About this role
About Pacesetter Research Pacesetter Research is a research and intelligence team dedicated to studying how the legal world—law firms, legal departments, and third-party players like legaltech, ASLPs, and etc.—are adapting to rapidly-changing market environments. In short, the Pacesetter Research team is dedicated to studying the role of innovation in law, but not just any innovation: we’re looking for innovation that has a measurable impact for key stakeholders. This term, “innovation,” is often conflated with merely adopting new, advanced technologies but we look across firm management, client relationship management, service delivery, and talent strategy.
How do we do this? We approach innovation through a combination of primary research, proprietary data collection, executive interviews, and market analysis, in the process identifying the innovations, business strategies, and operating models shaping the future of law. Our mission is to generate actionable insights that inform key decision-makers across legal markets.
About the Role
We are seeking a Research Analyst who combines strong relationship-building skills with intellectual curiosity and analytical rigor. The Legal Department Innovation Analyst is responsible for helping lay the research foundations for the insights tied to corporate legal departments. This is achieved through multiple modes of research including networking directly with General Counsel, Chief Legal Officers, Legal Operations leaders, Legal Technology professionals, and other senior legal department stakeholders.
Aside from conducting interviews, the analyst will gather intelligence, develop proprietary datasets, monitor emerging trends, and contribute to the creation of industry-leading research publications. Unlike traditional research roles that rely heavily on desk research, this position places significant emphasis on relationship development, executive engagement, and primary data collection. The successful candidate will become a trusted industry contact who helps Pacesetter Research uncover the strategies, innovations, challenges, and priorities shaping modern legal departments.
This analyst position will work closely with other Pacesetter analysts, as well as analysts, journalists, and data specialists on adjacent teams. This role is ideal for candidates who enjoy meeting people, asking thoughtful questions, uncovering patterns, and transforming conversations into valuable intelligence and insights.
Key Responsibilities
- Develop Industry Relationships, building and maintaining relationships with General Counsel, Chief Legal Officers, Deputy General Counsel, Legal Operations professionals, Innovation leaders, and other legal department stakeholders.
- Conduct Primary Research Conduct in-depth interviews with legal department leaders.
- Develop interview guides and discussion frameworks.
- Facilitate qualitative research conversations and executive roundtables Identify emerging themes, pain points, priorities, and innovation trends Capture and organize research findings in structured formats.
- Build Proprietary Intelligence Assets Collect, validate, organize, and update information from interviews, surveys, public disclosures, events, and other sources.
- Track innovation initiatives across legal operations, technology, AI adoption, talent management, outside counsel strategy, service delivery, and organizational design.
- Ensure data quality and consistency across research projects.
- Execute Secondary Research Analyze publicly available information including company websites, legal department publications, industry reports, conference presentations, news coverage, and thought leadership materials.
- Monitor legal industry developments and emerging business trends.
- Validate and contextualize primary research findings through secondary sources.
- Stay on top of developing industry trends in technology, operations, and management affecting legal departments.
- Analyze Findings and Develop Insights Synthesize qualitative and quantitative findings.
- Identify patterns, correlations, emerging practices, and outlier behaviors.
- Develop frameworks that explain market developments and innovation trends.
- Translate research findings into actionable business insights.
- Produce or contribute to research content, including articles, report sections, executive summaries, and analytical commentary.
- Support the development of new proprietary research products and intelligence offerings.