Chief Operating Officer - Nationally Scaling Professional Services Platform

Position: Chief Operating Officer – Nationally Scaling Professional Services Platform
Reports To: Chief Executive Officer
Location: United States – Fully Remote
Travel: Ability to travel once per quarter to Phoenix or as needed to ensure operational consistency and cultural alignment across nationally scaling regional locations.

Chamberlain Advisors is conducting an executive search seeking an experienced Chief Operating Officer for our direct client, a rapidly growing, fully integrated personal injury law firm with scaling operations throughout the United States. As a cornerstone of the executive team, you will report directly to the CEO and partner closely with board members, and other executive leadership team members (CFO, CTO, CMO, CPO, GC, and firm Partners). In this role, you will institutionalize a complex high-volume operational model that optimizes the lifecycle of every case from initial intake through final settlement, proactively identifying and resolving capacity constraints to ensure seamless delivery as the firm scales into a 3,000-employee enterprise. You will navigate the organization through phases of rapid growth and structural transitions to build a cohesive, high-performance culture, ensuring that every strategic shift is grounded in rigorous margin management, cost-to-serve optimization, and bottom-line profitability. This is an extraordinary opportunity for an experienced operations leader to take the helm of a massive scaling effort, leveraging their enterprise-wide operational expertise and fiscal discipline to drive unparalleled market leadership and bottom-line success.

Core Profile: alignment with the following is required to get you in the conversation

• Scalable Governance & Institutional Growth: Candidates must possess a proven track record of leading organizations through the transition from mid-sized to large-scale enterprises of 3,000+ employees. This requires the critical thinking necessary to shift the organizational reliance away from tribal knowledge and manual intervention toward standardized, repeatable systems that drive consistent results. The COO will be responsible for the structural "hardening" of the firm, maintaining operational standards and cultural integrity while successfully navigating the complexities of rapid headcount expansion. You will be the architect of a standardized operational framework where performance is predictable and entirely independent of individual-specific contingencies.
• Operational Infrastructure & Technical Integration: We require a process-oriented leader who views legal operations through the lens of industrial-scale throughput and systemic efficiency. This individual will serve as a primary stakeholder in the optimization of enterprise case management systems, ensuring that technological investments are directly mapped to business logic. By identifying and resolving operational bottlenecks, the COO will transform the firm’s workflows into a standardized, high-volume pipeline that maximizes both the velocity and quality of case settlements. Success in this category is measured by a demonstrable reduction in case cycle times and the total elimination of manual workarounds through comprehensive technical automation.
• Fiscal Stewardship & Data-Driven Accountability: The COO will exercise comprehensive P&L oversight, ensuring that every operational initiative is grounded in a deep understanding of the firm's financial health and unit economics. This role demands an analytical approach to decision-making, utilizing data-driven insights and dashboard metrics to protect margins and drive ROI. Beyond task execution, the candidate must demonstrate a proactive ownership mindset, identifying financial risks and operational inefficiencies independently to ensure long-term profitability and reliability. Your objective is to ensure that operational expansion consistently translates into optimized operating profitability and measurable, scalable bottom-line growth.
• Change Management & Strategic Resilience: The ideal candidate will demonstrate the resilience required to maintain operational stability during periods of significant organizational transformation. You will act as a strategic bridge between IT, HR, legal, marketing, and finance departments, harmonizing disparate systems and cultures into a unified enterprise identity. This role requires a leader who can prioritize agile execution over exhaustive perfection, ensuring continuous improvement and stability even as the firm’s business model and infrastructure evolve. As COO, success will hinge on your ability to execute large-scale strategic pivots while maintaining the integrity of the firm’s core revenue-generating functions.
• Executive Influence & Organizational Culture: The successful candidate will demonstrate a high degree of emotional intelligence and a sophisticated ability to influence a diverse range of stakeholders. This leader must possess the versatile communication skills required to engage effectively with both frontline operational staff and high-earning legal professionals, ensuring organizational alignment at every level. By prioritizing collective leadership and professional diplomacy, the COO will foster a culture of mutual respect and high performance, effectively managing the unique power dynamics inherent in a high-stakes legal environment. Ultimately, you will serve as the primary stabilizer for the organization, ensuring high retention and personnel alignment during periods of intensive organizational pressure.

Core Responsibilities & Scope of Work:

Scaling Governance & Firm Execution

• Institutional Systems & Playbooks: Design and deploy a centralized "Firm Playbook" and operating system to replace individual-contingent successes with standardized, repeatable SOPs across all non-legal functions.
• Decision Rights & Accountability: Establish a clear RACI matrix across the enterprise to eliminate ownership ambiguity, ensuring absolute clarity on decision rights, escalation paths, and cross-functional dependencies.
• Operational Rhythms & Visibility: Lead rigorous weekly and monthly Business Review meetings focused on metric-based accountability and the development of a strategic PMO to manage the firm's project portfolio.
• Infrastructure Hardening: Audit and re-engineer personnel-dependent tasks into system-driven workflows capable of supporting an institutionalized, 3,000+ employee scale while ensuring capital is directed toward high-ROI initiatives.

Legal Operations & Case Lifecycle Management
Intake & Claims Verification

• Funnel Optimization: Own the daily conversion funnel by identifying lead drop-off points and implementing technical or tactical fixes to maximize lead throughput.
• Vetting & Quality Control: Implement mandatory documentation checklists and weekly quality audits to ensure every claim is properly vetted and litigation-ready at the point of entry.
• Data-Driven Handoffs: Establish real-time reporting rhythms and technical bridges to ensure high-velocity, zero-loss handoffs from the intake center to the legal departments.

