NVA

Job Summary

National Veterinary Associates is seeking an experienced Associate General Counsel, Commercial, to serve as a strategic legal partner on high-value commercial matters that are critical to NVA’s growth and operational excellence. This role will lead a critically important team within the Legal function that focuses on complex commercial agreements and procurement contracts (covering spend in excess of $500M annually) and also provides broad legal support to the business in the areas of technology, data privacy, marketing, consumer-facing products and services, intellectual property and more.

The ideal candidate is not only a strong technical lawyer, but also a trusted thought partner to business leaders—someone who combines legal skill with deep business acumen, and who can anticipate challenges, identify opportunities, and help drive results on the company’s most important priorities.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead legal support for Procurement team- lead all legal aspects of commercial contracting across procurement, supply chain, and vendor relationships, ensuring agreements align with strategic, operational, and financial goals. Be a strategic partner to Procurement in developing multi-year strategy with key vendors.
• Negotiate and structure commercial partnerships that drive revenue and innovation, including collaborations involving data, AI and other technology, marketing and new business initiatives. Deep experience as lead negotiator of high value commercial contracts; executive presence to meet and negotiate with vendors directly.
• Manage a critically important team within the Legal function that provides broad legal support on a wide range of issues, including technology, data privacy, marketing, commercial contracts, consumer-facing products and services, intellectual property, insurance and a variety of hospital-level legal issues.
• Partner with business leaders across operations, procurement, IT, medical, finance, and marketing to develop pragmatic, timely, and business-aligned legal solutions.
• Design and implement contract management best practices to improve efficiency, governance, and value realization including by policy and procedure deployment.
• Drive legal operations improvements, with a focus on deploying legal technology to enhance efficiency, precision, and visibility across the function.
• Manage outside counsel to ensure efficient, high-quality support on specialized matters.
• Support strategic decision-making by balancing legal risk with commercial objectives and operational realities.

Qualifications

• J.D. from an accredited law school and active license to practice in at least one U.S. jurisdiction.
• 10+ years of legal experience, including significant in-house experience advising on complex commercial agreements and strategic partnerships.
• Demonstrated success in high-value procurement, supply, or strategic vendor contracting.
• Experience leading a high-performing team within an in-house Legal function
• Experience supporting a variety of functional teams, including technology, data, marketing, procurement and operations.
• Experience with AI and other technology contracts and data privacy provisions is required
• Experience implementing and/or managing contract lifecycle management (CLM) platforms.
• Exceptional communication and relationship-building skills, with the ability to gain trust quickly and influence across the organization.
• Strategic thinker who combines sound legal judgment with a deep understanding of business drivers.
• Ability to operate effectively in a fast-paced, collaborative environment.

*This role is not open to receiving agency candidates and any contingent submissions will not be honored.

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