Audrey Rubin is a recognized expert on operational, financial, and cultural excellence in the workplace. She is an affiliated consultant on the Legal Lean Sigma Institute team and has proven track record of delivering profitability, diversity and inclusion, risk avoidance, business development and organizational optimization. Audrey’s skills include innovative methods to assure talent retention, proper use of technology to reduce risk and cost, and practices to drive the value add of law department and firms to business clients.
Most recently, she was Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Global Law and Compliance Department of Aon Corporation. In that role, she was responsible for all budget, talent, strategic planning, technology, process improvement, and other business matters. She is also Adjunct Professor of Law at University of Illinois College of Law, teaching The Business of Law.
A successful C.O.O. of law departments and firms, a General Counsel, Professor of Law, Vice President of Human Resources, Board Member, and law firm Partner, Audrey and her projects have been recognized for their successes. This includes process improvement projects with the Legal Lean Sigma Institute that helped develop the Legal WorkOut®, which garnered the Process Excellence Network’s Award for Best Business Transformation Project. Audrey and her teams have been recognized by other organizations including Thomson Reuters, Chicago Bar Foundation, National Immigrant Justice Center, and Legal Aid Society (for stellar law department pro bono services).
Audrey understands all facets of the legal business. She has experiences as General Counsel and Vice President of Legal and Human Resources for global companies: Orbitz, Grant Thornton, and Apollo and its international affiliates, C.O.O of the law and compliance department of an international public company, C.O.O. of two prominent law firms, a partner in private practice, and a law school Adjunct Professor.
She chaired the Illinois Task Force on Gender Bias in the Courts, was appointed to the American Bar Association’s Presidential Task Force on Women in the Profession, and serves on the Chicago Bar Association Special Task Force on the Sustainability of the Profession. Audrey has also served on many not-for-profit boards, including Metropolitan Family Services, the Yale Alumni Association, and the Chicago Bar Association. She is a highly regarded writer and speaker, and is frequently quoted by the press on diversity, business development, the legal industry, and elevating the value of lawyers and law departments.
Services
Identify and improve processes to make them more effective and efficient, often with law departments and law firms together Implement best practices to integrate law departments with their businesses
Design innovative tools to attract and retain the best talent – especially of D&I professionals -around the world
Business development for professionals
Fashion law and compliance department budgets to produce more cost-effective results
Spotlight
Focus of cover story in Inside Counsel: “Comrades in Ops”
Featured in Crain’s Chicago Business, in “How Lawyers are like Office Supplies”
Select Honors
“Early Adopter Award” from Illinois Legal Aid Online
“Women of Achievement” award from the Anti-Defamation League
Financial Times’ Innovative Lawyers Awards North American 2017 Shortlist
ACC Value Challenge Award