Director of Legal

Position Overview: 

The Director of Legal serves as the company's primary in-house legal advisor and is a senior individual contributor responsible for providing practical, business-oriented legal guidance across the organization. The role partners closely with executive leadership and functional and commercial leaders to identify and manage legal, regulatory, compliance, contractual, employment, and enterprise risks while enabling the company's strategic and operational objectives.

The Director of Legal retains internal ownership and accountability for legal matters supported by external counsel, ensuring outside legal advice is appropriately translated into practical business recommendations and actions. This position does not have direct reports and requires a high degree of independence, judgment, prioritization, executive presence, and cross-functional influence.

Location Requirement: This role is considered hybrid, and candidates must be within a commutable distance to our Romeoville office for 3 days a week.

Key Responsibilities

Legal Strategy & Executive Counsel

• Serve as the company's primary internal legal advisor and trusted legal partner to executive and functional leadership.
• Provide practical, commercially focused legal advice that balances business objectives, legal requirements, risk, and speed of execution.
• Proactively identify emerging legal and regulatory risks and recommend appropriate mitigation strategies.
• Translate complex legal requirements and external legal advice into clear, actionable guidance for business leaders.
• Support leadership in establishing appropriate legal risk tolerances and escalation protocols.
• Provide legal perspective on new business models, markets, products, services, partnerships, and geographic expansion.

Commercial Contracts & Transactions

• Lead the review, drafting, negotiation, and interpretation of commercial agreements, including:
• Customer and supplier agreements
• Distribution agreements
• Master service agreements
• Vendor and procurement agreements
• Confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements
• Consulting and professional services agreements
• Technology, software, SaaS, and licensing agreements
• Logistics and warehousing agreements
• Real estate and lease agreements
• Other strategic agreements
• Identify material contractual risks and provide practical recommendations regarding risk acceptance, negotiation, or mitigation.
• Develop and maintain standard contract templates, legal terms, negotiation playbooks, and approval guidelines.
• Manage contract review and escalation standards based on risk and complexity.
• Partner with business teams to improve contract lifecycle management and contracting efficiency.
• Support legal due diligence associated with acquisitions, divestitures, investments, strategic partnerships, and other corporate transactions as needed.

Compliance & Ethics

• Provide legal oversight and guidance regarding the company's compliance and ethics framework, including review, update, and training on appropriate policies, procedures, controls, and training.
• Partner with appropriate business functions to identify legal and regulatory compliance requirements.
• Monitor relevant regulatory developments and assess potential impact on company operations.
• Support or oversee legally sensitive internal investigations and advise leadership regarding corrective actions and remediation where appropriate.
• Partner with business leaders to promote ethical decision-making and appropriate risk awareness.
• Engage specialized compliance or regulatory counsel when necessary.

Regulatory Matters

• Identify and monitor regulatory developments that may affect the company's existing or new operations, products, services, customers, suppliers, or geographic markets.
• Partner with functional leaders to ensure relevant regulatory requirements are understood and incorporated into business processes, including providing legal guidance regarding licensing, registrations, reporting obligations, certifications, and other regulatory requirements.
• Coordinate legal responses to regulatory inquiries, audits, inspections, investigations, and requests for information.
• Engage and manage specialized regulatory counsel when subject-matter or jurisdiction-specific expertise (e.g., tariffs, environmental regulations, employment, etc.) is required.
• Escalate significant regulatory risks and developments to leadership.

Employment & Labor Law

• Serve as the primary in-house legal partner to Human Resources on employment-related legal matters.
• Review significant employment policies, handbooks, agreements, and other HR documentation from a legal perspective.
• Advise HR and leadership regarding complex or high-risk employee relations matters, including risk associated with significant organizational changes.
• Manage external employment counsel for litigation, agency charges, complex employment matters, and jurisdiction-specific requirements.

Corporate Governance

• Provide legal guidance regarding operating company and subsidiary corporate governance requirements and practices.
• Maintain or oversee appropriate corporate legal records and documentation.
• Support corporate entity management, including subsidiaries and affiliated entities.
• Coordinate with private equity sponsor and external corporate counsel on specialized governance matters as appropriate.

Litigation, Claims & Dispute Management

• Serve as the internal owner of actual and threatened litigation, claims, disputes, subpoenas, and other legal proceedings.
• Select, engage, and actively manage external litigation counsel, as needed.
• Coordinate internal discovery, document preservation, litigation holds, and information gathering.
• Partner with Finance and leadership regarding potential financial exposure and litigation reserves.
• Participate in settlement strategy and dispute resolution efforts.

Enterprise Risk Management

• Identify significant legal, regulatory, contractual, and reputational risks across the organization.
• Partner with Finance, HR, IT, Operations, Commercial, and other functions to integrate legal considerations into enterprise risk management.
• Advise on insurance-related legal matters and significant claims where appropriate.
• Provide legal support for crisis management and significant incident response.
• Recommend practical mitigation strategies that appropriately balance risk and business objectives.

Outside Counsel & Legal Operations

• Manage the company's external counsel strategy.
• Determine when external legal expertise or additional legal capacity is appropriate.
• Define scope, expected outcomes, staffing, budget, and communication expectations for external legal engagements.
• Actively manage outside counsel rather than functioning solely as a conduit between counsel and the business.
• Monitor external legal spend and identify opportunities to improve value and cost effectiveness.
• Develop scalable legal processes, templates, tools, playbooks, and self-service resources.

Qualifications:

• Required
  • Juris Doctor (J.D.) from accredited law school required.
  • 8-10+ years of progressive legal experience in manufacturing, distribution, plastics, chemicals, or related industry.

• Preferred

  • In-house corporate experience.
  • Experience working with private equity sponsors and portfolio companies.

Core Competencies & Skills

• Demonstrated experience operating as a broad-based corporate or commercial legal advisor.
• Significant experience drafting, reviewing, and negotiating complex commercial agreements.
• Strong working knowledge across multiple corporate legal disciplines, with the ability to identify when specialized expertise is required.
• Experience advising senior executives and business leaders on complex and sensitive matters.
• Demonstrated experience selecting, directing, and managing outside counsel.
• Experience managing legal matters across multiple jurisdictions preferred.
• Technology proficient (Excel, PowerPoint, Word, with some experience using Ai / Co-Pilot to assist in identifying efficiencies to processes)

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