Corporate Counsel

Corporate Counsel

Kin Capital Partners buys businesses and holds them for the long haul. We don’t flip companies, so the agreements we sign here aren’t someone else’s problem after closing—we live with every one of them, and so do the people who run our businesses.

This office provides legal support to every operating company in the portfolio. In practice that means one lawyer here touches commercial millwork, iron and steel door distribution, ultra-luxury architectural fabrication, crane rental, and more—several entities, several industries, and real operators on the other end of every question.

This role reports directly to the Chief Administrative Officer, who also serves as the company’s general counsel. You’ll own a large share of the company’s day-to-day legal work—contracts, acquisitions, employment, real estate, and entity matters—with real authority to make calls and the judgment to know when a question needs to go up.

What you’ll do

The work is what you’d expect from an in-house counsel role. The way we work is what we’re hiring for.

The work:

• Draft, review, and negotiate customer, supplier, vendor, and equipment agreements across the operating companies, and own them through signature
• Support acquisitions from LOI through closing: diligence, purchase agreements and ancillary documents, financing, and the integration work that follows
• Advise managers on employment matters—hiring, discipline, separations, and policy—in compliance with federal and state law wherever we operate
• Handle owned and leased real estate, including leases, purchases, and the intercompany arrangements between our entities
• Keep our entities in order: operating agreements, consents, equity issuances, and the governance records that go with them
• Assess disputes early, give practical guidance on resolving them, and manage outside counsel when a matter needs one

The way we work:

• Be the lawyer operating company leaders call first, and give them an answer they can act on—not a list of everything that could go wrong
• Learn each business well enough to know what a contract term means on a job site, in a crane yard, or on a shop floor
• Turn repeat work into standard tools—templates, playbooks, clause positions, and simple intake—so routine matters move without waiting on a lawyer
• Use AI and sound process to make legal work faster and more consistent, and write it down so it holds, including with people outside legal who have to follow it
• Know the difference between answering a question and fixing why it keeps getting asked, and do both

The first list is table stakes. The second list is what marks an exceptional candidate. A company our size doesn’t need a lawyer who waits for work to land on their desk; it needs one close enough to the businesses to catch issues early, and who builds the tools that let operators handle routine matters themselves. Every template, playbook, or process that sticks is one less fire, and it’s how legal gets to spend more of its time on the work that actually moves the company forward.

What we’re looking for

Real transactional skill. Commercial contracts and corporate transactions are the core—drafting from scratch, marking up the other side’s paper, and knowing which points matter and which don’t. Careful drafting, and the judgment to recognize when you can make a decision and when a question needs to go up the chain.

Comfort with the numbers. You should be able to read a financial statement, follow a working-capital adjustment, and see how a contract term shows up in the P&L. Lawyers who treat the business side as someone else’s job won’t enjoy this seat.

Comfort with AI. We use AI tools daily and we expect you to. If you’ve never touched them, that’s fine; if you’re skeptical that they belong in legal work, this isn’t the right seat. You’ll also be the one who checks what they produce—here, AI is a tool for a lawyer, not a substitute for one.

Judgment about where legal holds the line. Contracts and statutes read black and white on paper and are rarely that clean in practice. Operations and sales will ask you for things—sign the customer’s paper as written, close faster than diligence allows, handle an employee situation a particular way. Some of those requests are entirely reasonable and legal should move fast to support them. Some are not, and someone has to say so and explain why in language an operator will actually hear. We need someone who can tell the two apart and is comfortable being the person who says it.

Resourcefulness and autonomy. Knowing when to raise your hand and when to make the call, document your reasoning, and keep moving. You will be given matters and goals, you’ll decide the best path to get them across the finish line, and you’ll have all the support you need. You will not be micro-managed or hand-held through every step of the process.

Clear writing. A lot of this job is explaining a legal issue to someone who isn’t a lawyer, in a way that changes what they do next. Short, plain, and useful beats long and hedged.

Helpful, but not required

We would rather have the right thinker without these than the wrong one with all of them.

• Hands-on M&A deal experience, at a firm or in-house, especially lower-middle-market deals
• Multi-entity work: LLC operating agreements, equity issuances and profits interests, intercompany arrangements
• Exposure to construction, manufacturing, distribution, or equipment rental
• Experience building templates, playbooks, or contract processes, or training non-lawyers to use them

Typical background: J.D. from an ABA-accredited law school. A Louisiana license is preferred, since this seat is in our Lafayette office. Lawyers admitted and in good standing in another U.S. jurisdiction are welcome if eligible for Louisiana’s limited license for in-house counsel—most of our work turns on general corporate and commercial principles, not Louisiana civil law. Four to eight years of practice focused on corporate and commercial transactions, whether at a firm or in-house.

The details

Location-Lafayette, LA – in office

Schedule- Full-time, Monday through Friday, regular business hours

Reports to- Chief Administrative Officer

Benefits

Health, dental, and vision insurance; HSA match; 401(k) with company match; paid vacation and sick leave

This is an in-office role by design. The work described above—learning how each business actually runs, catching an issue before it becomes a dispute, getting a new process to stick with people outside legal—happens faster when you’re down the hall from the people it involves.

Benefits:

• 401(k)
• Dental insurance
• Health insurance
• Health savings account
• Life insurance
• Paid time off
• Vision insurance

Work Location: In person