Senior AI & Innovation Counsel

At Norton Rose Fulbright, people thrive because of a shared commitment to quality, unity and integrity. The highly regarded law firm consistently receives recognition from Great Place to Work and Top Workplaces, two companies that specialize in assessing organizational culture. Teams collaborate across regions, value new ideas and deliver meaningful client solutions, supported by a culture that embraces ambition, development and shared success. With more than 3,000 lawyers and 3,000 business services professionals working together across 50 offices worldwide, this global law firm provides a full range of legal services to leading corporations and financial institutions operating in key markets and sectors.

About you 

You are an accomplished attorney seeking to leverage your technical and commercial fluency in a global law firm. You are keen on not just leveraging AI for client delivery but rethinking how delivery gets executed at scale with the technology available. You are equally comfortable discussing workflows with attorneys, legal practice considerations with engineers, and translating ambiguity into commercial products. You bring a curious and conscientious mindset: focusing on client value while ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, and aligned with firm risk tolerance.

About the role 

Norton Rose Fulbright has a long-standing commitment to leveraging technology to enhance legal services and streamline operations. We are seeking a highly motivated and experienced Senior AI & Innovation Counsel to play a central role in embedding AI into legal practice and driving adoption across the firm. This role sits within the US Innovation team and reports to the US Director, Head of Innovation, and collaborates closely with legal practice groups, IT, KM, and other business services functions. A successful candidate will bring strong legal practice background, a practical understanding of AI technologies, and the ability to lead a team as well as complex, cross-functional initiatives. 

This is a unique opportunity to help build an AI and Innovation lawyer function inside one of the world's leading law firms -- with organizational support, a growing team, and genuine executive sponsorship. The work is consequential, the problems are hard, and the potential to reshape how legal services are delivered is real. 

This role is critical to translating the firm’s AI investments into real-world impact. By combining legal judgment with practical innovation, the Senior AI & Innovation Counsel ensures that solutions are not only built -- but trusted, adopted, and embedded into how legal work gets done. 

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to: 

As a player-coach, this is a hands-on role where you will be focused on both your practice group and people leadership. Equally, you will build trusted relationships with attorneys and business service colleagues across the firm to drive alignment and support for the Innovation program’s initiatives. 

Practice Integration 

• Embed within priority practice group(s) and support other Innovation teams and key Innovation initiatives by encouraging adoption of AI tools and workflows 
• Validate AI outputs through a practiced legal lens, ensuring they meet professional, ethical, and client standards 
• Translate attorney needs into actionable requirements for other innovation and legal engineering teams 
• Integrate AI and agentic tools into existing legal workflows to improve efficiency, consistency, and quality 
• Maintain a pipeline of practice driven priorities and use cases 
• Contribute to a library of reusable workflow patterns and agentic playbooks that can be adapted across practices 

Use Case Development and Delivery 

• Identify, prioritize, and develop high-value use cases based on real legal work and practice experience 
• Decompose legal matter workflows into discrete tasks, decision points, and dependencies to identify where AI and agentic solutions can drive the greatest impact  
• Parter with other Innovation functions and translate decomposed workflows into clear functional specifications: agent behaviors, guardrails, evaluation criteria, and success metrics  
• Partner with attorneys, other Innovation teams, and Legal Practice Management to map matter lifecycles and pinpoint high-leverage automation opportunities within each phase 
• Support rapid prototyping and testing of new workflows and tools; and help iterate solutions from concept to scalable, production-ready offerings 
• Capture feedback and measurement loops from attorneys to continuously improve and validate solutions performance against attorney expectations and matter quality standards 

Capability Building and Leadership 

• Operate as a player-coach, balancing hands-on engagement with people leadership and development  
• Manage and mentor a team of AI and innovation lawyers as the function scales 
• Establish AI and Innovation lawyer best practices/standards, cross-functional collaboration expectations and workflows, and quality practices for the team 
• Partner with the Director of Innovation and senior leadership to shape the AI and Innovation lawyer roadmap and org design 
• Lead with impact and client value, and help shape future commercial outcomes and team structures 

Collaboration and Stakeholder Engagement  

• Build trusted relationships with partners and attorneys across practice groups 
• Serve as an adoption conduit and be an interface between lawyers, Innovation, and technical teams 
• Work directly with Innovation leadership, attorneys, practice leaders, and business stakeholders to co-design solutions 
• Partner with the AI Governance & Program Manager, IT, and Info security teams to ensure solutions meet firm standards and governance requirements 

Qualifications: 

• JD required 
• Minimum seven years' experience as a practicing attorney or in KM/ Innovation within professional services, preferably at an AmLaw 100 in a practice group of strategic importance to Norton Rose Fulbright
• Demonstrated and deep understanding of legal workflows and how legal work is delivered in practice 
• Proven experience with legal technology, project management, business planning, and team management  
• Comfort operating in ambiguity: this function is still being defined, and you will help define and mature it 
• Excellent communication skills and ability to translate business or legal requirements into technical solutions and workflows; able to present to senior partners and work alongside engineers in the same day 
• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple projects, deliver results in a fast-paced environment, and drive organizational behavior change 
• Genuine broader market curiosity about AI and its implications for the future of legal practice – beyond simply familiarity with the tools 
• Understanding of data privacy, security, and responsible AI considerations in a professional services context 
• Experience developing scalable frameworks, playbooks, or reusable solution patterns

Norton Rose Fulbright US LLP is committed to providing employees with a comprehensive and competitive benefits package that supports you, your health, and your family. Benefit packages include access to three medical plans, dental, vision, life, and disability insurance. Employees can also access pre-tax benefits such as health savings and flexible spending accounts. Norton Rose Fulbright helps provide financial security by allowing employees to participate in a 401(k) savings plan and profit-sharing plans if eligible. Full- time employees are eligible to access fertility benefits designed to support fertility and family-forming journeys.

In addition to the Firm’s health and welfare benefits above, we offer a competitive paid time off plan, which provides a minimum of 20 days off based on your role and tenure with the firm. The firm offers a generous paid parental leave benefit allowing parents to take a minimum of 14 weeks of paid leave to bond with your newborn, or adopted child(ren). Employees are also entitled to 11 Firm holidays.

Norton Rose Fulbright US LLP is an Equal Opportunity Employer and complies with all applicable federal laws and their implementing regulations that require the collection and recording of certain data and information. The information we receive will not be used to make any decision regarding employment and will be kept separate from your application. Similarly, self-identification information is kept confidential and used only in accordance with applicable federal laws and regulations. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Norton Rose Fulbright is committed to providing reasonable accommodation as an Equal Opportunity Employer to applicants with disabilities. If you require assistance or accommodation to complete your application, please contact us.hr@nortonrosefulbright.com. Please provide your contact information and a description of your accessibility issue. We will make a determination on your request for reasonable accommodation on a case-by-case basis.

E-Verify is a registered trademark of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. This business uses E-Verify in its hiring practices to achieve a lawful workforce.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Norton Rose Fulbright US LLP will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about, discussed, or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant. However, employees who have access to the compensation information of other employees or applicants as a part of their essential job functions cannot disclose the pay of other employees or applicants to individuals who do not otherwise have access to compensation information, unless the disclosure is (a) in response to a formal complaint or charge, (b) in furtherance of an investigation, proceeding, hearing, or action, including an investigation conducted by the firm, or (c) consistent with the contractor’s legal duty to furnish information. 41 CFR 60-1.35(c).