At Core States Group, the work you do matters to the clients we serve, the communities we support, and the teams who rely on one another to deliver with excellence. Our Cause is powerful: to create a world where all environments improve everyday life.

Why Professionals Choose Core States Group

Here’s what you can expect:

VALUES-DRIVEN CULTURE – A workplace rooted in Integrity, Service, Inclusion, Excellence, and Innovation. Our Core Values guide how we work, how we treat each other, and how we show up for our clients every day.
COMPENSATION – Competitive wages and bonus programs, including professional licensure bonuses.
RETIREMENT – A strong 401(k) match, with immediate vesting, to help you invest in your future and build your retirement savings with confidence.
HEALTHCARE – Competitive health benefits including HSA with employer contribution, life insurance options, and supplemental coverage options, giving you the flexibility to select the coverage that best fits your needs and lifestyle.
VACATION – Generous PTO to help you recharge, relax, and maintain a healthy work-life balance.
PERKS – Team wellness challenges, free virtual gym app, wholesale club membership reimbursement, employee recognition programs, paid parental leave and much more!
FLEXIBLE WORK ENVIRONMENT – A flexible work environment that empowers you to do your best work, whether you’re in the office, working remotely, or blending both to support your responsibilities.
TUITION REIMBURSEMENT – support your growth with tuition reimbursement to help advance your education and professional development.

Summary of the Role

The Vice President, Legal is the principal legal and enterprise-risk advisor for Core States Group. This role leads the legal function, supports the CEO and senior leaders, and helps the company make practical decisions that protect the business, enable growth, and strengthen operating discipline. The role also owns the legal function’s service model, priorities, talent, outside counsel, and responsible adoption of AI tools.

Responsibilities

Enterprise counsel, accountability, and risk

Advise the CEO and senior leaders on material legal, regulatory, governance, reputational, and enterprise-risk matters.
Establish clear decision rights and escalation thresholds. Legal frames risk, provides guidance, and escalates when appropriate; business leaders retain ownership of operating decisions and results.
Guide a consistent enterprise risk posture across markets, services, clients, and transactions, with room for different decisions when the facts warrant them.
Make material risks visible early enough for the business to respond, with practical options and a clear recommendation.

Legal team, operating model, and outside counsel

Set the function’s strategy, structure, priorities, service levels, and measures of performance.
Lead, coach, and hold accountable the existing team; develop judgment, communication, project ownership, management capability, and technical skills.
Implement disciplined intake, triage, matter ownership, workload allocation, escalation, status reporting, and closeout practices.
Use matter and capacity data to improve process, delegation, self-service, and technology, and to support future resource decisions.
Direct, challenge, and evaluate outside counsel based on expertise, judgment, responsiveness, outcomes, and cost. Set matter budgets and staffing expectations.
Maintain a decision-useful view of active matters, exposure, deadlines, spend, cycle time, and unresolved decisions for the CEO.

Commercial contracts and client relationships

Own the contracting framework for clients, consultants, vendors, strategic partners, and other material relationships.
Build practical playbooks, delegated authority, templates, fallback positions, and escalation thresholds that improve speed and consistency.
Concentrate legal attention on consequential risk, including scope, standard of care, indemnity, duty to defend, liability limits, insurance, intellectual property, payment, schedule, change control, confidentiality, data, and termination.
Set fair, market-based positions that protect Core States from unnecessary risk and reinforce that the company is straightforward to work with. Opening positions should be terms Core States would consider reasonable if presented by a client.
Partner with business leaders to improve deal quality, accountability, and cycle time while protecting the client relationship and the economics of the work.

Professional liability, claims, and insurance

Lead the company’s approach to professional liability, E&O claims, threatened claims, subpoenas, litigation, investigations, and material disputes.
Ensure prompt notice, preservation, fact development, ownership, insurer coordination, and executive communication.
Translate recurring claim and contract patterns into changes in project delivery, training, controls, and contract positions.
Coordinate with insurance brokers, carriers, and outside counsel while retaining internal ownership of strategy, cost, timing, and business impact.

Licensing, entities, governance, and compliance

Own the system of accountability for professional and business licensing across jurisdictions, including reliable source data, named owners, change triggers, validation, escalation, and executive visibility.
Oversee entity governance, delegated authorities, records, registrations, and recurring legal obligations.
Develop a risk-based compliance program integrated into operations, tested in practice, and updated as the business and regulatory environment change.
Partner with HR on employment, investigations, policies, and sensitive people matters, with clear allocation of responsibility between Legal and HR.

