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
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.
Skills Knowledge and Expertise
Education
- Bachelor's degree required.
- Preferred fields include:
- Legal studies
- Businesa
- Economics
- Social sciences (e.g., Political Science, Economics, History, Sociology, Anthropology)
- Public Policy
- Market Research
- Data sciences/Data Analytics
- Journalism
- Related disciplines
Experience
- 3-7 years of experience in one or more of the following:
- Preferred but not required for the right candidate: Direct experience with a law firm or legal department (including legal research/paralegal, analytics, knowledge management, business development, competitive Intelligence, etc.)
- Market research
- Competitive intelligence
- Industry analysis
- Business research
- Consulting
- Journalism
- Corporate research
- Professional services research
Desired Skills
- Strong research (primary, secondary) skills
- Data analysis
- Data management Relationship Building/ Strong interpersonal and networking skills.
- Ability to establish credibility with senior professionals
- Confidence interacting with executive-level audiences
- Experience conducting interviews or stakeholder conversations.
- Professional curiosity and active listening skills.
- Experience conducting qualitative and quantitative research.
- Strong interviewing skills.
- Experience organizing and managing research data.
- Ability to evaluate source credibility and reliability.
- Strong information-gathering capabilities.
- Analytical Thinking
- Ability to identify themes and patterns across multiple sources.
- Strong critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
- Experience working with structured datasets.
- Excellent Excel skills
- Familiarity with survey analysis and data visualization tools is a plus.
- Communication
- Exceptional written communication skills
- Ability to produce concise executive-facing content.
- Strong presentation development capabilities.
- Comfort with presenting research findings in writing or person (e.g., web events, in-person events, etc.)
- Independent thinker but works well on a team.
What Success Looks Like
Within the first year, a successful analyst will:
- Build a meaningful network of legal department contacts.
- Independently conduct executive interviews with legal leaders.
- Contribute proprietary intelligence to the Legal Department Innovation Database.
- Become a trusted point of contact for research participants.
- Produce published research under the Pacesetter Research brand.
- Identify original insights that influence Pacesetter publications and industry conversations.
- Help establish Pacesetter Research as a leading source of intelligence on legal department innovation.
- Ideal Candidate Profile
The ideal candidate combines:
- The curiosity of a journalist
- The relationship-building skills of a business development professional.
- The rigor of a researcher
- The judgment of a consultant.
- They enjoy meeting people, learning how organizations operate, uncovering emerging trends, and transforming conversations into strategic intelligence.
If you can bring an effective combination of this background, skills, experience, and traits then we encourage you to apply!
About Centellic Centellic stands at the center of the markets it serves, empowering organizations with indispensable data and insight to make critical decisions on growth, risk and opportunity.
Through proprietary data, deep market expertise and AI-enabled technology, our platforms are embedded in client workflows. That capability is underpinned by our events, which bring the market together to share perspective and deepen understanding of the issues shaping each sector. Together, they give organizations earlier visibility of emerging trends, and the clarity and confidence to act when decisions matter.
At Centellic, we’re a global intelligence and information services business, setting the standard for how critical business decisions are made.
Why Centellic? At Centellic, we help our clients make better decisions, and our people are at the heart of that work. Every individual plays an important role in this, bringing curiosity and high standards to everything they do.
Those who thrive here take ownership, care deeply about their work and are committed to excellence. Standards are high because our people set them that way. And while we have decades of expertise, we are still growing, pushing and building something extraordinary.
Centellic’s advantage is our people and the culture we’ve created together. It’s an environment where individuality is encouraged, relationships are genuine, and there’s a strong sense of purpose in what we’re building together. Collaborative, respectful and driven, we take our work seriously without taking ourselves too seriously.
Benefits
Our people are our most valuable asset, as such, we offer a wide range of benefits to help ensure that all are supported:
- 15 vacation days, 12 company holidays, three personal days, one day to volunteer at the organization of your choice, plus a day off for your birthday each year
- Choice of three Cigna health insurance plans, two dental plans, and vision coverage.
- Health Savings Accounts (HSA) and Flex Spending Accounts (FSA)
- Comprehensive wellness program
- Employer paid life insurance
- Employer paid short-term and long-term disability insurance
- Accident and critical illness insurance
- 401K and Roth retirement savings plans with employer matching
- Employee Referral Awards
- Tuition reimbursement after 1 year of service
- Commuter Benefits
The company is committed to accommodating people with disabilities. If you require any reasonable accommodations to be made, please let us know as part of our application page. If you are unable or limited in your ability to access job openings or apply for a job on this site as a result of your disability, please contact Margo DeAngelo at 646-530-5941.
We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, protected veteran status, or disability status.