Deputy General Counsel

Overview

Are you a senior in-house legal leader ready to operate as a true enterprise partner, not just a technical expert? Do you thrive in complex, global environments where judgment, influence, and people leadership matter as much as legal precision? Are you motivated by the opportunity to shape and modernize a global legal function within a mission-driven, global organization?

CFA Institute is seeking a Deputy General Counsel to serve as its number two legal leader, providing strategic and operational legal leadership across a global organization with a strong public-interest mission. Reporting to the Chief Legal and Compliance Officer, this role combines executive-level judgment, people leadership, and legal operations transformation. The role is designed to strengthen enterprise legal capability, modernize the legal function, and provide senior leadership depth across the organization.

• Act as a senior strategic adviser to the Chief Legal and Compliance Officer, CEO, and executive leadership on complex legal and regulatory matters

• Lead and oversee a global team of senior legal leaders, including senior directors and heads, fostering accountability, collaboration, and high performance

• Provide enterprise-level legal judgment across corporate, regulatory, commercial, data privacy, employment, intellectual property, and litigation matters

• Drive alignment between legal strategy and organizational objectives, enabling innovation while managing risk

• Oversee legal support for global partnerships, new markets, products, and initiatives, including emerging areas such as AI

• Lead legal operations transformation to position the legal function as a proactive, business-enabling partner, including operating models, KPIs, dashboards, process improvement, and technology adoption

• Partner closely with Compliance & Ethics, and Enterprise Risk teams to ensure coordinated enterprise risk management

• Manage outside counsel, legal budgets, and vendor relationships to ensure effective and efficient legal delivery

• Represent the organization in high-stakes negotiations, regulatory discussions, investigations, and dispute resolution

• Act for the Chief Legal & Compliance Officer as required, exercising delegated authority on complex and sensitive matters

• Juris Doctor or equivalent law degree with admission to practice in the United States

• Extensive senior in-house legal leadership experience within complex, global organizations

• Demonstrated ability to operate with authority and credibility at executive and board level, providing pragmatic, business-oriented legal advice

• Proven experience leading and developing senior legal professionals through organizational change and transformation

• Demonstrated breadth of legal exposure across complex, global organizations, with enterprise-wide oversight across a broad range of legal domains and the judgment to integrate specialist advice into coherent, strategic decision-making

• Strong legal operations and transformation experience, including metrics, technology, and modern operating models

• Experience managing cross-border legal issues and global stakeholder relationships

• Sound judgment, resilience, and confidence in high-risk or high-stakes decision-making environments

• Experience operating in regulated or quasi-regulated environments is advantageous; sector background is flexible

• Opportunity to operate as a senior enterprise leader within a global, mission-driven organization

• Scope to shape and modernize a legal function with genuine organizational impact

• High-trust partnership with executive leadership and the Board

• Global remit with complex, intellectually engaging legal and strategic challenges

• A role offering long-term leadership growth, including readiness to assume broader responsibility over time

At CFA Institute, we are committed to transparency and equity in our hiring process. In compliance with wage transparency laws in many of the jurisdictions in which we recruit, we provide the following information regarding compensation for this position:
Expected salary range: 250–300k per year. All salary ranges are subject to adjustment based on location,…