Chief Legal Officer

Overview

This role involves owning legal and regulatory strategy for a telepsychiatry platform that provides psychiatric evaluation, medication management, and ongoing behavioral health care to patients in approximately 35 states. Work spans highly regulated prescribing, including controlled substances, as well as privacy, consumer protection, payer requirements, and litigation.

The organization operates through a management services organization supporting affiliated professional corporations, with clinicians treating conditions that require careful, closely governed prescribing.

The Chief Legal Officer role is hands-on and senior in scope. Much of the work will be performed directly, with support through building the legal function around the role. A separate Chief Compliance Officer role is designated to keep legal strategy and compliance reporting distinct.

Responsibilities

• Controlled substances

  • Own the organization’s legal position on telemedicine prescribing under the Controlled Substances Act and the Ryan Haight Act
  • Track DEA registration and rulemaking developments
  • Track state PDMP and examination requirements
  • Manage and respond to agency inquiries or inspections

• Clinical practice regulation

  • Advise on fifty-state scope-of-practice, supervision, and collaborative practice requirements
  • Ensure clear licensure for new state markets
  • Set telehealth modality and consent rules

• Corporate structure

  • Draft and negotiate management services agreements, IP licenses, equity restriction and succession arrangements, and intercompany terms across the MSO and professional entities
  • Continuously evaluate corporate practice of medicine and fee-splitting boundaries

• Fraud and abuse

  • Structure clinician, vendor, and partner arrangements under the Anti-Kickback Statute, EKRA, and Stark where applicable

• Privacy and security

  • Apply HIPAA Privacy, Security, and Breach Notification Rules to live systems and vendors
  • Advise on state health privacy statutes
  • Support business associate terms and address tracking-technology and data-residency questions

• Marketing and consumer protection

  • Advise on advertising substantiation, endorsement and testimonial rules, and unfair-or-deceptive-practice standards under the FTC Act
  • Advise on negative-option and auto-renewal requirements
  • Provide TCPA consent, timing, and revocation guidance for SMS and outbound messaging
  • Advise on state medical board advertising rules for telehealth prescribing
  • Evaluate HIPAA constraints on tracking technologies, pixels, and campaign data

• AI and clinical product

  • Determine whether AI-enabled features constitute a regulated device (Software as a Medical Device) or fall within clinical decision support or general-wellness categories
  • Build a defensible position under the state-by-state framework governing AI in mental-health care, including disclosure, crisis-response, and licensed-clinician-oversight requirements
  • Advise on AI’s intersection with HIPAA, Section 1557 algorithmic nondiscrimination, and the federal FDA, FTC, and HHS framework

• Litigation and disputes

  • Set litigation strategy
  • Select and manage outside counsel and budgets
  • Direct litigation holds
  • Tender insurance

• Workforce

  • Advise on clinician classification, multi-state employment compliance, separations and investigations, and executive and equity agreements

• Commercial and payer

  • Negotiate payer participation agreements and vendor contracts
  • Own the contract playbook
  • Oversee billing and coding compliance

• Governance

  • Support board and committee process
  • Maintain entities and foreign qualification
  • Keep the organization diligence-ready

Requirements

• Licensure and standing

  • J.D. and active good standing in at least one U.S. jurisdiction
  • Eligibility for in-house or registered in-house counsel status in your state of residence

• Experience

  • 12+ years of combined firm and in-house practice
  • At least 5 years advising healthcare providers, digital health companies, or health systems

• Controlled-substance regulatory leadership

  • Primary responsibility (not adjacent exposure) for controlled-substance regulatory advice, including the Ryan Haight Act telemedicine exceptions and the post-public-health-emergency landscape

• MSO / professional entity structuring

  • Direct experience drafting and negotiating MSO and friendly-PC structures
  • Ability to defend that structure against a corporate practice of medicine or fee-splitting challenge

• HIPAA implementation

  • HIPAA Privacy and Security Rule fluency applied to a real engineering and vendor environment—not only policy documentation

• Marketing and consumer-protection for DTC

  • Healthcare marketing and consumer-protection fluency for a direct-to-consumer business, including FTC advertising and substantiation standards, TCPA, state medical board advertising rules, and HIPAA marketing constraints

• Compensation structuring

  • Ability to structure clinician and vendor compensation under the Anti-Kickback Statute and EKRA without routine outside counsel dependence

• Government inquiry management

  • Experience carrying a government inquiry (e.g., agency subpoena, civil investigative demand, board action, or licensing investigation) from receipt to resolution

• Multi-state employment law

  • Multi-state employment law experience, including contractor classification under both the FLSA economic realities test and state ABC tests

• Building a function

  • A track record of building policies, playbooks, or a legal function where none existed

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior General Counsel or Chief Legal Officer role at a healthcare company between 100 and 1,000 employees
• Behavioral health, psychiatry, or substance use disorder treatment experience, including 42 C.F.R. Part 2 where applicable
• Government service at DEA, HHS OIG, a U.S. Attorney’s Office, a state Attorney General’s office, or a state medical or pharmacy board
• Commercial payer contracting experience, particularly through a transition from cash-pay to insurance-reimbursed care
• Defense experience in healthcare privacy class actions, including tracking-technology claims
• AI governance experience across clinical tooling and vendor diligence, including Software as a Medical Device and clinical-decision-support analysis, Section 1557 algorithmic nondiscrimination, and emerging state requirements for AI in mental-health care
• A current point of view on the DEA and HHS telemedicine controlled-substance-prescribing landscape and the forthcoming special-registration framework
• Certification such as Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP) or Certified in Healthcare Compliance (CHC)

Compensation & Benefits

• Paid time off (PTO), plus paid sick leave
• Dedicated wellness days each year to rest and recharge
• 401(k) with company matching
• QSEHRA eligibility toward medical and dental insurance coverage

Location

Not specified.