E-Disclosure Manager in Manchester

This is an excellent opportunity for an experienced e-Disclosure / e-Discovery professional to establish and run a central operational service that supports matter teams and disciplines e-Disclosure supplier engagement across the firm, supporting teams across our Advisory Services division’s Litigation, Regulatory & Compliance and Employment departments, and teams handling contentious and litigious matters within our Corporate and Real Estate divisions.

Reporting to the Head of Legal Process Innovation, the e-Disclosure Manager plays a pivotal role in enabling efficient disclosure engagements by owning intake, triage and scoping; leading on day-to-day coordination with panel vendors; managing risk; providing MI and continuous improvement; and supporting lawyers and client stakeholders. The role demands a proactive, self-managing mindset and excellent communication skills.

The Team Shoosmiths’ Projects & Innovation (P&I) team is a central legal operations and change delivery function, responsible both for driving the firm’s strategic change agenda and for building sustainable operational capability across the business. While P&I leads and oversees significant change programmes across the firm, it also has an ambition to expand and professionalise the firm’s legal operations capability. It aims to improve the way legal services are delivered by relieving operational burden from lawyers, standardising ways of working, embedding consistent and scalable processes and improving quality, efficiency and profitability.

By combining delivery of change with legal operations expertise, P&I drives operational excellence and legal innovation that is sustained, maximising the impact of both firmwide programmes and targeted operational services. Shoosmiths’ strategy is to transform Shoosmiths from being a really good firm with a really solid reputation, into an excellent firm with a reputation for excellence. So that by 2030, we will excel in our chosen markets. At the heart of our new strategy is focus. Intense focus on what we do well. And a bold commitment to doing it even better.

The Firm Shoosmiths is the law firm clients choose for excellent service, incisive thinking and above all for our ability to focus on what matters. From offices across the UK and Brussels, we support some of the world’s most exciting and ambitious businesses; amazing clients making an impact. We empower our people to be their authentic selves and deliver together in supportive teams committed to excellence and innovation. The first top 50 law firm to achieve ‘Platinum Standard’ Investors in People, our values and culture are not just words on our website but are the heartbeat of the firm. We have an outstanding benefits package to complement our competitive remuneration system. In addition to the competitive salaries, great working environment and high-quality work, we believe that all staff should be rewarded for their commitment to the continued success of the firm through a comprehensive and flexible range of benefits.

Key Responsibilities:

• Operate the single “front door” for e-Disclosure at the firm: receive requests, acknowledge, triage and prioritise transparently.
• Lead on determining requirements for each matter / engagement’s E-Disclosure project (scope, assumptions, milestones, decision points, QC checkpoints, risks).
• Engage and instruct panel vendors, ensuring consistent instructions and clear deliverables, and coordinate vendor kick‑offs and agree milestones.
• Design and document defensible workflows and ensure audit‑ready documentation is created and maintained.
• Act as the day‑to‑day coordination point between matter teams and panel vendors, tracking progress, chasing deliverables and managing risks and issues.
• Coordinate quality control checkpoints and document outcomes.
• Maintain consistent production processes to enable final legal sign‑off with matter partners.
• Support lawyers with managing strategic client relationships in e‑Disclosure settings.
• Drive panel discipline and operational performance feedback loops, and manage a governed exceptions route for off‑panel requests in line with agreed approvals.
• Capture MI and provide simple reporting/dashboards (demand, cycle times, vendor performance, issues, outcomes) to support continuous improvement and scaling decisions.
• Develop and maintain standard ways of working (templates, playbooks, checklists) and deliver awareness/training to embed adoption across teams.
• Support colleagues in Procurement, Risk & Ethics, In‑house Legal Counsel, Finance and IS with supplier performance management.
• The role may also be required to support future improvement projects.

Skills & Qualifications:

• Significant experience in e-Disclosure / e-Discovery delivery, including vendor coordination and matter‑level project management that demonstrates commercial awareness and robust budget and resource management.
• Expert understanding of the end‑to‑end e-Disclosure lifecycle and defensible workflows.
• Confident in stakeholder management with excellent communication, presentation and interpersonal skills, including the ability to translate technical concepts into plain language for lawyers and clients.
• Disciplined operational mindset and excellent analytical, problem‑solving and decision‑making skills driving competence in prioritisation, multi‑matter control, escalation, risk management, quality assurance and audit trail documentation.
• Familiarity with common e-Disclosure platforms (e.g. Consilio, CYFOR, OpenText, Relativity or equivalents) and the use of established or emerging legal technologies (including AI).
• Data/MI capability for capturing, analysing and reporting key operational metrics and using them to drive continuous improvement.
• Professional services / law firm experience (desirable) and understanding of client‑facing service delivery expectations.
• Possesses a good understanding of the commercial, organisational and financial context in which the firm operates, and consequently ensures that they operate with the firm’s processes, business objectives and budget in mind and actively contribute towards firm‑wide profitability and competitive advantage.
• Accreditations such as PRINCE2 / Agile / Lean Six Sigma are desirable but not essential.

Equal opportunities:

Our approach to our people is underpinned by our approach to diversity, inclusion and well‑being. Our ambition is to build a diverse and ambitious workforce that reflects all backgrounds and talents, and a workplace that is supportive and inclusive, recognises and nurtures talent, and has a strong sense of community between colleagues. This means that everyone who either applies to or works for the firm is treated equally, whatever their gender, age, ethnic origin, nationality, marital status, disability, sexual orientation or religious beliefs.