VP of Legal and General Counsel

Decent is seeking an entrepreneurial, collaborative, and practical legal advisor to join our team as VP of Legal and General Counsel. This position requires experience in the highly regulated PEO and/or health insurance industries. We want someone who will help us understand legal risks, balance them against business risks, and take the time to understand what we have gone through to get to where we are as a company and will do their best to answer questions with “yes, if” rather than jumping to “no, because”.

Our VP of Legal and General Counsel will be responsible for creating an innovative legal and regulatory strategy, overseeing strategic deals and relationships, and serving as an integral partner to every stakeholder in the company. Decent operates in a complex legal and regulatory landscape and your impact will span across product, regulatory, commercial, geographic expansions, privacy, corporate, IP, employment, policy, and compliance. Beyond just the legal function, we’re looking for a business partner who will have input and influence across the company and who will serve as a key member of Decent’s leadership team.

Key Responsibilities

• Drive legal, regulatory, and compliance strategy. We are working to change the world by delivering affordable health insurance for all and will face headwinds at all steps. Create, socialize, and execute Decent’s plan to stay legal and compliant, and help us achieve our goals with creativity, grace, and will
• Maximize our legal and regulatory ROI. Help us avoid wasting money on legal, regulatory and compliance work, including research, contracts, and relationships. More broadly, apply your leadership and critical thinking skills to help us choose the right things to do and do them efficiently.
• Extend the legal and regulatory advantages inherent in our current structure and market context.
• Build, lead, and manage a high-performing legal function that aligns with the needs of a rapidly growing organization.
• Develop, grow and empower an outcomes-oriented compliance function to match the scale of our business.
• Oversee and help develop our legal strategy for a wide variety of product, regulatory, and commercial opportunities, and serve as our strategist and point of contact for third party legal and compliance firms.
• Advise our leadership, product, commercial, support, and other teams, and help us understand when to take risks, how to mitigate them, and when to avoid them. Bring deep experience and product knowledge to the table in order to give appropriate recommendations based on the context.
• Interface with our key partners (including customers, partners, insurance companies, and regulators) to advise on regulatory and privacy-related issues. Collaborate across the Decent team to help build and manage our policy and regulatory relationships.
• Performs routine to highly complex legal work including interpretation and application of state and federal regulations, specifically related to the Texas Insurance Code, Texas Occupations Code, Texas Government Code, Texas Administrative Code and ERISA.
• Participate directly in administrative, regulatory, and other court hearings, including preparation of Decent staff.
• Coordinate and research state and federal laws and regulation.
• Collaborate with staff and subject matter experts to draft legal opinions and provide directives on company actions.
• Represent Decent in any disciplinary actions concerning its agents, brokers, companies, or other authorized persons.

Your Key Characteristics

• Passionate individual who believes in Decent’s mission and the positive impact that the PEO model and consumer-centric healthcare can have on the world.
• Shipping-oriented mindset, focused on achieving results quickly. Founder and operating experience is a big plus.
• 10+ years of relevant legal experience, ideally gained in both the law firm and in-house settings working with technology companies; General Counsel experience is preferred.
• 3+ years working with company staff, insurance industry, government officials, and the public.
• Proven experience building and leading teams in high-growth environments. A strong track record of positive outcomes for those you have hired and managed in the past.
• Background working in PEO and/or health insurance, and the ability to quickly learn the nuances of PEO and healthcare regulation.
• Excellent communication and project management skills, and the ability to work under tight deadlines, sometimes beyond normal working hours.

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