LC&S Shared Services Ops Specialist

The LC&S Shared Services Team is a pool of legal, commercial, and compliance professionals supporting Nokia's Legal & Compliance (L&C) function across markets and business areas. We provide legal and commercial expertise with a high standard of accountability and responsiveness, enabling L&C to focus on its most complex and mission-critical work.

• Review outside counsel invoices line by line against Nokia's approved billing guidelines, fee arrangements, and rate cards.

• Identify and flag discrepancies, including excessive or unjustified hourly charges, block billing, duplicate entries, unapproved timekeepers or rates, non-reimbursable fees and expenses charged, and #_msocom_1 [AS1] non-compliant task or expense codes#_msocom_2 [VS2] #_msocom_3 [AK3] , in line with Nokia Billing Guidelines.

• Detect unusual patterns in usage, such as sudden spikes in hours, disproportionate senior-partner time on routine tasks, investigate root causes of billing deviations with law firms; escalate unresolved or repeated non-compliance to Legal counsel and management.

• Apply reductions, write-offs, or rejections in line with policy where charges fall outside agreed guidelines, and document rationale for audit trail, track firm-level compliance trends over time and recommend guideline updates or firm-specific correction plans.

• Manage the Matter Management tool (Legal Tracker by Thomson Reuters) including creating matters, initiating PO approvals for law firms based on approved RFPs and quotations provided by Nokia Legal counsel and processing invoices. 

• Coordinate with internal stakeholders and external law firms to ensure timely, accurate invoice submission, approval, and payment, maintain accurate billing records and audit trails to support accounts payable/receivable and month-end/year-end close.

• Prepare periodic spend and compliance reports (by firm, matter, practice area) highlighting exceptions, savings, and trend analysis for L&C leadership, partner with Finance, Procurement, and Legal Operations to align invoice data, budgets, and accruals.

• Recommend and help implement improvements to billing guidelines, review workflows, and e-billing system controls, support internal/external audits by providing documentation on billing exceptions and resolutions.

• Respond to queries from law firms and internal stakeholders regarding billing decisions, with clear, well-documented reasoning.

• Must Have:

• Bachelor’s degree in business, Law, Finance, Accounting, or a related field; an LLB or LLM is preferred with 7+ years of experience in legal billing, e-billing/spend management, legal operations, or law firm finance, with direct exposure to outside counsel invoice review (in-house or law firm environment).

• Strong working knowledge of alternative fee arrangements and common billing compliance issues (block billing, rate deviations, task-code misuse, etc.), hands-on experience with e-billing/matter management platforms (Legal Tracker/TR, or similar such as Simple Legal, along with Ariba and SAP strongly preferred, 

• Sharp analytical and investigative mindset with close attention to detail, able to spot patterns and anomalies across large volumes of invoice data.

• Solid understanding of legal terminology, matter lifecycle, and law firm engagement/fee structures, advanced proficiency in MS Excel for data analysis and reporting; comfortable with Microsoft Office suite generally.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; able to raise and defend billing exceptions diplomatically but firmly with law firms.

• Self-driven, organized, and comfortable managing multiple priorities and deadlines in a fast-paced, multicultural environment.

• It would be nice if you also had:

• Certifications or coursework in legal operations, e-billing, or financial management are a plus.

• Bachelor’s degree in business, Law, Finance, Accounting, or a related field; an LLB or LLM is preferred with 7+ years of experience in legal billing, e-billing/spend management, legal operations, or law firm finance, with direct exposure to outside counsel invoice review (in-house or law firm environment).
• Strong working knowledge of alternative fee arrangements and common billing compliance issues (block billing, rate deviations, task-code misuse, etc.), hands-on experience with e-billing/matter management platforms (Legal Tracker/TR, or similar such as Simple Legal, along with Ariba and SAP strongly preferred,
• Sharp analytical and investigative mindset with close attention to detail, able to spot patterns and anomalies across large volumes of invoice data.
• Solid understanding of legal terminology, matter lifecycle, and law firm engagement/fee structures, advanced proficiency in MS Excel for data analysis and reporting; comfortable with Microsoft Office suite generally.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; able to raise and defend billing exceptions diplomatically but firmly with law firms.
• Self-driven, organized, and comfortable managing multiple priorities and deadlines in a fast-paced, multicultural environment.