Legal Ops Manager

About the Job:

👋 I’m Kelly https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-fish-52116924/, Senior Legal Counsel at Ashby. I joined recently as our first dedicated legal hire and I’m now building the legal team to support our next phase of growth.

After 12 years building and scaling in-house legal teams, I joined Ashby for its ambition, product vision, and exceptional talent across the company. The team is full of smart, low-ego, high-ownership operators and the leadership team is decisive in balancing speed with long-term growth.

Ashby is in a rapid growth phase (growing ~130% YoY and adding ~500 customers per quarter), and our legal function is at an inflection point. We’ve established our first in-house legal presence and are actively expanding with hires across commercial and product/privacy. The next critical step is hiring our first Legal Operations Manager to build the operational infrastructure for the legal function: the systems, processes, data, and relationships that enable us to scale efficiently and make better decisions as we scale.

This is a highly impactful, builder role. You will be responsible for designing and implementing the systems, processes, and tools that underpin how legal works at Ashby - from the legal inbox, contract workflows and intake processes to cross-functional tooling and exploring AI opportunities. You will partner closely with myself and our Commercial Counsel to bring contracting in-house, lead the evaluation and implementation of intake and contract workflow and management tooling (which may range from workflow automation to full CLM), and work directly with Sales on enablement and adoption.

You will also work cross-functionally with teams like Sales, Security, Product, IT, and RevOps to design scalable, tech-enabled solutions. This includes evaluating and implementing new tools, improving workflows, and exploring how AI and agentic systems can meaningfully improve how legal operates and how other teams engage with the legal team.

This role is central to unlocking leverage for the entire legal team and enabling Ashby through this exciting growth phase. If you are excited about building from zero, thrive in high-growth environments, and enjoy turning ambiguity into scalable systems, I’d love to meet you.

Responsibilities

• Build and own Ashby’s legal operations function from the ground up, including systems, processes, and tooling.

• Partner with Commercial Counsel to bring commercial contracting fully in-house, reducing reliance on external counsel and improving speed and consistency.

• Lead the evaluation, selection, implementation, and ongoing management of contract workflow and management tooling (e.g. workflow automation or CLM).

• Partner closely with Sales and RevOps to support contract tooling rollout, drive adoption, and deliver enablement (playbooks, workflows, training).

• Design and implement a centralized legal intake function (e.g., legal inbox, ticketing system), improving visibility, prioritization, and response times.

• Identify and implement opportunities to leverage AI and emerging technologies to improve legal workflows, including experimentation with agentic tools and optimization of internal AI usage.

• Establish and maintain contract templates, version control, and documentation to ensure consistency and scalability.

• Build and maintain a centralized legal knowledge base, including playbooks, FAQs, and self-service resources that reduce repetitive inquiries from business teams.

• Collaborate cross-functionally with teams such as Security, Product, IT, and Finance to implement scalable legal and compliance workflows (e.g., security questionnaires, procurement tools, incident management).

• Own and continuously optimize the legal tech stack, including integrations with tools like CPQ and procurement platforms (e.g., Zip), and identify opportunities to adopt new tooling as the function matures.

• Support broader legal and company initiatives as needed, including fundraising or M&A data room management, compliance workflows, and cross-functional projects.

• Manage vendor and external counsel operations, including billing, budgeting, and performance tracking.

• Build reporting and dashboards to provide visibility into legal metrics (e.g., contract turnaround time, volume, bottlenecks).

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in legal operations with at least 2 years’ experience working in legal operations within a high-growth technology company or startup. You have built or materially scaled legal operations infrastructure before, not just maintained it.

• Participation in relevant legal ops communities is a plus.

• Demonstrated experience evaluating, implementing and managing legal technology (e.g., CLM/workflow automation, intake/ticketing systems, contract repositories).

• Experience evaluating, implementing and experimenting with AI tools in legal or operational workflows.

• Strong understanding of commercial contracting workflows and the needs of GTM teams.

• Experience working cross-functionally with teams like Sales, RevOps, Security, Product, or Finance.

• Highly organized with strong project management skills - able to drive multiple initiatives simultaneously and bring structure to ambiguity.

• Strong analytical mindset with the ability to identify inefficiencies and design scalable solutions.

• Excellent communication skills - able to translate legal and operational concepts into clear, actionable processes.

• High ownership and execution focus - you don’t just design systems, you implement and iterate on them.

You should apply if:

• You’re a systems thinker - you don’t just see a tool, but instead you see an ecosystem that interconnects with other teams. You stay current on legal tech and are excited by the white space available for you to build a best in class legal operations tool stack from scratch.

• You possess strong project management skills. You will be running vendor evaluations, negotiations, implementations and keeping your stakeholders informed at every step of the process.

• You understand how lawyers work and how legal technology can accelerate both the legal team and the business teams we support. You build strong cross-functional relationships with RevOps, sales, security and IT, and you take the time to understand their existing tech stacks and workflows so that legal tooling integrates with, rather than disrupts, how those teams already operate.

• You are proactive and can ruthlessly prioritize. You can easily spot areas of improvement across the legal process and operations and can work with cross-functional teams on education and process improvements.

• You're comfortable with ambiguity and excited by Ashby’s stage of growth. You’ll help building processes and systems from the ground up.

You shouldn’t apply if:

• You prefer highly structured environments with established playbooks already in place. We're building those now - and you'll help shape them - but if you need that structure from day one, this isn't the right fit.

• You default to replicating what you’ve done before rather than evaluating from first principles. At Ashby, one of our Operating Principles is to think from first principles and we constantly assess the best available technology and approaches that can improve our legal operations.

• You're not comfortable working directly with GTM teams and business stakeholders.

• You prefer to advise rather than execute. This role requires rolling up your sleeves and doing the work, not just flagging issues.

• You prefer an in-office environment. This is a remote role and is best-suited for self-starters who excel in an independent setting.

• You’re uncomfortable with change. We are a rapidly growing team and company, and the ability to stay flexible and thrive amid change is key to success here.

About Ashby

We’re building the next generation of enterprise software and we’re starting with a