- Salary
- $225k – $360k
- Location
- Princeton, NJ, US
- Type
- Full-time
- Department
- Legal
- Seniority
- Director
- Experience
- 10+ years
- Education
- Certification
- Visa
- Not sponsored
- Closing date
- Today
- Source
- iCIMS
Description
Overview
University Counsel and Director of Investment Legal Services, Princeton University
Princeton University is seeking to add an experienced attorney to its Office of the General Counsel (OGC) to provide dedicated inhouse support to the Princeton University Investment Company (Princo) on matters related to its investment activities. This is a newly created position and the candidate selected will be an integral part of the Princo team and sit with the Princo staff while practicing under the professional supervision of the University's Vice President & General Counsel.
Position Overview
OGC and Princo seek to hire an attorney, who will be a member of OGC and sit with Princo, to support OGC in providing dedicated legal services to Princo. This person will serve as Princo’s lead attorney and advise staff on pertinent legal and compliance matters related to Princo’s investment activities. The position will involve significant responsibility for reviewing and negotiating legal agreements with investment managers, prime brokers, and other vendors that provide services directly related to Princo’s investment activities. Additional responsibilities will include managing legal workflows, as well as designing and overseeing regulatory and compliance practices at Princo.
Given Princo’s lean organizational structure, the successful candidate will have the opportunity to engage in a broad range of substantive legal and operational matters related to Princo’s investment activities, contribute to process improvement initiatives, and help ensure that Princo operates effectively and is aligned with Princeton’s fiduciary responsibilities and long-term investment objectives.
This new position will require collaboration with Princo staff and OGC, other University departments, and external counterparties, including investment managers, outside counsel, brokerage firms, and custody providers. To be successful, the University Counsel and Director must fully understand the University’s and Princo’s business and legal needs, drivers, strategies, goals and expectations, and provide thoughtful leadership and guidance on all investment legal matters.
This position will have a dual reporting structure, reporting directly to the University’s Vice President and General Counsel (or her designee) with a reporting line to Princo’s Managing Director of Operations, Administration, and Technology as well. Day to day functional supervision will be provided by the Managing Director, with legal and ethical oversight provided by the Vice President & General Counsel in a manner consistent with Rule 5.1 of the New Jersey Rules of Professional Conduct.
Responsibilities
Principal Duties and Responsibilities:
- Work closely with investment staff to lead the legal review for investments in investment funds (e.g., venture capital, private equity, hedge fund and real estate funds), primary investments (e.g., direct securities), and co-investments including: advising on legal and market terms at the early negotiating term sheet stage, reviewing offering materials such as limited partnership agreements and private placement memoranda, preparing detailed comment memos with key business points and legal/due diligence inquiries, negotiating such points with manager’s counsel, and balancing the dual goals of promoting the best interests of Princeton while developing a collaborative, partnership dynamic with the manager and, if available, its operations team. Delegate portions of the review to outside counsel, as needed. Extra care, attention, support, and relationship building is required for Princeton’s investments in emerging managers, including sourcing and maintaining relationships with Princeton’s recommended third-party service providers, and evaluating non-U.S. regulatory requirements.
- Identify issues and consult with other OGC attorneys, Princo’s Tax Director, external tax, compliance, and derivatives counsel as needed for various projects to resolve unique, complex, or critical legal matters. Research various legal and compliance issues, particularly related to U.S. securities filings and compliance requirements. Present relevant findings/practical impacts to investment and operations teams and collaborate with such teams on the creation and implementation of any new structural investment opportunities, necessary compliance enhancements, or operational capabilities.
- Lead the legal review, negotiation and execution of agreements with trading counterparties (such as prime broker agreements, ISDAs, and collateral agreements) and associated service providers (such as custodians and administrators), liaise with internal stakeholders and clients regarding contract terms, strategic enhancements, trading-related responsibilities, approvals and queries related to such agreements, and advise on compliance with the legal terms contained therein. Counsel on the legal assessment and implementation of Princo’s trading needs in close collaboration with operations colleagues and, as appropriate, other University departments.
