Deputy General Counsel

Job Overview
At St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, our mission to advance cures and means of prevention for pediatric catastrophic diseases drives everything we do. As a key member of our Legal Department leadership team, the Deputy General Counsel will play a pivotal role in supporting this mission by providing strategic legal guidance to our executive leadership, faculty, and staff. In this role, you will collaborate with fellow Deputy General Counsels and departmental leaders to manage legal matters and mitigate risks. You will also supervise a team of lawyers and/or staff, fostering a culture of integrity, collaboration, and innovation.

Your expertise will be instrumental in facilitating departmental and institutional strategic initiatives, guiding change management processes, and ensuring that our legal strategies align with St. Jude's core values. You will advise on a wide variety of issues such as conflicts of interest, healthcare regulatory compliance, research compliance, federal grants compliance, clinical trials contracting, biosafety, health care innovations, contracts, employment law issues, and/or medico-legal issues.

Job Responsibilities:

• Serve as a key resource on complex legal issues, and as a key legal/departmental contact in the absence of the Chief Legal Officer.
• Manage litigation and investigations while minimizing adverse publicity and other exposure.
• Review and approve law firm engagement letters and invoices and manages interactions with law firms, including around cost and responsiveness.
• Actively participate in resource planning and budget management.
• Attend leadership or Board committee meetings as requested by the Chief Legal Officer.
• Assist Chief Legal Officer in the preparation and presentation of materials to staff, internal committees, and Board of Governors, including giving those presentations when appropriate.
• Respond and interface with governmental agencies as needed.
• Closely coordinate and cooperate with peers to ensure all relevant legal aspects of the business operations are addressed, communicated, and escalated in a proactive and effective manner.
• Look at the pipeline of talent within Legal as an organizational pool - investing in future skills, spending time on development through feedback and coaching, and challenging high-potential members with different assignments.
• Perform other duties as assigned to meet the goals and objectives of the department and institution.
• Maintains regular and predictable attendance.

Minimum Education and/or Training:

• Doctorate of Jurisprudence (JD) degree required from an accredited law school.

Minimum Experience:

• Minimum Experience: 15+ years of experience in multiple specialized areas of the law, such as technology matters, international/foreign law matters, medico-legal advising, labor and employment, academic programs, clinical research, foreign law, insurance, privacy/data protection, health care compliance, grants and contracting, intellectual property, medical staff relations, non-profit tax issues, animal care and use, environmental health and safety, hospital operations, and accreditation matters.
• Significant experience contributing to development of strategy and oversight of legal function.
• Demonstrated experience in legal strategy development, operational mgmt., stakeholder mgmt., and/or budget mgmt.
• Experience building relationships/ influencing senior leaders and external community.
• Proven performance in earlier role/comparable role.

Licensure, Registration and/or Certification Required by Law:

• Active license to practice law in at least one U.S. jurisdiction required.
• License to practice law in the State of Tennessee is required within nine (9) months from date of hire into the position. Registration as in-house counsel in lieu of a full license to practice is an option but must be obtained within six (6) months of date of hire into the position.

Special Skills, Knowledge and Abilities:

• Defines and drives critical metrics to ensure strong customer orientation within team.
• Prevents customer escalations by exploring alternative solutions.
• Constantly identifies and implements process enhancements for better alignment with customer teams.
• Builds a culture of clear communication and accountability around goals. Can handle complex/ sensitive people issues.
• Has a strong focus on capability needs, development, talent sharing, and stretch assignments for own teams.
• Encourages a consistent structured approach to people development through development planning, coaching, and mentoring across teams.
• Has an overall enterprise talent focus. Looking at talent beyond own team from a skill composition perspective.
• Establishes and drives legal research and analysis processes and approaches across specialized areas of law.
• Guides teams in identification and investigation of relevant legal issues to support overall legal outcomes.
• Consistently anticipates potential legal issues or client concerns and proactively addresses them.
• Defines standardized and effective legal advisory processes across areas of law with focus on efficiency and risk minimization.
• Advises business leadership around co-creation of overall legal strategy based on understanding of business needs and emerging legislative climate.
• Drives planning and implementation of legal strategy/tactics for complex/sensitive litigation or regulatory proceedings.
• Builds internal connections and external partnerships across executive/leadership levels.
• Strategically understands stakeholder needs and manages expectations and relationships on a regular basis.
• Can handle highly sensitive or tough situations with social and emotional grace and maturity.
• Is able to clearly look for trends in data and draws out simple patterns from complex data and resolves issues.
• Thinks big picture and can connect the dots easily.
• Creates plans and recommendations that reflect an understanding of interactions among key institutional drivers (e.g., financial, patient, operations, people), audiences, content, and timing.
• Models resourcefulness by reaching out to people within and outside functional groups to get work done effectively.
• Keeps large teams/ departments energized and focused on high-quality results by leveraging data/ analytics-based approaches.
• Builds systems, processes, and capabilities that can set and deliver a high-performance culture.
• Drives the establishment, evolution, and implementation of processes/ approaches to optimize legal contracting outcomes across areas of law.
• Monitors changing external landscapes across areas of law and proposes strategic actions to address implications on institutional contracting approaches.
• Navigates strategic contract negotiations effectively showing advanced levels of emotional intelligence, situational awareness, and agility.

Compensation

In recognition of certain U.S. state and municipal pay transparency laws, St. Jude is including a reasonable estimate of the compensation range for this role. This is an estimate offered in good faith and a specific salary offer takes into account factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets, experience and training, licensure and certifications, and other business and organizational needs. It is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the salary range and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current salary range is $170,560 - $357,760 per year for the role of Deputy General Counsel.

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St. Jude is an Equal Opportunity Employer

No Search Firms

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. Please do not call or email. All resumes submitted by search firms to any employee or other representative at St. Jude via email, the internet or in any form and/or method without a valid written search agreement in place and approved by HR will result in no fee being paid in the event the candidate is hired by St. Jude.