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