Full-time COO, Legal 500

01About Legal 500

Legal 500 is a global legal market research, data and intelligence business. Our research helps corporate clients make informed decisions about legal representation and gives law firms insight into their market position, performance, and clients.

Beyond research, we’re building a growing data, benchmarking, market-intelligence and subscription service offering. We bring the legal market together through a global programme of events - awards ceremonies, conferences and roundtables that convene leading law firms, in-house teams and their advisers. And through Legal Business, our journalistic title, we deliver independent news, analysis and commentary on the business of law and the strategy, performance and leadership of the world’s leading law firms.

We are a growing, multi-site organisation, with colleagues working across research, data, technology, product, journalism, commercial and events in London, Leeds and Bristol.

02About the Role

Here at Legal 500, we are entering a phase of growth and operational maturity. As our business continues to evolve, we are creating a new Operations Director role to help shape how we operate, scale and govern the organisation.

This is a broad leadership position focused on improving operational effectiveness across the business. Working closely with the CFO and wider leadership team, you will help strengthen governance, embed scalable ways of working, improve business systems and support the delivery of strategic change.

The role will initially be responsible for leading our IT team and ensuring technology services effectively support the business. Over time, we expect additional centralised services and operational responsibilities to come into scope, creating an opportunity to help shape and develop a broader Operations function for the future.

Based in Leeds, this role will also play an important part in strengthening senior leadership presence within our growing Leeds office and wider multi-site organisation. The role forms part of the Senior Management Team.

03What You'll Do

• Lead and develop the IT team, ensuring effective service delivery and alignment with business priorities
• Drive operational improvement initiatives that increase efficiency, consistency and organisational effectiveness
• Partner with leaders across the business to strengthen governance, controls and ways of working
• Deliver cross-functional projects that improve resilience, business performance and operational maturity
• Champion information security, risk management and robust operational practices
• Oversee key business systems, technology suppliers and external partners
• Support the introduction of scalable processes, governance frameworks and standards across the organisation
• Contribute as a member of the Senior Management Team and act as a visible leader within the Leeds office
• Help shape the future direction of Operations as additional centralised services are brought together over time
• What we're looking for
• We're looking for an experienced operational leader who enjoys improving organisations, leading change and building high-performing teams.

You may currently be an Operations Director, Head of Operations, Business Operations Director, Business Services Leader, or hold a similar operational leadership position.

You'll likely bring:

Experience leading operational functions within a growing organisation

Experience managing or overseeing technology and business services teams

A track record of delivering meaningful organisational change and operational improvement

Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills across multiple teams, functions and locations

Experience introducing structure, governance and scalable operational processes

Strong understanding of what 'good looks like', this might be in the form of recognised operational, quality, risk or information security frameworks (such as ISO standards, Cyber Essentials or similar) or it might be bespoke for an organisation you've worked in

Commercial awareness and the ability to balance strategic thinking with practical delivery

Strong leadership, communication and relationship-building skills

04Role Details

This role will be based in Legal 500's Leeds office. This office is currently situated on Aire Street but we are soon to be moving to a larger premises in Leeds City Centre

This role is hybrid - 3 days per week in the office and 2 days remote

There will be semi-regular travel as part of this role to our London and Bristol offices