Lead Senior Counsel, Americas Advisory

CBRE is the global leader in commercial real estate and investment services, consistently recognized for ethical leadership, innovation, and operational excellence. Guided by our RISE values—respect, integrity, service, and excellence, CBRE’s legal team serves as a trusted partner to the business, advising on complex matters across a global platform.

As the Lead Senior Counsel, Americas Advisory – Tri State Region at CBRE, you will serve as a key legal advisor to executive leaders and senior business stakeholders across the leasing and valuations segments—while also leading a large, NYC-based team responsible for delivering day-to-day legal support at scale. This role blends hands-on counseling on complex, high-stakes matters with people leadership, operational rigor, contract lifecycle management (CLM) expertise, and the ability to build a high-performing team and service model that supports transactions efficiently and consistently.

Reporting to the Associate General Counsel, Americas Advisory, you will set priorities, allocate work, and provide coaching and oversight across a large team, ensuring consistent, timely, and business-minded legal guidance for a high-volume, high-impact advisory practice. You will partner closely with Compliance, Risk, Finance, and business leadership, and will be accountable for team development, performance management, outside counsel oversight, and continuous improvement of tools and processes that enable top-tier leasing, brokerage, and valuations services.

What You'll Do:

• Lead, develop, and inspire a large NYC-based legal team, including hiring, onboarding, coaching, performance management, and succession planning.
• Establish and run the team operating model (intake, triage, playbooks, escalation paths, and SLAs) to deliver consistent legal support across multiple business lines.
• Own and optimize contract lifecycle management (CLM) processes and tooling (e.g., intake, workflow, templates, clause library, approvals, reporting), partnering with stakeholders to drive cycle-time reduction, quality, and compliance.
• Serve as senior escalation point for complex, high-stakes matters, providing strategic guidance and final review where appropriate.
• Stay updated on legal and regulatory changes affecting the commercial real estate industry and translate requirements into practical guidance, training, and playbooks for the team and business stakeholders.
• Oversee (and, as needed, directly handle) the review, negotiation, and drafting of NDAs, engagement letters, and transactional documents ensuring quality and consistency across the team.
• Ensure regulatory compliance with securities laws and global financial regulations. Lead project teams and coordinate projects with global legal, compliance, and business colleagues.
• Identify and mitigate legal risks in leasing, brokerage, and valuations transactions.
• Collaborate with business leaders, compliance teams, and external counsel to execute strategic transactions—providing clear deal leadership, delegating effectively, and developing others through active coaching, feedback, and review.
• Coordinate compliance with legal, regulatory, and risk priorities.
• Provide legal counsel to executives, managers, and employees on legal aspects of the Americas Advisory commercial real estate business.
• Evaluate complex commercial real estate transactions for potential securities-related risks and develop risk mitigation solutions.
• Maintain current knowledge of relevant laws.
• Build and deliver a structured training program for the team and internal clients, including periodic refreshers, templates, and matter debriefs to drive continuous improvement.

CBRE carefully considers multiple factors to determine compensation, including a candidate’s education, training, experience and location. The compensation offered to a successful candidate will depend on their skills, qualifications, experience and location. Successful candidates will also be eligible for a discretionary bonus based on CBRE’s applicable benefit program. This role will provide the following benefits: 401(K), Dental insurance, Health insurance, Life insurance, and Vision insurance.