Pre-Litigation Operations

• Throughput Velocity: Track case velocity metrics to pinpoint stagnant inventory and proactively reassign resources to move cases efficiently through the settlement pipeline.
• Workflow Standardization: Enforce unified standards for medical record retrieval, demand drafting, and negotiation to maintain a consistent Branded House level of quality.
• Bottleneck Elimination: Identify root causes of rework in file preparation and implement technical solutions to ensure all tasks are completed accurately the first time.

Litigation Operations

• Friction Reduction: Act as the primary blocker-remover for trial lawyers by managing all administrative and logistical hurdles to prioritize high-value legal execution.
• Capacity Planning: Partner with litigation leadership to develop data-driven staffing models that accurately predict hiring needs based on case volume and resource utilization.
• System Consistency: Ensure absolute consistency across case management platforms and litigation timelines to remove operational friction and support attorney performance.

Technical Infrastructure & Pipeline Integration

• Platform Advocacy & System Logic: Serve as the primary stakeholder for enterprise system optimizations, ensuring all technical builds within platforms like Salesforce or Filevine map directly to business logic and legal workflows.
• Omnichannel Integration & Flow: Oversee the seamless integration of call center technologies, with case management systems to ensure a friction-free data flow from lead to settlement.
• Automation & Cycle Time Reduction: Drive the implementation of comprehensive technical automation to eliminate manual workarounds, significantly reducing case cycle times across all legal departments.
• Throughput & Pipeline Monitoring: Treat case progression as an industrial manufacturing pipeline by monitoring inventory aging and throughput metrics to proactively identify and resolve systemic chokepoints.

Financial Stewardship & Unit Economics

• P&L Oversight & Margin Protection: Exercise comprehensive P&L responsibility by ensuring every operational initiative is backed by a rigorous cost-benefit analysis to maximize ROI and protect firm margins.
• Data-Driven Financial Advocacy: Build and monitor granular KPI dashboards that provide real-time visibility into the firm’s financial health, translating operational decisions into actionable financial impact reports for the executive suite.
• Budgetary Control & Risk Mitigation: Manage department heads to specific budgets while proactively identifying and mitigating financial risks or revenue shortfalls through objective, data-driven advocacy.
• Unit Economics & Strategic Analysis: Analyze critical metrics, such as intake conversion, claims quality, and attorney utilization & satisfaction to drive strategic pivots in marketing, case acquisition, and overall resource allocation.

Change Management & Executive Leadership

• Strategic Integration & Alignment: Direct the post-acquisition integration of new firms or De novo locations ensuring a seamless transition into the platform’s culture, standardized operating procedures, and unified enterprise identity.
• Cross-Functional Synthesis: Act as the primary bridge between technical developers, financial analysts, and trial lawyers to harmonize disparate systems and "translate" complex requirements into actionable business strategies.
• Executive Mentorship & Growth: Coach business unit leaders to enhance their strategic decision-making and professional autonomy while ensuring all leadership actions remain strictly aligned with the firm’s growth objectives.
• Resilient Culture & Execution: Maintain operational stability during large-scale pivots by prioritizing agile execution and modeling high emotional intelligence to foster a collaborative, high-performance environment across all organizational levels.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Operations Management, Finance, or a related field is required; an MBA is highly preferred but may be substituted by significant experience in large-scale institutional growth.
• Minimum of 15 – 20+ years of progressive operational leadership experience (COO, EVP Ops, or similar), with a documented track record of leading organizations through the transition from mid-sized to institutionalized enterprises of 3,000+ employees.
• Proven success in shifting organizations away from individual-contingent or personnel-dependent models toward standardized, system-driven environments through the design and deployment of centralized operating playbooks.
• Extensive experience overseeing high-velocity throughput environments where success is measured by the identification of systemic chokepoints, cycle-time reduction, and the transformation of workflows into high-volume pipelines.
• Demonstrated mastery of P&L management with the ability to ground every operational initiative in a deep understanding of unit economics, margin protection, and scalable bottom-line growth.
• Advanced proficiency in serving as the primary business stakeholder for enterprise-level platform overhauls and the integration of omnichannel contact center solutions to ensure technology maps directly to business logic.
• Expertise in leading complex organizational transformations, including the strategic integration of post-acquisition firms or de novo locations, while maintaining operational stability and cultural integrity.
• Possesses the systemic critical thinking necessary to deconstruct complex, undefined processes into actionable, automated, and repeatable workflows that drive consistent results.
• Demonstrates the vertical and horizontal assertiveness required to provide constructive pushback to the executive suite and maintain accountability among high-status technical professionals.
• Exhibits a high degree of emotional intelligence and the versatile communication skills needed to engage effectively with both frontline staff and high-earning legal professionals.
• Proven ability to interpret granular KPI dashboards and utilize data-driven advocacy—rather than anecdotal evidence—to drive strategic pivots in marketing and resource allocation.
• Maintains a self-starting, ownership mindset that thrives in high-pressure environments, prioritizing agile execution and "building the plane while flying it" over exhaustive perfection.

About Our Client
Our client, TopDog Law, is a nationally scaling, fully integrated personal injury law firm that is redefining the industry through world-class marketing, exceptional legal talent, and industrial-scale operations. Over the past three years, they have grown 2–3x year-over-year by aligning strategy with high-velocity execution, and they are now applying that same innovation to case management and infrastructure as they expand across the country. This is not a legacy law firm; it is a high-performance "rocket ship" intentionally designed for impact and growth, moving away from traditional models toward a standardized, high-trust, and no-ego culture. Our client is currently building the sophisticated systems and teams required for national scale without sacrificing quality or accountability, offering a unique opportunity for leaders to shape the firm’s operational future rather than just maintaining the status quo. They are assembling a team of exceptional leaders who thrive in fast-moving environments and take pride in building a world-class enterprise from the ground up.

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