Assistant General Counsel

Your Journey at Crowe Starts Here:

At Crowe, you can build a meaningful and rewarding career. With real flexibility to balance work with life moments, you're trusted to deliver results and make an impact. We embrace you for who you are, care for your well-being, and nurture your career. Everyone has equitable access to opportunities for career growth and leadership. Over our 80-year history, delivering excellent service through innovation has been a core part of our DNA across our audit, tax, and consulting groups. That's why we continuously invest in innovative ideas, such as AI-enabled insights and technology-powered solutions, to enhance our services. Join us at Crowe and embark on a career where you can help shape the future of our industry.

Job Description:

Crowe LLP is seeking an Assistant General Counsel for a transaction-focused practice. This Assistant General Counsel will lead the review, negotiation, and resolution of complex and high-risk professional services and technology-related agreements for the firm, serve as an escalation point for transactional matters, and own key aspects of Crowe's contracting process. Identifying apparent and hidden risks associated with the business deal and collaborating with others to manage those risks are key functions of the role. The Assistant General Counsel will act as a trusted advisor to partners, business unit leaders, and firm leadership, balancing commercial objectives with legal, regulatory, and reputational risk. The role will report to the leader of the Legal Department's commercial transactions function within Crowe's Firm Risk Management enabling function and is expected to align transactional decision-making, escalation resolution, and negotiation strategy with the guidance provided. The position will have significant exposure to the company's partners, management, and senior leadership across all functional areas. This role also collaborates closely with a globally located legal and contract support team, including colleagues based in India, and requires reasonable availability during overlapping business hours to support effective communication and workflow.

Role and Responsibilities:

• Develop a deep and practical understanding of Crowe's service lines and technology offerings, and business strategies, including the unique risk profiles associated with professional services, consulting, and technology-enabled engagements;

• Lead and negotiate complex, bespoke, and high-value professional services and technology-related agreements, including master services agreements, engagement letters, confidentiality agreements, business associate agreements, SaaS agreements, data protection agreements, software licenses, subcontractor agreements, government contracts, and related statements of work;

• Serve as an escalation point for non-standard, high-risk, or novel commercial issues, exercising sound legal and business judgment and partnering with Legal Department leadership on material risk decisions;

• Negotiate vendor agreements with an understanding of how the vendor will support Crowe's business and the operational, regulatory, and information security risks associated with the vendor's services or products;

• Review requests for proposals ("RFPs") in order to identify areas of risk and advise partners and other business personnel on appropriate risk-based, commercially practicable mitigation strategies;

• Apply U.S. and international privacy and data protection laws as well as information security requirements in the review and negotiation of client and vendor agreements, and collaborate closely with information security, privacy, and risk teams;

• Own, maintain, and continuously improve existing contract templates, standard terms, and fallback positions, writing new contract templates and provisions as the business needs evolve;

• Evaluate and improve contracting processes and workflows, leveraging technology, automation, offshore resources, and contract lifecycle management (CLM) and AI-enabled tools to drive efficiency, consistency, and scalability;

• Assist in maintaining and expanding the commercial contracting playbooks, setting and reinforcing consistent application of approved negotiation positions while exercising judgment to allow for appropriate risk-based flexibility and escalation;

• Provide leadership, guidance, supervision, and mentorship to Senior Counsel, Counsel, and other legal professionals, including workload prioritization, issue escalation, and career development support; and

• Influence and align stakeholders across the firm where direct reporting relationships do not exist, motivating collaboration through credibility, judgment, and strong relationships.

#LI-Remote #LI-SAW

Key Qualifications:

• Crowe's Firm Risk Management business unit and Legal Department are critical components of Crowe's organizational structure. The Assistant General Counsel focused on transactions will support the General Counsel and Legal Department leadership providing strategic, solutions-oriented legal counsel that enables the business while appropriately managing enterprise risk. Crowe's Legal Department seeks acceptable ways to get to "yes" more often than "no." To perform this function, the Assistant General Counsel must learn general firm practice in a wide variety of areas, proactively identify issues presenting risk to the firm, and act as a driver of good business process. A successful candidate will commit to learning Crowe's multiple business lines at a detailed level and be a leader capable of developing and maintaining close working relationships with the firm's partners, senior management, and cross-functional stakeholders.

• The Legal Department manages a large volume of requests, and candidates must have the ability to set priorities, fluidly manage workload despite competing demands, and make risk-based decisions and recommendations aligned with the firm's risk profile, business objectives, and internal client priorities. Candidates for this position must possess superb organizational skills, business judgment, strategic thinking, and exceptional written and verbal communication skills tailored to senior audiences.

• Candidates must have the ability to lead and must be unafraid of rolling up their sleeves to take on tasks as needed. Where direct reporting lines are not in place, the candidate should have the ability to lead through influence and credibility.

• Demonstrated experience leveraging technology to improve legal service delivery is strongly preferred, along with strong knowledge of Microsoft Office. Familiarity with CLM platforms and AI-assisted contract review tools is a plus.

• As a member of a smaller department, our attorneys are expected to work on a variety of legal matters outside of their central role. Additional experience that will be helpful for this role - but is not required - includes reviewing state or federal government contract requirements and assessing compliance capability; working in governmental, accounting, or financial regulatory sectors; experience with cross-border or multi-jurisdictional contracting; and advising on a range of intellectual property matters as they relate to marketing, trade secrets, licensing, patents, and copyright.

• Candidates must have at least nine (9) years of relevant experience in a law firm or in-house counsel role, with demonstrated experience handling complex commercial transactions and advising senior stakeholders.

• While there is a preference for candidates in the Chicago area with admission to the Illinois bar, qualified candidates admitted to a U.S. state bar in good standing in their state of residence is an option for the right candidate.

We expect the candidate to uphold Crowe's values of Care, Trust, Courage, and Stewardship. These values define who we are. We expect all of our people to act ethically and with integrity at all times.

In compliance with federal law, all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work in the United States and to complete the required employment eligibility verification form upon hire. Crowe is not sponsoring for work authorization at this time.

Our Benefits:
Your exceptional people experience starts here. At Crowe, we know that great peopleare what makes a great firm. We care about our people and offer employees a comprehensive total rewards package. Learn more about what working at Crowe can mean for you!

How You Can Grow:
We will nurture your talent in an inclusive culture that values diversity. You will have the chance to meet on a consistent basis with your Career Coach that will guide you in your career goals and aspirations. Learn more about where talent can prosper!

More about Crowe:
Crowe (www.crowe.com) is one of the largest public accounting, consulting and technology firms in the United States. Crowe uses its deep industry expertise to provide audit services to public and private entities while also helping clients reach their goals with tax, advisory, risk and performance services. Crowe is recognized by many organizations as one of the country's best places to work. Crowe serves clients worldwide as an independent member of Crowe Global, one of the largest global accounting networks in the world. The network consists of more than 200 independent accounting and advisory services firms in more than 130 countries around the world.

Crowe LLP provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetics, national origin, disability or protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

Crowe LLP does not accept unsolicited candidates, referrals or resumes from any staffing agency, recruiting service, sourcing entity or any other third-party paid service at any time. Any referrals, resumes or candidates submitted to Crowe, or any employee or owner of Crowe without a pre-existing agreement signed by both parties covering the submission will be considered the property of Crowe, and free of charge.

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