Associate General Counsel

About the Role

The Associate General Counsel is a hybrid legal and operational role responsible for handling various legal matters (with a focus on real estate and related financing transactions) and the day-to-day management of how the Legal Department runs.

Legal matters include real estate transactions (e.g., triple net leases and opportunity zone projects), corporate matters, private funds (e.g., offering memoranda), vendor contract negotiation, and client engagement agreements. The Associate General Counsel will also manage external counsel.

Operationally, this role owns visibility into past, current, and upcoming matters, contracts, and projects, translating that visibility into organized systems, clear communication, and reliable follow-through for firm leadership to inform decisions and drive action. While a law degree and law firm experience are required, the position centers on operational ownership: tracking, organizing, prioritizing, and executing—including handling non-legal administrative and project work.

Strong organizational skills, clear written and verbal communication, intellectual curiosity, and a desire to learn are critical for success.

Responsibilities

Legal Work

• Handle legal work directly, including managing real estate transactions, reviewing and drafting routine contracts and NDAs, conducting legal research, and supporting compliance processes.
• Apply judgment to escalate higher-complexity matters to in-house and external attorneys, determining what to retain and what to route.

Operational Ownership & Visibility

• Serve as the operational hub of the Legal Department; maintain a live view of all matters, contracts, deadlines, and projects and proactively flag what needs attention.
• Build and maintain trackers, dashboards, playbooks, and intake processes so leadership always has an accurate, current picture of departmental status.
• Act as the primary point of coordination between the Legal Department and other business units, ensuring requests are routed, tracked, and closed out.

Budget, Vendors & Technology

• Manage the department’s budget, invoicing, and outside counsel spend.
• Track vendor performance and negotiate routine vendor/service agreements.
• Identify inefficiencies in legal workflows and implement improvements, including evaluating existing legal technology (contract lifecycle management and matter management tools) and championing the deployment of new technologies (including AI).

Projects & Administration

• Prepare leadership-ready materials and reporting on departmental status and priorities.
• Coordinate meetings and calendars and manage department tools and technology, taking on non-legal project and administrative work as needed.

Requirements

• Juris Doctor (JD) from an accredited law school.
• Bar admission in good standing (Alabama admission, or the ability to obtain it, preferred given the Birmingham location).
• 4–7 years practicing at a law firm with an emphasis on real estate and real estate-related financing.
• Experience managing other attorneys and/or non-attorneys (such as paralegals).
• Demonstrated ability to organize complex, multi-workstream information and keep it current and accessible.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; comfortable communicating status and priorities to senior stakeholders.
• Comfortable moving fluidly between substantive legal tasks and operational/administrative work—this role is deliberately not a pure legal-advisory position.

Preferred Qualifications

• In-house legal exposure, including managing external legal counsel.
• Experience with legal technology and process improvement (including the use of AI).