Associate Vice President, Legal Knowledge & Workflow Management

Over the last 20 years, Ares’ success has been driven by our people and our culture. Today, our team is guided by our core values – Collaborative, Responsible, Entrepreneurial, Self-Aware, Trustworthy – and our purpose to be a catalyst for shared prosperity and a better future. Through our recruitment, career development and employee-focused programming, we are committed to fostering a welcoming and inclusive work environment where high-performance talent of diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives can build careers within this exciting and growing industry.

Ares is seeking an Associate Vice President, Legal Knowledge and Workflow Management to serve as the Legal Strategy and Innovation (LSI) team's forward-deployed operating and transformation partner to Funds Legal. Embedded with Funds Legal and reporting to the Head of Legal Knowledge and Workflow Management, this role will work with Funds Legal leadership to improve how legal work is delivered across fund formation and capital raising by integrating knowledge, workflow, technology and AI, data and external service providers. The role's primary mandate is to redesign and scale the Funds Legal delivery model: identifying where attorney judgment is required, where work can be standardized, delegated or technology-enabled, how institutional knowledge and data should be captured and reused, and how outside counsel and other providers should fit into the model. The role will initially focus on fund formation and capital raising while supporting broader Funds Legal operating priorities over time. This is a hands-on legal transformation role, not a traditional knowledge management or technology support role. The successful candidate will combine substantive fluency in private funds with strong operating-model and process-design capabilities, practical implementation skills and the ability to influence senior attorneys and cross-functional partners. The role may be prototyping or configuring tools directly where practical, but its core responsibility is to define problems, translate legal work and judgment into scalable solutions and drive implementation and adoption. REPORTING Reports to: Head of Legal Knowledge and Workflow Management KEY RESPONSIBILITIES Funds Legal Operating Model and Transformation Serve as the forward-deployed LSI operating partner to Funds Legal, working with leadership to identify, prioritize and execute the transformation agenda for fund formation, capital raising and other priority workflows. Define and improve the Funds Legal operating model, including what work requires attorney judgment, what can move to other internal or external resources, what can be standardized or technology-enabled, and the ownership, handoffs, escalation paths and governance needed to support that model. Review priority workflows to identify bottlenecks, duplicative work, unclear handoffs, attorney time drains and opportunities to simplify, standardize, delegate or automate work, while creating common standards across products, geographies and teams where appropriate. Translate Funds Legal priorities and pain points into clear requirements, implementation roadmaps and operating changes, coordinating across LSI and relevant business and control functions to drive execution. Knowledge, Workflow and AI-Enabled Solutions Synthesize fund terms, precedent, house positions, regulatory requirements, legal work product and relevant matter context into practical guidance, playbooks, structured data, templates and reusable workflow assets. Translate legal judgment, house positions and risk tolerances into requirements, workflow steps, rules, checklists, prompts and controls that can support repeatable and technology-enabled legal processes. Design, prototype or configure where appropriate, test and implement workflow and AI-enabled solutions for priority capital raising work, including intake, document analysis, terms checking, investor comments, side