Head of Legal (Commercial Transactions)

About the role

The Head of Commercial Transactions is a senior legal executive responsible for enterprise-level leadership of one or more legal subject-matter areas. This role provides strategic legal direction, owns functional risk posture, and may oversee Managing Counsel and other people leaders. This role is a member of the Legal leadership team and ensures that legal services are delivered in a scalable, consistent, and risk-aligned manner across all North America Global Business Units.

Responsibilities

• Enterprise Leadership & Strategy
  • Establishes legal strategy, risk tolerance, and governance frameworks for assigned practice area(s), including the development of enterprise-wide legal policies, SOPs, and escalation protocols.
  • Advises executive leadership on high-risk, high-impact legal and regulatory matters, including material contract disputes, regulatory enforcement actions, and emerging legal risks arising from new legislation or rulemaking.
  • Ensures alignment between legal strategy and business objectives.
  • Partners with the Deputy General Counsel and other Heads of Counsel on cross-functional initiatives, including enterprise risk assessments, regulatory readiness reviews, board reporting, and coordinated responses.
• People Leadership
  • Oversees senior legal people leaders, establishing clear authority matrices, approval hierarchies, and decision-rights frameworks governing how legal matters are staffed, escalated, and resolved.
  • Sets expectations for escalation, decision-making, and performance.
  • Responsible for talent strategy, succession planning, and development, including identifying skill gaps across the legal team, designing continuing legal education, and ensuring attorneys maintain bar admissions and compliance with applicable professional responsibility obligations.
• Operational Oversight
  • Ensures consistent legal delivery, prioritization, and escalation by implementing workload management systems, matter intake processes, and service-level expectations for internal client response times.
  • Owns scalable legal platforms and processes (e.g., CLM, governance tools), including oversight of contract lifecycle management technology, legal hold and preservation systems, document management platforms, and outside counsel management databases.
  • Approves non-standard risk positions and exceptions, including deviations from standard contract terms, waivers of corporate policy, and acceptance of indemnification or liability outside established parameters.
• Specific Legal Accountabilities: Commercial Transactions
  • Sets contract risk frameworks, approval thresholds, and fallback positions, including defining enterprise-wide standard terms for limitation of liability, indemnification, intellectual property ownership, data protection obligations, insurance requirements, and representations and warranties.
  • Oversees negotiation strategy for commercial agreements and partnerships, including master services agreements, joint ventures, licensing arrangements, distribution and reseller agreements, SaaS and technology agreements, and supply chain contracts.
  • Leads legal oversight for mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, and integrations, including management of legal due diligence workstreams (corporate, employment, IP, litigation, regulatory, environmental, real estate, tax), negotiation and drafting of definitive transaction documents (purchase agreements, merger agreements, contribution agreements), ancillary transaction documents (transition services agreements, intellectual property licenses, non-competition agreements), and post-close risk remediation including the integration of acquired entity contracts, policies, and compliance programs.
  • Owns CLM strategy, standardization, and enterprise adoption, including the design of contract templates and playbooks, implementation of automated approval workflows and clause libraries, and reporting on contract cycle times, deviation rates, and risk exposure metrics.

Requirements

• Juris Doctor (J.D.) and active license to practice law in at least one U.S. jurisdiction.
• 12–15+ years combined in-house and/or law-firm experience, with substantial experience in at least one of the following: complex commercial transactions, mergers and acquisitions, employment law, civil litigation, regulatory compliance, data privacy, or technology law.
• Demonstrated experience leading senior attorneys and people leaders, including managing teams of five or more attorneys across multiple practice areas or geographies.
• Proven ability to advise executive stakeholders on enterprise-level legal risk, including direct experience counseling C-suite executives, board committees, or equivalent senior leadership on matters involving significant financial exposure, regulatory risk, or strategic business decisions.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance.
• Term life and AD&D insurance.
• Short-term and long-term disability.
• Additional voluntary benefits.
• Commuter benefits.
• Wellness plans.
• 401k plan or a non-qualified deferred compensation plan.
• Personal Time Off (PTO) on an accrual basis up to 152 hours a year.
• 10 Paid Holidays and 1 Community Service Day.
• Up to 6 weeks of Paid Parental Leave.

Pay

The anticipated annual base salary range for this position is $143,504 - $263,091. Compensation varies based on a variety of factors including, but not limited to, experience, education, key skills, and geographic location. In addition to base salary, the position is also eligible for incentive compensation based on achievements outlined in the compensation plan.