- Spearhead legal efforts for Princo’s periodic review and opportunistic sale of illiquid investments (i.e., secondary sales process), including: serving as the legal point person for Princo’s third-party advisor and various investment staff to prepare portfolio for sale, supervising the preparation and maintenance of the legal materials required to be uploaded to the data room, working with external counsel to coordinate negotiation, and review of all legal documentation.
- Collaborate with operations colleagues on initial and periodic operational due diligence of external investment managers.
- Regularly attend and contribute to weekly OGC attorney meetings.
- Regularly attend and contribute to Investment Committee meetings and weekly investment team meetings.
- Maintain and update key terms and other documentation templates, manage record-keeping and document databases for all contracts under the attorney’s purview, and ensure relevant reports, policies, and procedures are regularly reviewed and updated, taking into account pertinent University policies to ensure alignment.
- Oversee staff compliance with Princo’s personal trading policies.
- Identify and implement process efficiencies and training opportunities. Arrange for or provide training to the Princo team in coordination with other OGC attorneys.
Qualifications
- Have at least 10+ years of relevant legal practice experience in a law firm or in-house legal department with extensive experience reviewing both public and private investment fund documents. Experience at an investment office of a university, foundation or other nonprofit, or an asset management firm is highly desired.
- Have a J.D. from an ABA accredited law school and excellent academic credentials.
- Be a licensed attorney in good standing, who is either licensed in, or willing and able to become licensed in, the State of New Jersey.
- Have demonstrated outstanding judgment, the highest ethical standards (including close adherence to the Rules of Professional Conduct), and the capacity to deal effectively with a widely varied array of legal issues in the investment and asset management sector.
- Excellent oral and written communication skills, and a willingness to engage in clear and transparent dialogue about both legal and non-legal issues.
- Advanced problem-solving skills, resourcefulness, and a creative approach to resolving ambiguous, complex, and multi-variable problems.
- Intrinsically motivated with the ability to work independently. Meticulous attention to detail, and strong organizational, project, and time management skills. A sense of urgency and responsiveness, and an ability to organize and manage multiple projects and prioritize competing needs of the office.
- Positive, energetic attitude with demonstrated commitment to operating in a team environment and working collaboratively on cross-functional teams. The ability to perform effectively, calmly, and collegially under pressure.
- Excellent relationship management skills. The ability to balance a partnership-oriented style with strong legal representation of Princeton’s interests.
- Strong Microsoft Office skills, and a facility with other technology tools and systems, including emerging legal AI products in a manner consistent with the Rules of Professional Conduct and University and OGC policies.
- Successfully complete the University’s background check.
Location
Princo has offices in Princeton, NJ and in New York City but operates as one team. The team currently meets together in Princeton on Mondays and Tuesdays, but employees can work out of either location later in the week.
About the Office of the General Counsel (OGC)
Under the University’s Bylaws, OGC is responsible for “all University matters requiring legal advice, action, or representation.” OGC is organized philosophically and practically as a collaborative undertaking, recognizing that each member of the team has made a deliberate and informed professional choice to practice in a mission-driven university setting. OGC operates with a view both to delivering prompt and excellent legal services and to empowering each attorney to practice in a way that allows the attorney to grow and thrive. OGC enables and encourages each of its attorneys to be, and be seen as, significant colleagues in all areas and at all levels of the University, and to embrace the shared passion and satisfaction of the institution’s efforts to achieve the highest levels of excellence.
OGC prides itself on being a collaborative group of 21st century counselors, often serving as thought partners to colleagues throughout the University. As such, the expectations of the office generally, and of its lawyers, are dynamic, not static—to be successful at Princeton, attorneys must be flexible, intellectually agile, and prepared to embrace and master new areas of the law as University needs evolve and demand. Currently, OGC has 10 attorneys (including the Vice President & General Counsel and the Deputy General Counsel), a paralegal, and three administrative professionals, bringing the total team to 14. The University Counsel and Director of Investment Legal Services will be the 15th member of the OGC team.
While OGC regularly engages outside counsel under the supervision of the General Counsel, the desire and presumption is that attorneys will serve the University as lawyers, not as conduits. Thus, before contacting external counsel, OGC attorneys will first consider whether the matter can be handled internally.
