Legal Services Strategy Program Manager

Microsoft's Corporate, External and Legal Affairs (CELA) organization is rebuilding how it buys, manages, and measures outside legal services. AI is resetting the economics of the legal industry, and Microsoft intends to lead through this transformational moment. The Legal Services Strategy team works with a group of broad, cross-organizational stakeholders to set the direction for CELA’s outside counsel engagement; this role co-builds and runs the processes, platforms, and vendor relationships that operationalize those decisions. 

The Legal Services Strategy Program Manager owns much of the day-to-day execution across the outside counsel lifecycle. The goal is to manage day-to-day work programmatically, ensuring that the knowledge we generate becomes a reusable foundation for future AI engagement rather than remaining fragmented across email threads, spreadsheets, and individual memories. 

This is a moment of change. The program is being redesigned while it runs, priorities will shift as the strategy takes shape, and systems this role depends on today may be replaced within a year. The right person reads that as the opportunity rather than the risk, and brings comfort with ambiguity, a bias toward building something great and improving it, and the composure to hold a line with sophisticated counterparties. 

This is an individual contributor role reporting to the Legal Services Strategy Lead. 

It is a rare chance to help redefine how one of the world's largest legal departments works with outside counsel, and to build much of the operating model that makes it work.

• Collaborate with cross-organizational teams to rebuild and run our system for managing Microsoft's law firm relationships, tracking communications, commitments, and next steps, and producing reporting leadership can act on. 

• Own the annual rate card negotiation process end-to-end with support from our vendors: firm outreach, rate intake and validation, exceptions, deadlines, and the health of the tooling behind it. 

• Operationalize and enforce the outside counsel guidelines: correct matter setup, invoice compliance, exceptions pushed back to firms, and a firm-by-firm scorecard covering on-time billing, narrative quality, and AI disclosure. 

• Run legal RFPs and the Legal Talent Marketplace, keeping competitive sourcing moving to decision and steering requesters toward flexible talent. 

• Own law firm and supplier onboarding: the gate that decides whether Microsoft adds a firm at all, plus the mechanics of registration, payee setup, and access. 

• Run the conflict waiver process: map approval levels, automate the routine decisions, escalate the rest, and manage turnaround time. 

• Deliver the CELA CLE program, curating topics that matter to Microsoft lawyers and running it as a Strategic Partner Program benefit. 

• Support the operating rhythm: business review data, engagement and spend reporting, vendor agreements and renewals, and triage of various communications. 

• Lead vendor relationships aligned to the above responsibilities and work cross-functionally with a diverse set of stakeholders to complete and influence work.