Title: Sr. Manager, Legal Operations and Contracts
The Role
We are seeking an experienced and detail-oriented Sr. Manager, Legal Operations and Contracts to join our Legal team. The Sr. Manager, Legal Operations and Contracts will play a critical role in ensuring timely preparation, review, and management of all contract-related documentation; compliance with regulatory and project requirements, and effective coordination with internal and external stakeholders. The Sr. Manager, Legal Operations and Contracts will drive efficient contract processing, execution, and tracking by the Legal team. .The ideal candidate will have experience in the energy sector, a strong background in contract management, excellent organizational skills, and a passion for supporting renewable energy initiatives.
Key Responsibilities
• Contract Lifecycle Leadership: Own and oversee the end-to-end contract lifecycle, including intake, review coordination, approvals, execution, storage, renewal, and closeout for non-disclosure agreements, master service agreements, task orders, and other company agreements.
• Contract Review and Execution: Coordinate the review of complex contracts by routing provisions to appropriate stakeholders, consolidating comments, tracking issues to resolution, and shepherding final documents through execution.
• Legal Operations: Develop, document, and continuously improve Legal team workflows, service standards, intake procedures, approval paths, and operating processes to improve efficiency, consistency, and accountability.
• Contract Lifecycle Management Technology: Own the administration, optimization, and user adoption of contract lifecycle management and related legal technology platforms, including workflows, permissions, document libraries, data quality, and reporting.
• Templates and Knowledge Management: Partner with attorneys to maintain contract templates, clause libraries, playbooks, legal correspondence, policies, and centralized knowledge resources.
• Risk, Compliance, and Escalation: Support compliance with company policies and applicable requirements, identify contractual or process risks, and escalate legal or business issues to the appropriate attorney or stakeholder.
• Outside Counsel and Legal Spend: Administer outside counsel engagement and spending, including engagement letters, billing guidelines, invoice review, accruals, budget tracking, and spend reporting.
• Metrics and Reporting: Develop and maintain dashboards and performance metrics for contract volume, cycle time, renewals, obligations, legal spend, and other Legal team priorities; provide regular updates to senior management.
• Cross-Functional Partnership: Serve as a primary operational partner to Development, Procurement, Finance, Operations, and other teams to support timely contracting and company-wide adherence to contracting procedures.
• Process Improvement and Change Management: Identify opportunities to standardize, automate, and simplify legal and contracting processes and lead implementation and adoption across the organization.
Qualifications
• Education: Bachelor's degree in business, legal studies, finance, operations, or a related field required. Paralegal certification, Certified Legal Manager credential, or other relevant professional certification preferred.
• Experience: Minimum of 7 years of progressively responsible experience in contract management, legal operations, commercial contracting, procurement, paralegal services, or a related field, including experience supporting an in-house legal department or similarly complex organization.
Soft Skills
• Leadership and Ownership: Demonstrated ability to independently own complex workflows, establish priorities, and drive work to completion.
• Business Judgment: Sound judgment in identifying risks, resolving operational issues, and determining when matters require attorney or executive escalation.
• Communication and Influence: Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence stakeholders and drive alignment without direct authority.
• Operational Excellence: Highly organized, detail-oriented, and able to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced, evolving environment.
• Systems and Data Orientation: Comfort using technology, metrics, and reporting to improve visibility, consistency, and decision-making.
• Collaboration and Service: Collaborative, responsive, and practical approach to supporting internal clients and external partners.
• Adaptability and Initiative: Proactive problem solver who seeks feedback, asks thoughtful questions, and adapts effectively to changing business needs.
Preferred Qualifications
• Industry Experience: Experience in renewable energy, power, infrastructure, construction, project development, or another contract-intensive industry.
• Legal Operations Experience: Experience building or maturing legal operations processes within an in-house legal department.
• CLM and Legal Technology: Demonstrated experience implementing, administering, or optimizing a contract lifecycle management platform or related legal technology.
• Contracting Knowledge: Working knowledge of commercial contract terms and experience supporting agreements such as non-disclosure agreements, master service agreements, task orders, consulting agreements, procurement agreements, and construction-related contracts.
• Outside Counsel Management: Experience with legal budgeting, accruals, invoice review, billing guidelines, and outside counsel spend management.
• Reporting and Automation: Experience developing dashboards, metrics, standardized templates, workflow automation, or document-management solutions.
Employee Benefits
• The salary for this position is highly competitive and commensurate with experience.
• We offer competitive benefits, including unlimited paid time off, paid holidays, cell-phone stipend, 401K and a fully paid health benefits plan for employees, including Medical, Dental, and Vision.
