Client Exec Manager - Retention

Overview: This is a high-impact commercial leadership role at the heart of our European retention, growth, and future new business strategy for law firm customers. As Manager of the Client Executive team, you will lead, coach, and develop a team of 10 Client Executives who collectively manage thousands of law firm accounts across Europe, with approximately 90% of revenue concentrated in the UK market. Your team’s initial mission is to protect and grow an existing customer base by driving deep product engagement, executing proactive contact management strategies, and ensuring customers realise maximum value from our portfolio — including Practical Law, Westlaw, HighQ, and CoCounsel.

You will foster a close, structured, and incentivised working relationship with the New Business Manager and their team to identify and act on growth opportunities within the existing account base and wider market. From next year, the scope will expand to include responsibility for both renewal and new business performance, bringing together customer retention, expansion, and new customer acquisition under an integrated commercial leadership model.

The successful candidate will operate across the full commercial lifecycle, including prospecting, pipeline generation, qualification, new customer acquisition, account growth, renewal management, forecasting, and team performance against multiple revenue targets. This role is for a commercially minded, customer-centric sales leader who thrives in a fast-moving legal technology environment and can translate product knowledge into customer outcomes, revenue growth, and long-term customer value.

Future Scope of the Role: During the initial period, the role will focus on customer retention, product adoption, and growth within the existing law firm customer base. From next year, the role will broaden to direct responsibility for new business performance alongside renewal and expansion targets. The expanded remit requires leading a more integrated commercial motion across both existing and prospective customers.

Responsibilities include ownership of new business pipeline generation, prospect qualification, sales forecasting, acquisition strategy, account growth, renewal execution, and collaboration across Marketing, Product, Customer Success, Sales Enablement, and the wider Sales organisation. The role balances protecting recurring revenue with generating new revenue opportunities. The candidate will build team capability across renewal and new business disciplines, including consultative selling, prospecting, discovery, qualification, negotiation, closing, adoption, account planning, and long-term customer growth.

About The Role: As a Client Exec Manager - Retention you will be responsible for:

• Team Leadership & Performance Management: Lead, coach, and develop a team of 10 Client Executives, with initial focus on retention and revenue growth and future expansion into new business accountability. Conduct regular one-to-ones, pipeline reviews, account reviews, forecast reviews, and skills development sessions to maximise team performance. Guide the team through an evolving commercial model, transitioning from retention/growth to include renewal and new business targets. Set and monitor KPIs including renewal rates, net revenue retention, product adoption metrics, expansion revenue, new business pipeline, forecast accuracy, and activity quality. Recruit, onboard, and develop talent, building capability in consultative selling, product knowledge, customer engagement, prospecting, pipeline management, and commercial negotiation. Create a coaching culture to enable Client Executives to manage both existing relationships and future opportunities.
• Account, Contact & Territory Strategy: Define and implement structured contact management across the team’s account base to ensure coverage, frequency, and quality of engagement at all levels. Maintain robust, tiered account plans prioritising risk, opportunity, strategic importance, product usage, revenue potential, and growth potential. As the role expands, implement structured territory and prospecting plans for both existing and prospective customers. Drive a data-led approach using usage data, product adoption signals, engagement metrics, buying signals, market intelligence, and CRM insights to inform outreach and intervention strategies. Oversee CRM usage to maintain accurate pipeline, activity, account health, opportunity, and forecast records. Prioritise accounts and prospects based on risk, opportunity, strategic fit, revenue potential, product usage, buying signals, and market segment.
• Customer Usage & Product Adoption: Champion a usage-first philosophy to monitor and respond to usage trends, mitigate churn risk, and identify growth signals. Drive adoption across the full product portfolio — HighQ, CoCounsel, Practical Law, and Westlaw — building trusted customer relationships and measurable outcomes. Encourage informed, value-led conversations about how product usage translates to efficiency, risk reduction, improved client service, and competitive advantage. Use adoption insights to inform renewal strategy, account growth plans, expansion opportunities, and, where relevant, new business positioning. Collaborate with Customer Success, Product, Marketing, and Sales Enablement to maximise value from the portfolio.
• Product Knowledge & Market Intelligence: Maintain a deep understanding of the full product portfolio and its roadmap, focusing on features most relevant to law firm customers of different sizes and practices. Articulate the integrated value of CoCounsel Legal alongside Westlaw, Practical Law, and HighQ. Stay current on the legal technology landscape and competitive environment, including AI-powered tools in law firm workflows. Ensure the team understands customer pain points, competitor activity, market trends, and law firm buying behaviours. Translate product, market, and customer insight into coaching, messaging, account strategy, prospecting strategy, and commercial execution.
• New Business, Renewal & Cross-functional Collaboration: Cultivate a close working relationship with the New Business Manager, creating a culture of shared intelligence and collaborative revenue generation. Ensure Client Executives are incentivised and accountable for generating and passing qualified growth leads, with clear processes for handoffs and joint account planning. From next year, assume broader commercial responsibility for renewal and new business outcomes with aligned retention, expansion, and acquisition strategies. Establish processes for lead generation, qualification, opportunity ownership, pipeline progression, renewal planning, and account expansion across existing and prospective customers. Collaborate with Product, Marketing, Customer Success, Sales Enablement, and other internal teams to feed customer feedback into product development, campaigns, propositions, and go-to-market strategy. Develop targeted campaigns and propositions for specific customer segments, practice areas, product groups, or new opportunities. Ensure a seamless customer journey from prospecting and acquisition through onboarding, adoption, renewal, expansion, and long-term value realization.
• Revenue & Commercial Accountability: Own the team’s retention and growth targets initially, with full accountability for forecast accuracy and delivery. From next year, own or contribute to renewal and new business targets across multiple commercial outcomes. Balance protecting recurring revenue with expanding existing relationships and generating new acquisition. Proactively manage at-risk accounts, with remediation plans to prevent churn and protect renewal revenue. Identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities and collaborate with the New Business team during the transition. Oversee pipeline creation, progression, and conversion for existing and, later, new logo acquisition. Provide regular reporting to senior leadership on performance, account health, renewal outlook, pipeline, forecast accuracy, market trends, and risks/opportunities. Use data to identify performance gaps, coach team members, improve conversions, and drive predictable revenue growth.

