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 judgement, influence, and people leadership matter as much as legal precision? Are you motivated by the opportunity to shape and modernise a global legal function within a mission-driven, global organisation? CFA Institute is seeking a Deputy General Counsel to serve as its number two legal leader, providing enterprise-wide strategic 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, delegated authority, and enterprise advisory responsibility, alongside people leadership and legal operations transformation. The role is designed to act as a trusted legal partner to executive leadership, modernise the legal function, and provide senior leadership depth across the organisation.

• Act as a senior strategic adviser to the Chief Legal and Compliance Officer, CEO, and executive leadership on complex legal and regulatory matters
• Provide enterprise-level legal judgement across corporate, regulatory, commercial, data privacy, employment, intellectual property, and litigation matters
• Lead and oversee a global team of senior legal leaders, including senior directors and heads, fostering accountability, collaboration, and alignment with enterprise priorities
• Drive alignment between legal strategy and organisational 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 organisation in high-stakes negotiations, regulatory discussions, investigations, and dispute resolution
• Act for the Chief Legal & Compliance Officer as required, exercising delegated authority on complex, sensitive and high impact matters

• Juris Doctor or equivalent law degree with admission to practise in the United States
• Extensive senior in-house legal leadership experience within complex, global organisations
• Demonstrated ability to operate with authority and credibility at executive and board level, influencing enterprise decisions through pragmatic, business-oriented legal advice
• Proven experience leading and developing senior legal professionals through organisational change and transformation
• Demonstrated breadth of legal exposure across complex, global organisations, with enterprise-wide oversight across a broad range of legal domains and the judgement 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 judgement, 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 legal leader within a global, mission-driven organisation
• Scope to shape and modernise a legal function as a core strategic partner to the business, with genuine organisational 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…