Project Manager

At Fried Frank, we’re a community of 800 lawyers and 500 business services professionals across New York, Washington, DC, London, Frankfurt, and Brussels. We advise leading corporations, investment funds, and financial institutions on high-stakes M&A, securities, regulatory matters, real estate, and litigation. Our culture is grounded in our core values — excellence, integrity and collaboration — and is designed to foster continuous learning, meaningful mentorship, and lasting professional growth. We are firmly committed to pro bono service and social justice, building on a proud legacy in civil rights. Our inclusive talent strategy is a core part of our broader talent management efforts and we remain steadfast in fostering a workplace where everyone has the opportunity to grow, thrive, and become their best professional and personal selves. Our business services professionals are integral to the firm’s success, driving innovation, operational excellence and exceptional client service across all areas of the firm. We offer competitive compensation and a comprehensive benefits package, including comprehensive medical coverage, retirement plans and health and wellness initiatives designed to support your personal and professional wellbeing. We welcome passionate, driven individuals to join us, and be part of a team where you’ll be supported, inspired and empowered to build an exceptional career.

Position Summary:

Fried Frank is currently recruiting for the role of Project Manager to effectively deliver complex projects on time, within scope, and within the allocated budget. This role will report directly to the Head of the Project Management Office and also work closely with key project stakeholders within the firm. The ideal candidate will have a proven track record of success, possess excellent interpersonal skills, lead cross-functional teams, solve complex problems, and effectively communicate with key business leaders, technical staff, subject matter experts, and stakeholders across the organization. The Project Manager will be expected to work independently and be able to exercise strong judgement to move projects forward and proactively escalate issues and risks. This is an excellent opportunity for someone who wants to branch out into different functional areas at a law firm to further enhance their skill set and broaden their experience.

Duties & Responsibilities:

• Manage multiple projects simultaneously that are heavily technical and/or involve implementing new technologies and processes at the firm with high visibility to the front and back offices.
• Develop flexible/agile project plans that consider scope, objectives, technical feasibility, risks, resource availability, performance, and business risk.
• Identify where projects do not have clearly defined scopes, objectives, requirements, or deliverables, and work with the project team to define and document.
• Coordinate, prioritize, and monitor key project tasks, necessary decisions, and supporting information to ensure alignment of business objectives.
• Drive project execution while making trade-off recommendations, understand technical challenges, enable solutions, and report status.
• Solicit input from internal and external sources, investigate and incorporate best practices based on experience, expert opinions, and sound judgment.
• Establish regular communications with key business partners, subject matter experts, and team members to manage project scope, schedule, and costs.
• Engage and collaborate with key stakeholders to understand and manage their requirements, expectations, and priorities, and act as their trusted advisor on successfully moving projects forward.
• Lead and champion change throughout the organization as part of each project by defining and executing change management and communications plans, and proactively obtain stakeholder buy-in and participation in change initiatives.
• Manage escalations and unblock constraints and dependencies.
• Oversee end-to-end third-party vendor relationships from RFP selection to work delivery, budget reporting, through project close.
• Manage and mitigate project risks with thorough risk assessments, and devise comprehensive risk mitigation and contingency plans.
• Create and maintain project documentation including but not limited to project plans, risk & issue management, status reporting, communication plans, stakeholder engagement plans, project budgets, scope statements, requirements documentation, test strategies and plans, benefits realization, training plans, deployment plans, resource management plans, project scorecards, product selection scorecards, and process documentation.
• Build out testing strategies and plans, and manage issue resolution for projects.
• Track, analyze, and skillfully employ supporting data in project meetings and communications.
• Articulate key concepts for technical and non-technical audiences at multiple seniority levels across the organization with minimal oversight.
• Present and provide presentation materials for leadership/management regularly.
• Create roadmaps and visualize multi-phased projects or Firm strategies.
• Contribute to internal PMO growth initiatives, including mentorship, strategy, and methodology enhancement.
• Champion the usage of project management tools, methodologies, and project management software on behalf of the PMO.
• Mentor junior employees and others across the organization looking to broaden their project management toolkit.

Qualifications:

Education / Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent work experience
• PMP or equivalent project management certification preferred
• Experience with Lean or Six Sigma methodologies strongly preferred
• Change Management certification is a plus

Skills & Abilities:

• 8+ years of project and program management experience, preferably in the legal industry or professional services.
• Knowledge of PM methodologies to effectively communicate concepts and implement multi-disciplinary approaches where appropriate, including but not limited to agile and waterfall.
• Demonstrated experience managing a sizeable portfolio of projects is required. This experience would manage large-scale multi-disciplinary projects, IT portfolio of projects, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) projects, and projects or programs over two years in duration.
• Experience managing the following projects is strongly preferred - Work/Resource Allocation Projects, migration from SharePoint on prem to SharePoint Online, Enterprise Resource Planning projects, and software rollout to wide audiences across the firm (inclusive of communications and change management planning).
• Flexible approach and willingness to wear many hats from process design, change management, testing design, QA, etc.
• Experience managing and delivering end to end stage gate reviews.
• Strong facilitation skills to lead complicated discussions with participants from various stakeholder groups.
• Critical thinker who can anticipate problems and risks using experience, logical reasoning, and data and process analysis.
• Demonstrated competency in a variety of project management tools to build roadmaps and plans: Asana, MS Project.
• Strong interest in learning about the different functional areas at the firm and how the PMO can help them succeed with their projects.