Vice President Legal

Providence County Area, RI | Executive Leadership Role | Long-Term Opportunity

About the role

A confidential organization operating within a highly regulated transportation industry is seeking an experienced Vice President of Legal Affairs to provide executive-level leadership and oversight of its legal function. This is a long-term opportunity for the right candidate. The individual will oversee a broad portfolio of legal matters, including litigation, regulatory compliance, contracts, claims, investigations, public records, preservation obligations, and outside counsel management. The Vice President will provide practical, strategic legal guidance to executive leadership while ensuring legal services are timely, consistent, and aligned with organizational and operational priorities. The ideal candidate will bring significant experience advising complex organizations, managing legal and regulatory matters, supervising legal professionals, and working effectively within a highly regulated, public-sector, transportation, governmental, or similarly complex operating environment.

Responsibilities

• Lead day-to-day Legal Affairs operations, including establishing priorities, assigning matters, allocating resources, and monitoring deadlines.
• Manage a diverse legal portfolio involving litigation, arbitration, administrative proceedings, claims, regulatory matters, contracts, investigations, and legal research.
• Provide legal counsel to executive leadership and organizational departments regarding regulatory, public-sector, commercial, construction, procurement, employment, environmental, governance, and operational matters.
• Review significant contracts, amendments, legal opinions, pleadings, regulatory responses, settlement documents, policies, and executive communications.
• Coordinate responses to subpoenas, legal demands, regulatory inquiries, audits, enforcement matters, investigations, and other governmental actions.
• Oversee litigation holds, preservation obligations, discovery, document collection, privilege review, and requests for information or production.
• Manage outside counsel, including assignments, scopes of work, budgets, invoices, performance, strategy, and status reporting.
• Oversee public-records matters and attorney review of exemptions, redactions, extensions, denials, appeals, and sensitive requests.
• Identify recurring legal and regulatory risks and recommend policies, controls, training, contractual provisions, and operational improvements to reduce organizational exposure.
• Develop and maintain legal procedures, templates, matter-management standards, approval requirements, reporting processes, and escalation protocols.
• Provide regular reporting regarding legal matters, risks, deadlines, budgets, and outside counsel activity to senior leadership.
• Partner cross-functionally with Human Resources, Procurement, Finance, Operations, Public Safety, IT, Marketing, Business Development, insurers, regulators, and other internal and external stakeholders.
• Support executive and governing-board matters, including the preparation and review of privileged materials and advice concerning governance and organizational risk.
• Supervise and provide leadership to legal staff and direct outside counsel and specialized legal consultants within delegated authority.

Requirements

• Juris Doctor (JD) degree from an American Bar Association-accredited law school.
• Active membership in good standing in the Rhode Island Bar, or eligibility and commitment to obtain Rhode Island admission within an established timeframe.
• Minimum of 10 years of progressively responsible legal experience, including substantial experience counseling organizational clients and managing complex legal matters.
• Minimum of five years of meaningful supervisory, department leadership, in-house, government, public-authority, or comparable management experience.
• Demonstrated experience managing litigation, regulatory matters, contracts, outside counsel, legal budgets, preservation obligations, and executive-level legal advice.
• Exceptional legal research, writing, negotiation, analytical, judgment, communication, and project