certification preferred.
• Experience developing KPIs, dashboards, service-level measures, and executive reporting for a Legal organization preferred.
• Experience driving technology-enabled process improvement, automation, or responsible adoption of AI within a professional-services environment preferred.

Johnson & Johnson is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, disability, protected veteran status or other characteristics protected by federal, state or local law. We actively seek qualified candidates who are protected veterans and individuals with disabilities as defined under VEVRAA and Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act.

Johnson & Johnson is committed to providing an interview process that is inclusive of our applicants’ needs. If you are an individual with a disability and would like to request an accommodation, please email the Employee Health Support Center (ra-employeehealthsup@its.jnj.com) or contact AskGS to be directed to your accommodation resource.

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For additional general information on Company benefits, please go to: https://www.careers.jnj.com/employee-benefits

About Us

At Johnson & Johnson, we believe health is everything. Our strength in healthcare innovation empowers us to build a world where complex diseases are prevented, treated, and cured, where treatments are smarter and less invasive, and solutions are personal. Through our expertise in Innovative Medicine and MedTech, we are uniquely positioned to innovate across the full spectrum of healthcare solutions today to deliver the breakthroughs of tomorrow, and profoundly impact health for humanity. Learn more at https://www.jnj.com/.

Our Credo calls on us to respect the dignity of every individual and create an environment for all people to thrive. Throughout the recruitment process - from application through hiring - we are committed to providing reasonable accommodations/adjustments for qualified candidates with disabilities. If you need support at any stage of the recruitment process, please complete our candidate accommodation request form so we can assist you.