About You: Proven experience managing a customer-facing sales, account management, customer success, or commercial team, ideally within a legal technology, information services, or B2B SaaS environment. 5+ years of customer success, account management, sales, or commercial leadership experience in legal tech or SaaS, with a large book of business. Track record of meeting or exceeding retention, growth, and/or new business targets across a large, complex portfolio. Experience owning or contributing to both renewal and new business targets is highly desirable, with understanding of different sales disciplines for retention, expansion, and acquisition. Experience leading teams through a change in commercial model, integrating retention and new business efforts is advantageous. Experience selling to law firms or familiarity with law firm operations is a strong plus. Experience coaching teams on consultative selling, pipeline management, account planning, prospecting, qualification, negotiation, and forecasting.

Skills & Competencies: Understanding of the legal industry and ability to communicate value of products to improve operations. Strong commercial acumen, able to read account health data and translate insights into action. Solid renewal and new business sales discipline knowledge, including prospecting, discovery, qualification, pipeline, negotiation, closing, and expansion. Analytical, with data-driven mindset and strong coordination and communication skills. Credible communicator with ability to engage end users to C-suite executives and senior decision-makers. Relationship builder capable of long-term partnerships. Highly organized, able to manage competing priorities in a large team and high-volume base. Strong forecasting discipline across renewal, growth, and new pipelines; capable of coaching others on next steps. CRM proficiency (e.g., Salesforce) and data-driven approach to account, activity, pipeline, and forecast management. Ability to balance short-term delivery with long-term customer value across acquisition, adoption, renewal, and growth.

Attributes: Collaborative leader who builds trust across teams and motivates performance. Energised by technology and the legal sector, with curiosity about product development, legal innovation, AI, and customer outcomes. Comfortable in a fast-evolving product and commercial environment, with a requirement to stay current on AI and legal tech developments. Willing to operate in an evolving commercial structure with expanding responsibilities. Motivated by ownership of both retention and new business growth, with ability to create focus and accountability across revenue motions. Change-oriented and adaptable, capable of bringing teams along as the business evolves. Results-driven with action orientation, accountability, and continuous improvement.

What’s in it For You? Hybrid Work Model: Flexible hybrid environment (2-3 days in the office) for office-based roles, with digital and physical connectivity. Flexibility & Work-Life Balance: Policies to manage personal responsibilities, including up to 8 weeks work-from-anywhere per year. Career Development and Growth: Culture of continuous learning and skill development; Grow My Way program and skills-first approach to grow and lead in an AI-enabled future. Industry Competitive Benefits: Comprehensive plans including flexible vacation, mental health days, Headspace, retirement savings, tuition reimbursement, incentives, and wellbeing resources. Culture: Global recognition for inclusion and belonging, values: Obsess over our Customers, Compete to Win, Challenge Thinking, Act Fast / Learn Fast, Stronger Together. Social Impact: Paid volunteer days and opportunities for ESG initiatives. Making a Real-World Impact: Contribute to justice, truth, and transparency through serving professionals and institutions globally.

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