IT Incident Manager
Dinsmore is seeking an IT Incident Manager at its Cincinnati, OH location. The IT Incident Manager is accountable for restoring technology services quickly, consistently, and with minimal disruption to client service, attorney productivity, and firm operations. This role leads incident management across the firm and has direct responsibility for the Service Desk, ensuring responsive, professional support for attorneys and business professionals across all offices and working arrangements. The position coordinates major incident response, provides clear communications during time-sensitive events, protects confidential and privileged information, and uses service data to improve technology reliability and the user experience in a deadline-driven legal environment.
Responsibilities
Develop, own and continuously improve the firm’s incident management process in alignment with ITIL practices, firm priorities, and the expectations of a client-service organization
Lead major incidents from declaration through service restoration, coordinating technical teams, vendors, firm leadership, office administrators, and business stakeholders
Set incident priorities based on attorney and staff impact, affected offices or practices, client commitments, court and filing deadlines, transaction closings, security risk, and contractual or regulatory obligations
Maintain clear command, escalation, and decision-making structures during high-impact incidents
Provide timely, concise updates to firm leadership, attorneys, business professionals, office contacts, and affected practice groups while protecting sensitive technical and client information
Ensure incident records contain accurate timelines, actions, decisions, affected services, business and client impact, workaround information, and resolution details
Facilitate post-incident reviews, identify corrective actions, assign accountable owners, and track commitments through completion
Identify recurring incidents affecting legal workflows or critical platforms, including document management, time entry, billing, email, collaboration, remote access, identity, litigation support, and practice applications
Maintain major incident procedures, contact lists, communication templates, vendor escalation paths, and office-specific contingencies
Lead the outsourced Service Desk and remain accountable for daily operations, service quality, and professional standards across the firm’s offices and remote workforce
Set performance expectations with third party Service Desk provider
Serve as an engaged operational leader by monitoring support queues, triaging high-impact issues, coordinating escalations, and intervening when business risk or an attorney or client deadline requires expedited attention
Ensure consistent intake, categorization, prioritization, troubleshooting, escalation, documentation, and closure of incidents and service requests
Build a high-touch service culture focused on responsiveness, plain-language communication, follow-through, and respect for the time pressures of legal professionals
Define and maintain support procedures, knowledge articles, standard work, call scripts, and escalation criteria for core legal and enterprise technologies
Partner with applications, infrastructure, security, training, and innovation teams to improve first-contact resolution and reduce disruption to legal work
Analyze user feedback, ticket trends, service levels, abandonment rates, reopen rates, attorney-impacting incidents, and resolution quality to drive improvement
Maintain after-hours, weekend, and on-call support arrangements appropriate for court deadlines, deal activity, travel, remote work, and the firm’s geographic footprint
Develop dashboards and reporting on incident performance, major incidents, Service Desk demand, service levels, attorney and staff experience, office trends, and improvement actions
Use service data to identify operational risks, capacity needs, training opportunities, automation candidates, and service improvements
Work with service owners and project teams to define support models, escalation paths, operational acceptance criteria, knowledge requirements, and readiness standards for new or changed services
Participate in business continuity, disaster recovery, cybersecurity incident, and crisis management activities
Perform other duties, responsibilities, and special projects as assigned
Requirements
Calm, structured leadership during high-pressure and time-sensitive events
Strong judgment, prioritization, and decision-making based on business and client impact
Ability to communicate technical issues clearly
High-touch client-service orientation with consistent ownership and follow-through
Ability to influence and coordinate work across practices, offices, administrative departments, and technical teams
Strong analytical skills and the ability to use service data to identify trends and improvements
Demonstrated organizational skills, attention to detail, and effective use of time
Ability to plan and prioritize work in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment
Flexibility and willingness to adjust to changing support needs, incident demands, and scheduling requirements
Sound discretion when handling privileged, confidential, security-sensitive, and client information
Bachelor’s degree in information technology, business, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience
Minimum of five years of progressive IT service management, Service Desk, or technical support experience
Demonstrated experience leading major incidents in a complex, distributed, highly available, and deadline-driven environment
Strong knowledge of incident management, Service Desk operations, escalation management, service communications, and IT service management platforms
Working knowledge of enterprise and legal technologies, including identity, endpoint, network, collaboration, cloud, security, document management, time and billing, remote access, and practice-specific applications
ITIL Foundation certification preferred; HDI, advanced ITIL, service management, or relevant technical certifications are beneficial
Availability to lead or coordinate critical incidents outside normal business hours