In-House Counsel

About the Company

Stellar Management is a family owned New York City real estate platform. We own and operate roughly 110 buildings: more than 10,000 apartments, most of them rent stabilized, plus office and retail space across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx.

About the Role

This is the company's only transactional lawyer. You report directly to the managing partners and work every day with asset management, capital markets, development and construction, accounting and the family office. A separate legal team handles landlord tenant work. On the transactional side there are no associates. You do the drafting yourself, with AI tools that are already built and in daily use. At any given time the seat carries 30 to 40 open matters.

Process: resume and a short note on why this seat, a take home work test drawn from the real work (about four hours), conversations with asset management and the managing partners, then references. To apply, send your resume and a short note through LinkedIn.

Responsibilities

• Commercial leasing (about 50%): new retail and office leases on our standard forms, renewals, amendments, assignments, licenses and surrenders. Mostly small neighborhood tenants, plus larger office deals, carried through signature and setup in Yardi.

• Disputes and other (about 15%): tenant defaults, unauthorized subleases, insurance claims, DOB violations, demand letters, building sales as seller's counsel.

• Forms, tools and process (about 13%): maintaining our standard forms, negotiating playbooks, AI drafting tools and lease tracker.

• Financing (about 12%): borrower side refinancings, extensions and workouts, working hand in hand with our capital markets lead. Large loan modifications are handled with outside counsel, with you running the process.

• Entity, tax and family office (about 10%): LLC agreements, reorganizations, tax structuring with outside advisors, trust and guarantor questions.

• Manage outside counsel on litigation, tax and the largest deals. You are the person everyone in the building calls with a legal question.

Qualifications

• A 4th or 5th year real estate attorney who is ready to own a legal function, not one slice of a deal.

• NY bar.

• Four to five years of real estate transactional work at a strong firm or in house: leasing, financing, acquisitions and sales.

Required Skills

• You have drafted leases and loan documents yourself.

• You would rather close twenty small leases well than wait for one big deal. No work is beneath the title.

• You chase a signature, a COI or a Yardi setup without being asked.

• You already use AI in your drafting and can explain how you check its output.

• You know what you don't know, when to bring in an outside advisor, and how to run that advisor.

Preferred Skills

• Rent regulation, HPD or 421a exposure, loan modifications, time on the business side of real estate.

• We care more about horsepower, drive and how you treat people than about pedigree.

• Room to grow into the senior legal role for the right person.

Pay range

$200,000 to $300,000 base salary, plus bonus, depending on experience.

Equal Opportunity Statement

Stellar Management is an equal opportunity employer. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status or any other protected status under federal, state or local law.