Pricing Strategist at Baker McKenzie

Responsibilities:

• Engage directly with the Firm Partners, frontline client service teams, and BDMC teams to provide guidance and enablement on pricing, whilst liaising with fee-earning teams on service delivery, and Finance teams on operationalising commercial terms
• Drive the development of client relationship/matter fee deals:
• Create appropriate scenario-based models to assess the financial and profitability impact of pricing options
• Develop feasible pricing solutions that satisfy client objectives and brief decision-makers on the financial implications of various pricing terms
• Monitor and analyze the financial performance of alternative fee-based matters to identify and communicate best practices to improve future outcomes
• Provide ‘ad-hoc’ pricing support to client teams to help in the development of fee options
• Conduct and deliver pricing and profitability analysis on major clients, industry groups, practice groups, and service lines, at the regional or office level:
• Analyse and interpret client billing and collections data, independently research matters to investigate scope and cost, and engage (where appropriate) with specialist teams to build operational context on historical matters
• Work closely with the Firm's BDMC team to provide analysis supporting client and practice development initiatives
• Work as a trusted liaison to the Regional Pricing Committee, and inform commercial decisions:
• Analyse and interpret the financial impact of pricing and secondment requests;
• Review of client financial performance to determine the impact of the pricing and secondment arrangements
• Support strategic discussions with substantive analysis and interpretation of regional financial performance
• Develop and refine analytical pricing tools:
• Contribute to the development and ongoing improvement of analytical pricing tools, including the Firm's Global Rate Card, Matter Pricing Tool, and other bespoke tools
• Enhance and further develop tools and processes to support engagement scoping, budgeting, and analysis
• Apply pricing-related market intelligence to the development of new pricing arrangements:
• Interpret available industry pricing trends and competitor rates in the region to inform pricing strategy at timekeeper, client, industry, and practice levels
• Review and distil findings regularly from key sources of competitive intelligence and client feedback for a briefing to client service and business teams
• Support the development of pricing-related training and assets:
• Assist in the development of practice or firm-wide pricing-related training, including (but not limited to) presentations to the financial control community, client managers, and client teams

Skills and Experience:

• Relevant undergraduate degree required; coursework in business, finance, accounting, math, statistics, or chemistry strongly preferred
• Proficiency in applications for data analysis, charting, visualization, and presentation: Excel, and PowerPoint; experience with PowerBI, Tableau, and QlikView a plus
• Rigorous integrated analytical and financial management skills with relevant experience with data manipulation for exploratory analysis and insight generation ideally in a professional services environment; proficiency with Python or R a plus
• A pro-active, can-do attitude with problem-solving skills
• Experience or familiarity with purchasing/procurement practices a plus
• Familiarity with, or an aptitude for the development of, market practices relative to pricing, legal project management, practice innovation approaches, and partnering with emerging providers within a law firm setting; awareness of technology applicable to the function; demonstrated knowledge of the global marketplace for legal and professional services
• Some familiarity with law firm operations, legal accounting, finance, and the elements of law firm profitability at practice group, service line, client, matter, and attorney level
• Excellent communication skills; demonstrated ability and desire to work collaboratively with senior-level professionals to help them succeed in meeting their business development objectives
• Ability to work independently; willingness to work hands-on to achieve objectives in a relatively flat organizational structure
• Adaptability and ability to work under pressure