Job Description

About the Company: A well-established national retail organization operates numerous stores across the country. The company maintains a strong market presence and is committed to innovation, operational excellence, and providing exceptional customer experiences.

Why Join? You'll have the opportunity to make a meaningful impact by providing strategic legal counsel and shaping business operations. We value innovation, collaboration, and a forward-thinking approach. If you are ready to advance your career with a dynamic organization, join us and contribute to shaping the future of our business.

Position Summary: As Real Estate Leasing Counsel, you will bring energy, creativity, and emotional intelligence to a role that requires both legal expertise and business acumen. You will demonstrate a high degree of business savvy, strategic thinking, drafting, negotiating, communication, and collaboration skills while providing a full range of legal functions as assigned by the Chief Legal Officer.

Your primary focus will be drafting and negotiating retail leases and related documents for shopping centers, mall-based, and street store environments, as well as supporting all real estate related legal and business issues, dispute resolution, and litigation matters. You will think outside the box, solve problems proactively, and articulate legal and business positions in a way that balances risk mitigation with achieving business objectives. You will also support and provide oversight of the lease administration function, ensuring compliance, data integrity, and operational excellence across the portfolio.

Essential Functions:

• Leasing and Finance: Draft, negotiate and provide support for commercial real estate lease and finance matters through skilled retail lease drafting, negotiation and editing while properly balancing business risks and meeting internal objectives and guidelines, legal research (as necessary) in jurisdictions across the country.
• Portfolio Support: Collaboratively support the company's retail lease portfolio, addressing issues as they arise and drafting/negotiating attendant documents (including lease renewals, amendments, SNDAs, estoppels, landlord dispute letters).
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner closely with real estate, leasing, construction, procurement, and facilities teams - answering questions on lease interpretations and making recommendations for best practices and processes to drive consistency and efficiency.
• Disputes & Litigation Support: Provide counsel for all aspects of real estate disputes, pre-litigation, and pending litigation matters, including strategy, documentation, and coordination with outside counsel when appropriate.
• Tenant Rights Enforcement: Work with and guide internal teams to enforce tenant lease rights (e.g., co-tenancy and exclusive use provisions), including strategy development and dispute resolution.
• Lease Administration Oversight: Support the lease administration function, including lease abstract accuracy, critical date management, obligations tracking (e.g., maintenance, operating covenants), and alignment with finance and operations to ensure data integrity and timely execution.
• Standards & Templates: Develop, maintain, and improve company real estate agreement standards and template forms—including general construction, architecture, vendor procurement, lien releases, and related documents—to promote uniformity and speed.
• Corporate Strategy and Contract Support (Plus): Contribute to corporate strategic development matters as needed (e.g., M&A support), including due diligence and reviewing, drafting, and negotiating agreements such as NDAs, letters of intent, purchase agreements, and joint venture documents.

Minimum Requirements:

• Juris Doctor (J.D.) from an accredited law school; active membership and good standing in at least one U.S. state bar.
• Demonstrated experience in retail/commercial real estate leasing, contract drafting and negotiation, and dispute resolution/litigation support.
• Familiarity with lease administration processes (e.g., abstracting, critical dates, options management) and internal controls for compliance.
• Strong proficiency in contract interpretation, legal research, and advising business stakeholders with a balanced risk/reward approach.
• Experience working across shopping center, mall, and street store environments is preferred.
• Plus: Experience and desire to expand skill set with Commercial Contracts, Intellectual Property, Data Privacy, Marketing and Consumer Facing matters.

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