Senior Paralegal

Senior Paralegal

Company: Western Governors University

Job Location:

Category: Legal Affairs

Type: Full-Time

Job Type: Full time

Job Number: JR-024918

Location: Salt Lake City, UT

If you're passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country-and you're committed to working hard to play your part in building that future-consider WGU as the next step in your career.

Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.

The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs.

At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is:

Grade: Professional 310 Pay Range: $88,300.00 - $132,400.00

Job Description

The Senior Paralegal provides advanced paralegal and legal operations support to attorneys within the Office of General Counsel. Working independently in a fast-paced, high-volume environment, this role manages complex and sensitive legal support activities across multiple practice areas, including litigation, intellectual property, corporate governance, privacy, regulatory compliance, and transactional matters. The Senior Paralegal exercises advanced judgment, prioritizes competing demands, coordinates cross-functional legal workflows, and helps improve legal department processes, tools, and resources. This role is well-suited to candidates who are motivated by public interest work and continuous learning.

Responsibilities

Primary Responsibilities

• Manage substantive legal support activities across a broad portfolio of matters, ensuring timely coordination, organization, and follow-through on complex and sensitive workstreams.
• Administer litigation and claims support processes, including document preservation, litigation holds, discovery coordination, subpoena and administrative response support, matter tracking, and records management.
• Manage intellectual property portfolio administration, including trademark and copyright filings, renewals, deadline tracking, correspondence, and support for licensing-related matters.
• Coordinate corporate governance and entity maintenance activities, including board and committee materials, governance records, resolutions, bylaws, and related filings.
• Support privacy, regulatory, and compliance processes by coordinating records collection, response tracking, incident documentation, and required submissions or reporting.
• Serve as a key operational partner in legal intake and workflow management, helping prioritize requests, route matters, and support efficient delivery of legal services.
• Draft, review, revise, and maintain legal templates, reference materials, playbooks, and knowledge management resources.
• Identify, recommend, and implement improvements to legal department processes, tools, tracking methods, and documentation practices.
• Coordinate with internal stakeholders, outside counsel, vendors, and service providers as needed to support legal matters and departmental operations.
• May provide guidance, onboarding, or work direction to less experienced paralegal or legal support staff.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

This job description includes a general representation of job requirements rather than a comprehensive inventory of all required responsibilities or work activities. The contents of this document or related job requirements may change at any time with or without notice.

Qualifications

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Advanced organizational, analytical, and document management skills.
• Strong judgment and discretion in handling sensitive and confidential matters.
• Ability to independently manage multiple complex matters and competing deadlines.
• Ability to identify risk-sensitive issues and escalate appropriately.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to collaborate effectively across legal and business stakeholders.
• Ability to improve workflows, tools, and processes in a legal operations environment.

Education

• Bachelor's degree in a related area
• Paralegal certificate from an ABA-approved paralegal program

Experience

• 5 years of progressively responsible paralegal experience in a law firm, in-house legal department, higher education, nonprofit, or similarly complex environment.

Experience in lieu of education

Equivalent relevant experience performing the essential functions of this job may substitute for education degree requirements. Generally, equivalent relevant experience is defined as 1 year of experience for 1 year of education and is the discretion of the hiring manager.

Preferred Qualifications

• Certified Paralegal (CP) or Registered Paralegal (RP) designation.
• Experience in higher education.
• Broad experience providing substantive paralegal support across multiple legal domains, such as litigation and discovery (including eDiscovery), intellectual property filings and portfolio management, corporate governance, and regulatory compliance across multiple jurisdictions.
• Familiarity with privacy and data protection requirements applicable to higher education, including FERPA and student privacy obligations.
• Experience supporting contract and matter workflows using contract lifecycle management (CLM), litigation management, or similar legal technology platforms.
• Experience leveraging AI-assisted legal tools or emerging legal technologies to support legal operations, research, or workflow efficiency.

Travel

This position requires occasional travel of up to 20%, including required attendance at designated company summits (typically one to two per year). Additional travel may include conferences, visits to company locations, and other business-related events as needed. Additional travel may be assigned as needed to support business requirements

Position & Application Details

Full-Time Regular Positions (classified as regular and working 40 standard weekly hours): This is a full-time, regular position (classified for 40 standard weekly hours) that is eligible for bonuses; medical, dental, vision, telehealth and mental healthcare; health savings account and flexible spending account; basic and voluntary life insurance; disability coverage; accident, critical illness and hospital indemnity supplemental coverages; legal and identity theft coverage; retirement savings plan; wellbeing program; discounted WGU tuition; and flexible paid time off for rest and relaxation with no need for accrual, flexible paid sick time with no need for accrual, 11 paid holidays, and other paid leaves, including up to 12 weeks of parental leave.

How to Apply: If interested, an application will need to be submitted online. Internal WGU employees will need to apply through the internal job board in Workday.