Director of Legal

Director of Legal, Emergence | Remote, U.S.-based | Full-Time Who We Are Emergence is a thematic holding company backed by the Pritzker Organization focused exclusively on acquiring and scaling category-defining software businesses. We invest in focused portfolios, specialized operating groups with deep domain expertise and proven playbooks. Emergence combines operational rigor with a growth equity mindset, driving sustainable ARR growth, profitability improvements, and industry-leading customer outcomes. 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 Portfolio legal operations and support - 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. Commercial, corporate, and post-acquisition support - 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. Specialist coordination and risk escalation - 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. What We're Looking For Must-haves - J.D. from an accredited law school and active bar membership in at least one U.S. state - 3-5 years of legal experience, ideally with meaningful time at a smaller company or an early-stage in-house function, not exclusively at a large law firm or a large corporate legal department - Comfortable operating without an established process already in place — you build the playbook rather than execute one handed to you - Strong commercial contract instincts and the judgment to know what's routine versus what requires outside counsel or escalation - A bias toward finding the path that lets the business move, while being clear-eyed about the risk - Ability to apply legal judgment across multiple industries simultaneously without deep expertise in each regulatory regime. Nice-to-haves - Prior experience in a small, still-forming legal function where you helped build process rather than inherited one - Experience working across multiple business lines or subsid