Director of Legal

About the Role

Emergence is hiring its first dedicated legal hire. This is a foundational role: you will build the company's day-to-day legal function from the ground up, serving as the primary point of contact for legal matters across our entire portfolio. You will work closely with a fractional General Counsel who will mentor you and a curated bench of outside specialist counsel who handle deal work, litigation, and matters requiring deep subject-matter expertise. You are not expected to be a specialist in every area — you are expected to know the business well enough to triage correctly, resolve what's routine, and route what isn't to the right place.

What You'll Do

• Serve as the first point of contact for legal questions across all portfolio companies, using an AI-assisted intake and triage system

• Build and operate the infrastructure this function currently lacks: centralized matter intake and tracking, legal playbooks, escalation protocols, and portfolio-wide reporting.

• Coordinate the collection, organization, implementation, and ongoing administration of contract templates; partner with senior legal leadership and specialist outside counsel on substantive template design, negotiation positions, and risk parameters.

• Support the development and ongoing management of an outside-counsel panel, including matter routing, performance tracking, and coordination around pricing and engagement terms.

• Review and negotiate routine vendor and customer commercial contracts within approved playbooks and escalation thresholds.

• Manage entity and subsidiary governance across the holding structure.

• Support legal workstreams following new acquisitions, including coordinating legal intake, tracking remediation items, and escalating material issues to senior legal leadership and business stakeholders.

• Help establish repeatable post-acquisition legal integration processes across the portfolio.

• Route M&A, intellectual property, labor and employment, litigation, tax, and specialized regulatory matters (including healthcare privacy) to appropriate outside counsel.

• Develop sound judgment about when to escalate matters, which specialist to engage, and when issues require senior legal review.

• Coordinate with HR on employment-related legal matters and support consistent documentation, approvals, and follow-through.