About The Princeton University Investment Company (Princo)
Princo is the department within Princeton that manages the University’s $42 billion endowment. Princo is a leading investment manager with a long history of superior performance. It seeks to earn outstanding long-term investment returns in support of the University’s mission to advance learning through scholarship, research, and teaching of unsurpassed quality, and with a pervasive commitment to serve the Nation and the world.
Princo is empowered to make investment decisions on behalf of the University and invests primarily through partnerships with the world’s top external investment managers across an array of geographies and strategies, including developed markets equities, emerging markets equities, hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, real estate, natural resources, and fixed income. Princo employs a long-term approach to investing that reflects the permanent nature of its capital base and the perpetual time horizon of its single client, Princeton University. Princo collaborates closely with partners who range from some of the most elite and best-known investors in the world to up-and-coming emerging managers. We are often these firms’ first and/or closest partners, and we strive to deeply understand the people with whom we partner and the assets they own. We frequently co-invest or invest directly alongside them in both traditional funds and unconventional structures.
Princo’s team consists of 31 operations professionals and a total staff, including investors, of 49. Princo’s operations staff works closely with the investment team providing support across a wide spectrum of functions, including administration, middle-office operations, technology, human resources, reporting and analytics, and tax. Our team ranges from veterans with decades of financial services experience to recent college graduates, and we heavily prioritize mentorship and an apprenticeship approach to professional development. Princo is a collaborative organization that values open debate and independent thinking.
About Princeton University
Princeton University is a vibrant community of scholarship and learning that stands in the nation’s service and the service of humanity. Its educational mission is to prepare students to pursue meaningful lives and to help address the challenges of the future. The university provides its students with academic, extracurricular, and other resources that prepare them for positions of leadership and lives of service in many fields of human endeavor. Princeton provides instruction and engages in world-class research in the liberal arts, sciences, and engineering.
Princeton has an undergraduate college and a graduate school, with 105 departments and interdepartmental programs. In the 2025–2026 academic year, Princeton enrolled 5,825 undergraduates and 3,365 graduate students. Princeton is committed to attracting and supporting talented students from all segments of American society and parts of the world. Our diverse student body hails from all 50 states and over 100 countries. The University is deeply committed to educational access and pioneered a no-loan financial aid program in 2001 which it has enhanced multiple times since. Seventy-one percent of undergraduate students in the Class of 2030 receive financial aid with an average undergraduate annual aid package of $83,000+. Total budgeted operating expenses for the University in the academic year 2025–2026 were approximately $3.337 billion, with sponsored research revenues in excess of $530 million.
As a global research university, Princeton seeks to achieve the highest levels of distinction in the discovery and transmission of knowledge and understanding. At the same time, Princeton is distinctive among research universities in its commitment to undergraduate teaching. Interdisciplinary work is vital to Princeton and is reflected in a full spectrum of academic programs. The ratio of full-time undergraduate students to faculty members is 8:1. Classes at Princeton are small and challenging, and undergraduates receive support to pursue independent scholarly work more typical of graduate level study at most institutions. Princeton provides undergraduates with intensive interaction—both within and outside the classroom—with some of the world’s most distinguished scholars. The faculty, consisting of 1,366 full-time, part-time, and visiting members as of Fall 2026, includes 32 recipients of the Nobel Prize in physics, literature, economics, and medicine.
For more information about Princeton University, please visit http://www.princeton.edu.
Disclosures
Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis. As of the date of this posting, the annualized salary range for this position is $225,000–$360,000, plus bonus opportunity. Posted salary ranges do not include incentive compensation or any other type of remuneration.
Princeton University is an Equal Opportunity Employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.
The University considers factors such as (but not limited to) scope and responsibilities of the position, candidate's qualifications, work experience, education/training, key skills, market, collective bargaining agreements as applicable, and organizational considerations when extending an offer. The posted salary range represents the University's good faith and reasonable estimate for a full-time position; salaries for part-time positions are pro-rated accordingly.
If the salary range on the posted position shows an hourly rate, this is the baseline; the actual hourly rate may be higher, depending on the position and factors listed above.
The University also offers a comprehensive benefit program to eligible employees. Please see this link for more information.