Lead Counsel, Enterprise Claims & Anti-Fraud Program Lead, FedEx
Jerrod Smith is an in-house legal executive with 23+ years of experience building and leading legal teams, driving complex commercial transactions, and delivering measurable results across litigation strategy, risk management, and fraud defense in the transportation, logistics, and engineering industries.
His career has been defined by building things. Early in his career, he built a legal department from the ground up at Air Liquide E&C, managing five direct reports as a member of the Executive Management Team reporting directly to the CEO, overseeing the resolution of more than $200 million in simultaneous disputes, and closing landmark commercial agreements, including a $350 million EPCM contract and a $225 million joint venture. Today, he leads a cross-functional team as program director of a national enterprise anti-fraud program at FedEx, directing an outsourced operational unit of seven, leading strategic sessions with senior executives, and driving nine-figure financial impact since the program's national launch.
On the commercial transactions side, he has spent the better part of two decades negotiating and structuring complex agreements across logistics, transportation, distribution, and engineering, including serving as lead in-house counsel for FedEx's $4.4 billion acquisition of TNT Express and advising on the full range of service, vendor, and risk-transfer agreements in the logistics space. He is an active practitioner of AI-driven legal operations, deploying AI litigation tools for defense efficiency and applying productivity AI across contract drafting, playbook development, research, and trend analysis. He believes the next generation of in-house legal leadership will be defined by those who can build scalable, results-driven programs, not just manage individual matters.
Smith is also a two-time FedEx Five-Star Award winner and a member of the Tennessee Bar and the ACC.
