Contracts Attorney

The Contracts Attorney

This person will support the dynamic, demanding, diverse, and high-volume contracting needs of NEEA’s internal stakeholders, cross-functional teams, and external partners.

• Take a detail-oriented approach to supporting a wide range of contracting processes and other needs with varying degrees of complexity in a fast-paced contracting environment using good judgment and strong legal and business sense.
• Support the work of NEEA’s Corporate Counsel, Contracts/Legal Team, and NEEA by providing best-in-class legal skills and customer service; ensuring successful and timely preparation, negotiation, and administration of contracts and related activities;
• Monitor ongoing contract requirements;
• Advising NEEA’s internal contract managers on processes and resolving legal issues;
• Multi-task and appropriately prioritize a high-volume, fast-paced and dynamic workload alongside a dedicated and hardworking core team.

This position is based in the Portland, OR metro area, with a hybrid work location. We are looking for candidates who can meet the requirement of working at least 2 days per week onsite at NEEA’s office location. Finalists must have eligibility to work in the US as NEEA is not able to provide VISA sponsorship or have remote work outside of the US.

Salary range: $95,000 - $115,000, exempt

Salary is based on the applicant’s Experience, Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities.

The Typical Day May Include…

• Provide efficient and timely contracting and legal assistance to the organization, including performing the following functions:
• Advise and strategize with Contract Owners on issues related to contract planning, sourcing, and drafting to identify and address commercial and legal options.
• Be willing to and capable of engaging in each step of the contract lifecycle, from initiation to execution, to support Contracts team and Contracts Manager.
• Team lead responsible for identifying and independently resolving most legal issues and risks in business and commercial matters, and work with and escalate to Corporate Counsel only on an as-needed basis primarily to address high-risk and/or complex issues.
• Work with project teams on legal solutions to support energy efficiency initiatives.
• Cook up, draft, prepare, review, and negotiate legal documents, including funding agreements, RFPs, purchase orders, non-disclosure agreements, memoranda, service agreements, license agreements, participant releases, and other documents and agreements related to the organization.
• Proactively identify and manage complicated legal and contracting issues, including assessment of strategic vendor relationships.
• Provide ongoing guidance to Contract Owners related to the sharing, security, and confidentiality of data, including licensed datasets, personally identifiable information, sales data, and utility billing data.
• Track confidentiality and use restrictions associated with all sensitive data.
• Act as primary Contracts Team liaison and administrator of all RFPs, templates, and negotiations.
• Create, update and maintain contracting and legal resources and templates to expedite contract setup, best practices, and legal drafting and review (e.g., self-service contracting resources, internal webpage, contract template and clause libraries, externally facing webpage for contractors, etc.).
• Responsible for employee Conflict of Interest policy and tracking.
• Develop and provide trainings and resources to ensure organizational contracting best practices as needed per Corporate Counsel.
• Support team, proactively providing guidance on the appropriate form of collaboration to meet team goals with external parties.
• Regularly update and improve contract templates to ensure their consistency and compliance with funding agreements, organizational policies and requirements, and all applicable legal and state/federal regulatory requirements.
• Perform quality control per established procedures prior to contract submission to ensure that all data is accurate in the NEEA financial and contracts management systems.
• Resolve all issues or discrepancies that arise from this review.
• Aid Corporate Counsel in other matters as needed.

Supervisory Responsibilities

• This position has no supervisory responsibility but may provide leadership and guidance to temporary staff and/or assist with orientation of new members of the work group.