General Counsel

Who We AreWith a legacy spanning four decades, Action Property Management has become the premier choice for homeowner’s association management. Founded in 1984, Action began with a single client and a vision to elevate ethical and professional standards in the HOA industry. Our unwavering commitment to integrity and professionalism, coupled with our core values of excellence, innovation, and care for people, continues to define us.  Today, as the largest privately owned HOA management company in the West, we proudly serve over 300 communities across 9 offices. Our success is fueled by a team of nearly 900 dedicated team members who genuinely love what they do and are dedicated to helping homeowners thrive and love where they live. 
Job SummaryThe General Counsel provides expert & strategic legal advice to support the growth & success of the business.  This key leader anticipates issues, assesses risk strategically, and provides hands-on counsel to executives & business teams to address critical legal and business challenges.  The General Counsel understands the tension between business realities and legal protections, effectively navigates the most difficult questions at the strategy level, and guides teams to avoid pitfalls at the operations level.  The General Counsel brings a proven ability to contribute to overall profitability. 
Salary: $225,000 -$250,000

Guidance & Strategy

• Analyze all manner of legal & business issues, develop strategy alternatives, recommend effective courses of action, and lead the legal implementation

Litigation and Claims

• Effectively manage litigation & claims brought against FirstService, including:
• Developing and vetting defense strategies
• Minimizing defense spend & settlement outlays
• Ensuring the value of insurance defense firms’ and specific attorneys’ billing & deliverables, including case analyses, litigation strategy, status updates, litigation budgets, and well-thought-out discovery, motion practice & settlement approaches
• Managing discovery, preservation & privilege
• Advise the business on asserting & resolving disputes

Insurance

• Protect the company by leveraging a deep understanding of insurance principles, coverage types, tendering imperatives, triggers to coverage, managing adjusters & third-party administrators, and avoiding actions that may jeopardize coverage

Contracts

• Expertly draft & edit contracts to protect FirstService while also achieving the company’s business objectives
• Successfully negotiate agreements to balance protecting FirstService’s interests with obtaining or retaining the business

Mergers & Acquisitions

• Pre-acquisition:  Serve as part of the acquisition team, effectively analyzing a target’s agreements, suits, claims & other risk factors as well as business ‘fit’ factors.  Assist in the preparation, review, and negotiation of documents for complex transactions. 
• Post-acquisition:  Serve as part of the post-acquisition integration team, managing various integration initiatives
• Mergers & entity formation:  Plan & project-manage the efforts, bringing the right voices to the table & considering operational, financial, tax, insurance, human resources & regulatory questions.

Employment Law

• Leverage a solid working knowledge of employment law to provide sound legal advice related to wrongful termination, harassment, discrimination & other employee matters.  Team with outside employment counsel & insurance defense counsel to address such matters as appropriate.

Operations & Legal Liability

• Leverage a deep understanding of the business & operating departments as well as in-depth knowledge of homeowner association law in the West Region states in order to navigate the legal / operations interface effectively.
• Train managers, executives and others to minimize legal liability for FirstService.
• Partner with operating executives & others to develop & adjust company processes as FirstService provides new services and as statutes & case law evolve.
• Guide the company with regard to regional compliance matters and public policy advocacy as needed.
• Other responsibilities as assigned 

Required Skills & Qualifications

• Overall broad legal knowledge (corporate law, litigation, labor law, etc.)
• Ability to develop legal strategy & objectives
• Impeccable professional ethics & integrity
• Ability to anticipate legal issues or risks and to ‘see around the corner’
• Creative problem-solving ability & excellent analytic skills
• The abi