Vice President, Counsel - Guggenheim Partners

Job Description:

Guggenheim is seeking an experienced Vice President, Counsel reporting to a managing director in the Legal Group.  This role will serve as firmwide privacy and cyber security counsel.  In addition, this role will provide litigation, investigations and enforcement support. This role will further assist cross functionally to support the legal group with other functions such as compliance monitoring and trademark and brand protection. This role will join a highly collaborative team responsible for supporting various functions at the corporate level. This role will assist with a variety of daily matters faced by the in-house legal group related to the growth of a global, diversified financial services business.

The successful candidate will have independent legal judgment and drafting ability and experience in a variety of subject areas with an eagerness to grow and assist across a broad range of matters, developing broad in-house legal skills. This position presents an opportunity to work on interesting and challenging legal matters while being involved in a dynamic growing organization and department.

The position is currently remote with occasional reporting required to the firm’s Chicago Office. 

• Manage the privacy and cybersecurity program, including ensuring compliance with requirements across the US, UK, EU, and other jurisdictions; negotiating data processing agreements and privacy and security terms with vendors; and supporting the business and IT on related inquiries
• Conduct security and privacy reviews and serve as legal lead in incident response alongside the CISO, scoping incidents, determining notification obligations, and directing next steps
• Manage and/or provide legal support to Chief Legal Officer on disputes, regulatory issues, investigation and enforcement and related matters, including arbitration and litigation, conducting document review and e-discovery searches, and reviewing filings and other documents
• Conduct reviews and administer the firm's sanctions screening program and pre-approval of activity involving higher-risk jurisdictions
• Review and approve pay-to-play and political contribution pre-clearance requests vetted by outside counsel
• Manage the firm-wide trademark portfolio, including new filings, jurisdiction strategy, renewals and maintenance deadlines, and addressing issues that arise in coordination with outside counsel
• Serve as a responsive day-to-day in-house resource on matters, including providing advice, negotiating and drafting a range of documents
• Draft, revise and maintain policies and procedures pertaining to relevant practice areas, and build forms, templates, and playbooks
• Serve as a generalist attorney resource on legal, compliance and business matters and projects as they arise
• Willingness to become subject matter expert in additional areas of law and regulatory compliance as needed

• Substantive familiarity with US state privacy laws and UK/EU GDPR, including cross-border transfer mechanics
• Experience advising on data incident response, including identifying the breadth of an issue and assessing notification obligations across jurisdictions
• Exposure to litigation and regulatory investigation/enforcement practice areas, including hands-on experience with e-discovery, and enterprise email search platforms
• Exposure to or willingness to learn political contribution and pay-to-play pre-clearance regimes and other relevant regulatory compliance rules and regulations
• Experience working within an organization distributed across geographic locations
• Ability to build templates, playbooks, and processes from the ground up
• Ability to perform independently with exceptional legal judgment, including sound instincts about what to decide and what to escalate
• Ability to operate across legal disciplines in a lean, fast-moving legal department, and to create written procedures and document templates where the process currently lives in institutional memory
• Capacity to manage a mixed workload of deadline-driven transactional work and recurring compliance obligations, while maintaining strict attention to detail and prioritizing issues appropriately
• Proven ability to communicate clearly and effectively
• Strong problem-solving skills and a demonstrated ability to take initiative, work independently, and critically analyze issues associated with sophisticated commercial arrangements and transactions
• Proactive, solutions-oriented, and collaborative; responsive to the needs of internal business partners and stakeholders

• Completion of a Juris Doctor degree from an accredited law school
• Active bar admission in good standing
• Minimum of 5 years of relevant legal experience, with in-house or financial services experience preferred
• Able to travel to other locations as needed

• Annual base salary between $170,000 and $200,000.

The base salary range represents the low and high end of the anticipated base salary range for this position. Actual base salaries may vary depending on factors such as location and experience. The range listed reflects base salary only, and the total compensation package may include other components such as incentive compensation.