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Posted August 10, 2022
Protocol Labs

Corporate Counsel

Protocol Labs
Anywhere Remote Full Time

About Protocol Labs Protocol Labs drives breakthroughs in computing to push humanity forward. Protocol Labs is a product-development lab, but behind...

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About Protocol Labs

Protocol Labs drives breakthroughs in computing to push humanity forward. Protocol Labs is a product-development lab, but behind the protocols and tools we build, behind the research and implementations, are passionate people, teammates, and community members. Most teams in the Protocol Labs Network are fully distributed and work remotely around the world. Engineers, researchers, and operators work in the open to improve the internet — humanity's most important technology — as we explore new advances at the intersection of many exciting fields (crypto, networks, distributed systems) and cultures (startups, research, open-source, distributed work).

We’re looking for a smart, self-motivated, creative, and organized attorney to own and run the company’s internal legal processes.

The Team

The legal team at Protocol Labs is a partner to our internal engineering and business units, which are inventing new open source technologies and new business models that include digital assets. Our world-class attorneys have deep expertise and many substantive wins in the fields of free speech and internet privacy, corporate and securities law, technology, policy, and more.
Just like the internet itself, we are a fully distributed team spread across the globe. We don’t let geography or borders define us -- we want to work with talented and intellectually curious people of diverse backgrounds and different perspectives. This role will work with colleagues and collaborators across the globe.
Protocol Labs and its projects count investors including Sequoia, Union Square Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and Polychain Capital. The company has raised more than $200 million to build technologies that improve and decentralize the Internet, using content-addressing, public blockchains, and novel cryptographic proofs.

As Corporate Counsel at Protocol Labs, you will...

As Corporate Counsel for Protocol Labs, you’ll be a trusted partner to each of Protocol Labs’ departments, handling issues that are critical to the company’s continued success. This is a great opportunity for someone to take on considerable responsibility, grow as a lawyer, and gain experience in all aspects of working as in-house counsel for a cutting-edge tech company.

Legal Leadership

    • Developing and implementing frameworks for complex issues like cryptocurrency compensation and international operations
    • Investigating R&D Lab-related Legal matters that align with Protocol Labs global, remote, and distributed mission, vision, and roadmap
    • Proactively charting PL legal strategy
    • Respond vigorously to challenges

Corporate Matters

    • Working on transactions, including serving as an advisor and coach to business and software units, while drafting and negotiating our agreements for service providers, vendors, partners, licensees, users, etc.
    • Corporate structuring including global entity strategy development and implementation
    • Corp governance review & policy best practices
    • Creating plain-language form agreements for transactions and educating/empowering relevant stakeholders on using these form

Employment Matters

    • Supporting employment negotiations and answering relevant legal questions
    • Addressing employment matters, including implementing policies and guiding compliance

Streamlining Operations

    • Considerable responsibility as the front-line contact for the business on a day-to-day basis for legal issues and requests
    • Implementing and maintaining our contract management systems.
    • Project managing multiple complex cross-functional workstreams
    • Interface with and optimize expert external counsel

You may be a fit for this role if you have...

    • Track record of demonstrating good judgement
    • Creative approach to solving challenging problems
    • J.D. from an accredited U.S. law school
    • Experience at a top corporate law firm
    • Proven track record of learning and adapting quickly, thinking rigorously, and working proactively and independently
    • Desire to create robust, responsive legal processes that balance the need to protect a company with the necessity of moving quickly in a startup
    • Adept at critical thinking & analysis of risk as well as pragmatic approach to mitigation and management of risk
    • You have deal experience including fundraising and / or financing, venture, Corp Dev / M&A, and deal structuring
    • Keen attention to detail and passion for getting things right
    • Ability to communicate and empathize with business, engineering, and legal colleagues alike
    • Excellent writing skills

Bonus Points

    • You’re interested in and and comfortable with technology
    • You have in-house experience at a high-growth tech company
    • You have one year of experience (or many more) drafting and negotiating contracts or working on litigation
    • You have global tax experience or knowledge

#LI-JT1, #LI-AB1

What’s it like to work at Protocol Labs?
Protocol Labs' mission is to improve humanity’s most important technology, the Internet. We build protocols, systems, and tools to improve how it works. Today, we are focused on how we store, locate, and move information. Our projects include IPFS, Filecoin, libp2p, and more.
As a distributed team, we hire anywhere in the world, and at various levels of experience (entry, senior, staff). We look for people with unique perspectives and diverse backgrounds.
We have a great benefits package, including parental leave, contributions to your retirement, competitive pay, and unlimited time off. For U.S.-based employees, we also provide platinum-level health, dental, and vision coverage for you and your family.

If you’re passionate about the future of computing and a more democratized internet, we want to talk to you.

GDPR for Job Applicants and Candidates

When you apply to a job on this site, the personal data contained in your application will be collected by Protocol Labs, Inc. (“Protocol Labs”), which is located at 427 N Tatnall St #51207, Wilmington, Delaware 19801 and can be contacted by emailing legalrequests[at]protocol.ai. Protocol Labs’ data protection team can be contacted via legalrequests[at]protocol.ai. Your personal data will be processed for the purposes of managing Protocol Labs’ recruitment related activities, which include setting up and conducting interviews and tests for applicants, evaluating and assessing the results thereto, and as is otherwise needed in the recruitment and hiring processes. Such processing is legally permissible under Art. 6(1)(f) of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation) as necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by Protocol Labs, which are the solicitation, evaluation, and selection of applicants for employment.

Your personal data will be shared with Greenhouse Software, Inc., a cloud services provider located in the United States of America and engaged by Protocol Labs to help manage its recruitment and hiring process on Protocol Labs’ behalf. Accordingly, if you are located outside of the United States, your personal data will be transferred to the United States once you submit it through this site. Because the European Union Commission has determined that United States data privacy laws do not ensure an adequate level of protection for personal data collected from EU data subjects, the transfer will be subject to appropriate additional safeguards.

Your personal data will be retained by Protocol Labs as long as Protocol Labs determines it is necessary to evaluate your application for employment or to assist in the hiring process. Under the GDPR, you have the right to request access to your personal data, to request that your personal data be rectified or erased, and to request that processing of your personal data be restricted. You also have the right to data portability. In addition, you may lodge a complaint with an EU supervisory authority.

This listing expired on Sep 24. Applications are no longer accepted.

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