Real Estate Leasing Counsel

About Rack Room Shoes

Great shoes for men, women and children in comfort, dress, casual, and athletic categories make Rack Room Shoes the family footwear retailer of choice. The company offers a wide selection of nationally recognized brands known for their quality. Rack Room Shoes also offers an assortment of exclusive private brands commissioned from the best manufacturers in the business. Our private brands offer customers great styles and outstanding values, which translates into satisfied, loyal, repeat customers.

About Rack Room Shoes:

Rack Room Shoes is recognized as a footwear industry innovator and has proudly served our communities, pairing people with their favorite shoes for over 100 years. We offer a great variety of on-trend styles for women, men and children in athletic, comfort and dress categories. We pride ourselves on a delightful and trusted shopping experience for our valued customers while offering an outstanding value on a wide selection of nationally recognized brands and exclusive private labels. We operate approximately 515 stores in 37 states.

Why Join Us?

At Rack Room Shoes, you’ll have the opportunity to make a meaningful impact by providing strategic legal counsel and shaping our business operations. We value innovation, collaboration, and a forward-thinking approach. If you are ready to advance your career with a dynamic organization, join us and contribute to shaping the future of our business.

Position Summary:

As Real Estate Leasing Counsel, you will bring energy, creativity, and emotional intelligence to a role that requires both legal expertise and business acumen. You will demonstrate a high degree of business savvy, strategic thinking, drafting, negotiating, communication, and collaboration skills while providing a full range of legal functions as assigned by the Chief Legal Officer.

Your primary focus will be drafting and negotiating retail leases and related documents for shopping centers, mall-based, and street store environments, as well as supporting all real estate related legal and business issues, dispute resolution, and litigation matters. You will think outside the box, solve problems proactively, and articulate legal and business positions in a way that balances risk mitigation with achieving business objectives. You will also support and provide oversight of the lease administration function, ensuring compliance, data integrity, and operational excellence across the portfolio.

Attorneys with expanded skill sets or the desire to develop as a generalist are encouraged to apply. Additional skills or desire to engage in contract review/negotiation, data privacy/security in a retail setting, operational support, litigation management, marketing team guidance/advice, etc.

Essential Functions:

• Leasing and Finance: Draft, negotiate and provide support for commercial real estate lease and finance matters through skilled retail lease drafting, negotiation and editing while properly balancing business risks and meeting internal objectives and guidelines, legal research (as necessary) in jurisdictions across the country.
• Portfolio Support: Collaboratively support the company’s retail lease portfolio, addressing issues as they arise and drafting/negotiating attendant documents (including lease renewals, amendments, SNDAs, estoppels, landlord dispute letters).
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner closely with real estate, leasing, construction, procurement, and facilities teams - answering questions on lease interpretations and making recommendations for best practices and processes to drive consistency and efficiency.
• Disputes & Litigation Support: Provide counsel for all aspects of real estate disputes, pre-litigation, and pending litigation matters, including strategy, documentation, and coordination with outside counsel when appropriate.
• Tenant Rights Enforcement: Work with and guide internal teams to enforce tenant lease rights (e.g., co-tenancy and exclusive use provisions), including strategy development and dispute resolution.
• Lease Administration Oversight: Support the lease administration function, including lease abstract accuracy, critical date management, obligations tracking (e.g., maintenance, operating covenants), and alignment with finance and operations to ensure data integrity and timely execution.
• Standards & Templates: Develop, maintain, and improve company real estate agreement standards and template forms—including general construction, architecture, vendor procurement, lien releases, and related documents—to promote uniformity and speed.
• Corporate Strategy and Contract Support (Plus): Contribute to corporate strategic development matters as needed (e.g., M&A support), including due diligence and reviewing, drafting, and negotiating agreements such as NDAs, letters of intent, purchase agreements, and joint venture documents.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• Practical Judgment: Ability to identify, explain, and balance complex issues and business/legal risks in a common-sense, practical, and layperson-friendly manner.
• Relationship Building: Builds strong, trust-based relationships with internal partners, senior leaders, landlords, and vendors; exhibits high emotional intelligence and professional presence.
• Collaboration: Proven ability to work collaboratively across functions and levels; brings energy and a dynamic, out-of-the-box mindset to problem-solving.
• Results Orientation: Driven to deliver results on time; able to prioritize, manage multiple matters, and meet deadlines in a fast-paced environment.
• Counsel & Alternatives: Provides practical, effective counsel; finds alternative solutions; holds the line when warranted in a respectful, authoritative manner; proposes workable paths to desired business outcomes.
• Autonomy: Comfortable working on a wide range of mission-critical projects with minimal supervision.
• Work Style: Detail-oriented, resourceful, adaptable, organized, discreet, and cost-conscious; remains calm and effective under pressure.
• Negotiation: Proven experience as an independent, efficient, and successful negotiator of commercial agreements.
• Strategic Thinking: Sound judgment and strategic thinking across all legal matters.
• Communication: Excellent written and oral communication skills; able to simplify complexity and influence stakeholders.
Dispute Resolution: Ability to negotiate and resolve landlord disputes involving tenant rights under leases, maintenance obligations, and property damage claims.

Minimum Requirements:

• Juris Doctor (J.D.) from an accredited law school; active membership and good standing in at least one U.S. state bar.
• Demonstrated experience in retail/commercial real estate leasing, contract drafting and negotiation, and dispute resolution/litigation support.
• Familiarity with lease administration processes (e.g., abstracting, critical dates, options management) and internal controls for compliance.
• Strong proficiency in contract interpretation, legal research, and advising business stakeholders with a balanced risk/reward approach.
• Experience working across shopping center, mall, and street store environments is preferred.
• Plus: Experience and desire to expand skill set with Commercial Contacts, Intellectual Property, Data Privacy, Marketing and Consumer Facing matters.

This position is located in Charlotte, NC and the candidate must be willing to relocate, if not already living in the Charlotte Metro area. Current Hybrid Work policy requires four days in office, one day work from home.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic.