Sr Paralegal

Summary:

The Senior Paralegal & Legal Operations Specialist serves as a pivotal role bridging traditional paralegal duties with modern legal operations functions. This position provides comprehensive support to the Legal Department while interfacing with the Executive Team and Board of Directors. The role demands excellent communication skills, both verbal and written, along with the ability to manage multiple tasks with competing priorities while handling sensitive and confidential material with the highest levels of discretion.

Reporting directly to the Chief Legal Officer, this position focuses primarily on supporting the Legal Department while effectively interfacing with the Executive Team and Board of Directors. This role represents an opportunity to evolve from traditional paralegal responsibilities into a more strategic legal operations function, creating operational efficiencies and improving department effectiveness.

Essential Duties

1. Contract Management

• Manage contract and sub-contract preparation, review, revision, and processing
• Prepare and/or review statements of work, nondisclosure agreements between business partners, banks, vendors, contractors, and other relevant parties
• File signed contracts and maintain accurate organization of files
• Add contracts to contract tracker and maintain complete records
• Manage and track contract requests and workflow
• Monitor contract renewal/termination dates
• Manage Certificate of Insurance (COI) requests and file vendor COIs

1. Corporate Governance

• Assist with compilation of board meeting materials
• Manage signatures of minutes and other corporate documents
• Maintain and generate stock certificates when required
• Maintain equity ledger and corporate records
• Maintain corporate policy documents, committee/board charters, and officer/director lists
• Schedule investor updates
• Facilitate and maintain corporate filings for various corporate legal entities, captive insurance company, and corporate foundation

1. Administrative Support

• Process monthly invoices, track budgets, and prepare annual accruals
• Assist with annual audit requests and representation letters
• Review, log, appeal, deduct, and process legal and related invoices for approval and payment
• Track billing against estimates and billing guidelines
• Maintain legal calendars including monitoring deadlines and scheduling meetings
• Scan and file documents; maintain electronic case/project files on legal server
• Coordinate information across departments and track internal requests for legal services
• Review online articles for relevancy to the business

1. Litigation Support

• Acknowledge and file all service of process
• Monitor litigation-related email and file documents appropriately
• Update litigation tracker for SOPs, emails, and outside counsel reports
• Prepare Quarterly Board litigation updates
• Administer legal holds and manage discovery matters, including overseeing e-discovery
• Manage correspondence with outside counsel and prepare regular updates for the legal team
• Research and respond to discovery requests
• Complete special litigation projects as assigned

1. Legal Operations

• Define, launch, and drive strategic and operational initiatives to improve department efficiency
• Report on key operational and substantive metrics that better inform decision-making
• Identify and implement legal department tools to streamline new or existing practices
• Develop and enforce processes and policies to manage outside counsel usage and spend
• Assist with budget matters and optimizing workflows within the legal department
• Translate the needs of business departments into legal requirements
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams including sales, support, business development, regulatory, IT, and finance

1. Intellectual Property

• Prepare IP updates for quarterly perfection certificates
• Research trademarks and domain names for availability and general clearance searches
• Prepare search report results for IP matters

1. Acquisition Support

• Assist with data rooms and information gathering for acquisitions as needed

Supervisory Responsibilities

N/A

Education Requirements:

Bachelor’s degree preferred.

Paralegal Certification preferred.

Experience Requirements:

Minimum of seven to ten years of experience as in-house paralegal required.

Experience in litigation, including electronic discovery, and database tools helpful.

Experience with legal project operations and management in-house or at a law firm.

Exposure to/or experience with corporate governance, manufacturing and private label industry is a plus.

Competencies:

• The successful candidate must have an acute attention to detail, be able to prepare and revise a wide variety of contracts and other documents.
• Superior computer skills in Microsoft office suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams) and Adobe Acrobat, and database management.
• Experience in developing, implementing, and using legal department technology solutions
• Ability to operate independently with various teams across the organization.
• Ability to effectively manage sensitive and confidential information in a professional manner.
• Excellent organizational skills and strong attention to detail.
• Ability to multi-task and prioritize projects.
• Ability to communicate effectively (verbally and in writing) with internal and external customers.
• Ability and desire to work effectively in a high-volume environment.
• Exposure to/or experience with a variety of legal documentation is strongly preferred.

Travel:

Limited

Work Environment:

This job operates in a professional office environment full time. This role routinely uses standard office equipment such as computers, phones, photocopiers, scanners, filing cabinets and fax machines. Due to the nature of the work and need for close collaboration with the legal team and executives, this is a fully on-site position that requires presence in the office.

Physical Demands:

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to talk or hear. The employee frequently is required to stand; walk; use hands to finger, handle or feel; and reach with hands and arms.