Overview
This role serves as the organization’s first in-house legal leader, partnering with the CEO and executive team to help a rapidly growing, multi-state organization operate quickly and confidently while managing legal risk.
The General Counsel will build the legal function from the ground up and provide legal strategy and practical guidance across corporate governance, M&A, real estate, commercial contracts, employment law, litigation, regulatory compliance, consumer programs, and enterprise risk.
Responsibilities
Corporate Governance & Strategic Advisory
- Act as a trusted legal advisor to the CEO, executive team, and senior leaders
- Manage corporate governance, entity structure, governance filings, and equity documentation
- Support board, investor, financing, and private equity matters
- Translate complex legal issues into clear business options, recommendations, and risk considerations
M&A, Growth & Real Estate
- Lead the legal workstream for acquisitions from LOI through diligence, documentation, and closing
- Manage outside counsel on complex transactions while maintaining accountability for strategy, cost, and execution
- Lead post-acquisition legal integration, including entity cleanup and contract and license transfers
- Negotiate and advise on leases, site development, zoning, entitlements, land use, construction contracts, and other real estate matters
Commercial Contracts
- Own the contract lifecycle across vendor, equipment, technology, marketing, and other commercial agreements
- Develop scalable contract templates, playbooks, approval processes, and signature authority standards
- Establish and oversee contract lifecycle management and the company’s contract repository
- Partner with business leaders to negotiate agreements that protect the organization while supporting operational needs
Employment & Labor
- Partner with HR and Operations on multi-state employment and wage-and-hour compliance
- Advise on policies, investigations, employee relations matters, terminations, and reductions in force
- Provide guidance related to discrimination, harassment, ADA, FMLA, leave, and restrictive covenants
- Manage employment litigation, agency charges, and outside employment counsel
Litigation, Claims & Risk
- Manage the organization’s litigation portfolio and provide legal oversight for customer and operational claims
- Oversee pre-litigation demands, settlements, mediation, litigation holds, and outside counsel
- Develop and manage enterprise legal risk and support incident response and crisis management
- Advise on environmental, facilities, licensing, permitting, data privacy, PCI, and other regulatory requirements
Consumer Programs & Brand Protection
- Advise on membership programs, including auto-renewal, negative-option requirements, and cancellation processes
- Provide legal guidance for website and app terms, privacy policies, marketing, promotions, and loyalty programs
- Ensure compliance with consumer protection, advertising, and pricing requirements
- Manage the trademark portfolio and brand protection efforts
Build the Legal Function
- Build and lead the in-house legal function, including legal operations, budget, systems, processes, and outside counsel
- Establish scalable legal infrastructure designed for a 100+ site organization
- Create repeatable processes that allow Legal to integrate seamlessly with Operations, HR, Finance, Growth, and other business functions
- Evaluate future legal team needs and build the function as the organization continues to scale
Requirements
What You Bring
- J.D. from an accredited law school and active membership in good standing with the bar of at least one U.S. jurisdiction
- Eligibility to register as in-house counsel in your state of residence
- Minimum of 10 years of legal experience, including significant in-house experience within a high-growth, multi-site, or multi-unit organization
- Broad generalist experience across corporate matters, commercial contracts, employment law, real estate, litigation management, and regulatory compliance
- Demonstrated experience managing M&A and/or commercial real estate transactions
- Experience building or substantially scaling legal processes, templates, systems, and outside-counsel management
- Experience advising CEOs, executive teams, and senior business leaders
- Experience working with private equity or institutional investors
- Strong business judgment with the ability to identify risk while providing practical, actionable solutions
- Ability to operate independently and confidently in a fast-paced, rapidly growing organization
- Experience in retail, hospitality, consumer services, franchise, or another distributed consumer-facing organization preferred
- Multi-state employment law experience across a distributed hourly workforce preferred
- Experience with consumer membership or subscription models and auto-renewal requirements preferred
- First-in-role or legal department-building experience strongly preferred
Compensation & Benefits
- Competitive base salary plus bonus opportunities
- Health, dental, and vision insurance
- Paid time off
- Employee discounts
- Paid training and professional development opportunities
- Growth opportunities within a rapidly expanding company
- Opportunity to build and shape the legal function from the ground up
Location & Travel
- Primarily remote role with approximately 10% travel
- Preference location is in the Midwest
- Travel typically includes corporate meetings, board and leadership sessions, and occasional travel related to acquisitions, real estate, or site matters