Senior Business Development Manager (Legal Software)

Job Description

We are seeking an experienced and results-driven Senior Business Development Manager to drive growth across Thomson Reuters' Legal Solutions portfolio, including legal research, AI-powered solutions, legal know-how, workflow automation, and legal operations platforms.

As a key member of the Japan Legal team, you will be responsible for generating new business opportunities, expanding strategic customer relationships, and accelerating the adoption of innovative legal and AI solutions within enterprise corporate accounts.

In this role, you will partner with Chief Legal Officers, General Counsel, Legal Operations leaders, Compliance professionals, IP teams, and business stakeholders to address complex legal and operational challenges. Through consultative engagement and strategic account development, you will help customers transform the way legal work is performed and deliver measurable business outcomes.

You will work closely with Product, Marketing, Customer Success, Solution Consulting, and regional leadership teams to develop and execute sales strategies that support customer success and business growth.

Key Responsibilities  

In this opportunity as a Senior Business Development Manager will: 

• Develop deep expertise across Thomson Reuters' Legal Solutions portfolio, including Westlaw Japan, CoCounsel, Practical Law, Legal Tracker, HighQ, and future legal technology offerings.
• Build a strong understanding of enterprise corporate customer priorities, legal department challenges, compliance requirements, and business transformation initiatives.
• Identify opportunities to address customer needs through integrated legal, AI, workflow, and legal operations solutions.
• Generate qualified pipeline through proactive business development activities, including account-based prospecting, executive engagement, customer referrals, events, webinars, and strategic marketing programs.
• Lead complex sales opportunities throughout the entire sales cycle, from prospecting and discovery through proposal development, commercial negotiations, and close.
• Drive new customer acquisition while expanding existing customer relationships through cross-sell, upsell, and multi-solution adoption strategies.
• Build trusted relationships with senior decision-makers and position Thomson Reuters as a strategic partner in legal transformation.
• Collaborate with Solution Consultants, Customer Success Managers, Product teams, and Marketing to develop customer-specific strategies and maximize business impact.
• Share best practices, market insights, customer feedback, and competitive intelligence across the broader sales organization.
• Contribute to territory and account planning activities to support long-term revenue growth.
• Support customer retention and renewal strategies when required.
• Facilitate customer workshops, product demonstrations, proof-of-concept engagements, and AI adoption discussions.
• Position AI-enabled legal solutions to help customers improve productivity, mitigate risk, enhance compliance, and increase operational efficiency.
• Maintain accurate pipeline management, forecasting, and CRM discipline to support predictable business performance.
• Consistently achieve or exceed assigned revenue, pipeline generation, and strategic account growth targets.

Required Qualifications 

You’re a fit for the role of Senior Business Development Manager if you have the following required qualifications: 

• 7+ years of successful enterprise sales experience in software, SaaS, information services, technology, legal technology, or professional solutions.
• Proven track record of acquiring new customers and growing complex enterprise accounts.
• Experience engaging senior business stakeholders and executive decision-makers.
• Experience managing complex, multi-stakeholder sales opportunities with long sales cycles.
  

Preferred Qualifications 

• Experience selling AI, workflow automation, SaaS, legal technology, or digital transformation solutions.
• Understanding of corporate legal departments, legal operations, compliance, governance, or risk management functions.
• Experience working in matrix organizations and global business environments.
• Strong interest in emerging technologies and the future transformation of legal services.

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What’s in it For You?

• Hybrid Work Model: We’ve adopted a flexible hybrid working environment for our office-based roles while delivering a seamless experience that is digitally and physically connected.
• Flexibility & Work-Life Balance: Flex My Way is a set of supportive workplace policies designed to help manage personal and professional responsibilities, whether caring for family, giving back to the community, or finding time to refresh and reset. This builds upon our flexible work arrangements, including work from anywhere for up to 8 weeks per year, empowering employees to achieve a better work-life balance.
• Career Development and Growth: By fostering a culture of continuous learning and skill development, we prepare our talent to tackle tomorrow’s challenges and deliver real-world solutions. Our Grow My Way programming and skills-first approach ensures you have the tools and knowledge to grow, lead, and thrive in an AI-enabled future.
• Industry Competitive Benefits: We offer comprehensive benefit plans to include flexible vacation, two company-wide Mental Health Days off, access to the Headspace app, retirement savings, tuition reimbursement, employee incentive programs, and resources for mental, physical, and financial wellbeing.
• Culture: Globally recognized, award-winning reputation for inclusion and belonging, flexibility, work-life balance, and more. We live by our values: Obsess over our Customers, Compete to Win, Challenge (Y)our Thinking, Act Fast / Learn Fast, and Stronger Together.
• Social Impact: Make an impact in your community with our Social Impact Institute. We offer employees two paid volunteer days off annually and opportunities to get involved with pro-bono consulting projects and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives.
• Making a Real-World Impact: We are one of the few companies globally that helps its customers pursue justice, truth, and transparency. Together, with the professionals and institutions we serve, we help uphold the rule of law, turn the wheels of commerce, catch bad actors, report the facts, and provide trusted, unbiased information to people all over the world.

About Us

Thomson Reuters informs the way forward by bringing together the trusted content and technology that people and organizations need to make the right decisions. We serve professionals across legal, tax, accounting, compliance, government, and media. Our products combine highly specialized software and insights to empower professionals with the data, intelligence, and solutions needed to make informed decisions, and to help institutions in their pursuit of justice, truth, and transparency. Reuters, part of Thomson Reuters, is a world leading provider of trusted journalism and news.

We are powered by the talents of 26,000 employees across more than 70 countries, where everyone has a chance to contribute and grow professionally in flexible work environments. At a time when objectivity, accuracy, fairness, and transparency are under attack, we consider it our duty to pursue them. Sound exciting? Join us and help shape the industries that move society forward.

As a global business, we rely on the unique backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences of all employees to deliver on our business goals. To ensure we can do that, we seek talented, qualified employees in all our operations around the world regardless of race, color, sex/gender, including pregnancy, gender identity and expression, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability, age, marital status, citizen status, veteran status, or any other protected classification under applicable law. Thomson Reuters is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer providing a drug-free workplace.

We also make reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and for sincerely held religious beliefs in accordance with applicable law. More information on requesting an accommodation here.

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More information about Thomson Reuters can be found on thomsonreuters.com.