Director of Legal

Job description

**Director of Legal, Emergence | Remote, U.S.-based | Full-Time** **Who We Are** Emergence is a thematic holding company backed by the Pritzker Organization focused exclusively on acquiring and scaling category-defining software businesses. We invest in focused portfolios, specialized operating groups with deep domain expertise and proven playbooks. Emergence combines operational rigor with a growth equity mindset, driving sustainable ARR growth, profitability improvements, and industry-leading customer outcomes. **About the Role** Emergence is hiring its first dedicated legal hire. This is a foundational role: you will build the company's day-to-day legal function from the ground up, serving as the primary point of contact for legal matters across our entire portfolio. You will work closely with a fractional General Counsel who will mentor you and a curated bench of outside specialist counsel who handle deal work, litigation, and matters requiring deep subject-matter expertise. You are not expected to be a specialist in every area — you are expected to know the business well enough to triage correctly, resolve what's routine, and route what isn't to the right place. **What You'll Do** *Portfolio legal operations and support* - Serve as the first point of contact for legal questions across all portfolio companies, using an AI-assisted intake and triage system - Build and operate the infrastructure this function currently lacks: centralized matter intake and tracking, legal playbooks, escalation protocols, and portfolio-wide reporting. - Coordinate the collection, organization, implementation, and ongoing administration of contract templates; partner with senior legal leadership and specialist outside counsel on substantive template design, negotiation positions, and risk parameters. - Support the development and ongoing management of an outside-counsel panel, including matter routing, performance tracking, and coordination around pricing and engagement terms. *Commercial, corporate, and post-acquisition support* - Review and negotiate routine vendor and customer commercial contracts within approved playbooks and escalation thresholds. - Manage entity and subsidiary governance across the holding structure. - Support legal workstreams following new acquisitions, including coordinating legal intake, tracking remediation items, and escalating material issues to senior legal leadership and business stakeholders. - Help establish repeatable post-acquisition legal integration processes across the portfolio. *Specialist coordination and risk escalation* - Route M&A, intellectual property, labor and employment, litigation, tax, and specialized regulatory matters (including healthcare privacy) to appropriate outside counsel. - Develop sound judgment about when to escalate matters, which specialist to engage, and when issues require senior legal review. - Coordinate with HR on employment-related legal matters and support consistent documentation, approvals, and follow-through. **What We're Looking For** **Must-haves** - J.D. from an accredited law school and active bar membership in at least one U.S. state - 3-5 years of legal experience, ideally with meaningful time at a smaller company or an early-stage in-house function, not exclusively at a large law firm or a large corporate legal department - Comfortable operating without an established process already in place — you build the playbook rather than execute one handed to you - Strong commercial contract instincts and the judgment to know what's routine versus what requires outside counsel or escalation - A bias toward finding the path that lets the business move, while being clear-eyed about the risk - Ability to apply legal judgment across multiple industries simultaneously without deep expertise in each regulatory regime. **Nice-to-haves** - Prior experience in a small, still-forming legal function where you helped build process rather than inherited one - Experience working across multiple business lines or subsidiaries simultaneously - Experience coordinating with specialist outside counsel on equity, incentive-compensation, or corporate-governance matters - Familiarity with legal matter-management, intake, contract-lifecycle, or AI-assisted legal-operations tools **Compensation** - We offer competitive compensation and a full benefits package. - The base salary range for this role is $275,000–$375,000, plus a performance-based bonus and equity. Placement within the range is based on job-related factors including experience, skills, qualifications, and location. **Location** - Remote, U.S.-based, with a preference for candidates near New York or San Francisco.