M&A and integration

In alignment with the internal acquisition team and outside counsel, coordinate the legal position for acquisitions, divestitures, investments, and other strategic transactions.
Coordinate legal diligence, risk assessment, transaction documents, disclosure, closing requirements, insurance, licensing, and specialist legal support.
Connect diligence findings to price, terms, remediation, ownership, and post-close integration.
Establish a repeatable legal-integration model covering entities, contracts, claims, insurance, employment, policies, licensing, data, records, and compliance.

AI leadership

The successful candidate must be personally forward-thinking on AI and comfortable leading through rapid technological change. Core States expects Legal to model responsible adoption and help the company move with appropriate speed and discipline.
Use enterprise-grade generative AI directly and demonstrate a record of redesigning legal workflows with measurable results.
Create a legal AI roadmap tied to outcomes such as contract cycle time, research efficiency, claims organization, knowledge reuse, reporting quality, and outside-counsel spend.
Lead adoption by example, set clear expectations for the team, provide training, and verify output quality through appropriate human review.
Partner with Technology, Operations, HR, and business leaders on governance covering approved use, confidentiality, privilege, client commitments, data security, records, human oversight, and vendor diligence.
Evaluate AI-related terms and risks in client, vendor, software, and acquisition agreements in a way that supports responsible adoption.
Translate the evolving legal and regulatory landscape into proportionate controls for Core States’ actual risk profile.

Success Measures
Success in this role will be measured by:

The degree to which the Legal function strengthens business judgment, improves risk management, supports growth, and builds a more scalable legal operating model.
More consistent legal support across contracts, claims, compliance, governance, and strategic matters.
Stronger CEO and senior leadership confidence in legal advice, escalation, and decision support.
Improved legal responsiveness, prioritization, and workload management across the team.
Greater consistency in contract positions, risk review, issue tracking, and follow-through.
More effective management of outside counsel, matters, budgets, and escalation points.
Stronger licensing, entity, and recurring-obligation controls with clear ownership and visibility.
Clearer coordination between Legal, HR, Operations, Technology, and business leaders.
Responsible AI adoption in Legal, with measurable improvements in speed, quality, and efficiency.
Stronger team accountability, judgment, and leadership depth across the legal function.
A stronger culture of ownership, practical problem-solving, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

Qualifications

We’re looking for talented professionals who are eager to grow their skills and contribute to high-quality, meaningful work. If you’re driven, collaborative, and ready to take the next step in your career, we want to hear from you. The following qualifications will help you succeed in this role:

Juris Doctor (JD) degree from an ABA-accredited law school.
Approximately 12+ years of progressively responsible legal experience, including meaningful in-house experience advising business leaders.
Proven leadership and development of legal professionals, with substantial people-management and functional-leadership responsibility.
Demonstrated ability to set priorities, allocate work, hold people accountable, manage performance, build repeatable systems, and create leadership depth.
Strong commercial judgment and the executive presence to advise, challenge, and support a CEO and senior leadership team.
Experience managing complex contracts, disputes or claims, outside counsel, budgets, compliance obligations, and cross-functional legal matters.
Clear, direct communication that turns complex analysis into actionable recommendations.
Contract drafting and negotiation.
Legal operations, intake, triage, workload management, and process discipline.
Outside-counsel management and budget oversight.
Claims, disputes, investigations, and litigation coordination.
Licensing, entity governance, and compliance oversight.
Demonstrated ability and willingness to identify practical uses for company-approved AI tools to improve team processes, support better decisions, and increase efficiency.
Demonstrated ability to review AI-generated content for accuracy, protect confidential information, and remain responsible for the final work product.

Work Location

This is a hybrid role based out of our King of Prussia, PA office.

Company Overview

Core States Group is an industry-leading architecture, engineering, and construction (A/E/C) firm trusted by many of the world’s most notable brands. With 26 offices across the United States and Canada, the firm delivers speed to market, cost certainty, and compelling design for national multisite programs and projects.

Established in 1999, Core States Group drives innovation and improves everyday life for countless people across several markets, including Convenience, Distributed Generation, Financial, Grocery, Housing, Industrial, Restaurants, Retail, Semiconductor, Zero-Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Infrastructure, and more.

A Note to Candidates

Please do not be concerned if you do not meet every requirement. At Core States Group, we are dedicated to building a diverse and inclusive workplace, so if you are excited about this role but your experience does not align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.

This position will remain open until it is filled.

Learn more about this Employer on their Career Site

Vice President - Legal