General Counsel – Head of Litigation

Our Mission

Reflection is a research lab making intelligence open and accessible for everyone to use, customize, and build on. We build open models that let anyone control their intelligence and help shape the future of AI. Our mission: make intelligence open and accessible to all.

Role Overview

Reflection is hiring an experienced, business-minded litigation leader to build and lead our litigation and investigations function. You will serve as the company’s principal legal advisor on disputes and contentious matters, own litigation strategy across a broad portfolio, and establish the systems and processes that prepare Reflection for its next stage of growth.

You will combine strategic leadership with hands-on execution: assessing emerging threats, directing significant matters, advising senior leadership, managing outside counsel, and building practical approaches to litigation readiness, discovery, subpoenas, and investigations. Your remit will include complex technology and intellectual property disputes, commercial matters, and regulatory investigations, with responsibility for coordinating other disputes across the business.

You will work closely with our Head of Product & Regulatory and colleagues across Legal, Research, Engineering, Safety, Security, and the business to anticipate risk and inform decisions about model development, open-weight releases, and commercialization. You will help turn lessons from disputes and investigations into better advice, stronger processes, and informed business decisions.

This is an opportunity to define and operationalize an important legal function at a frontier AI company. You should be equally comfortable recommending a strategy to executives, working through technical facts with researchers, improving a legal brief, and building a process that the company can use repeatedly.

What You’ll Do

• Lead litigation and dispute strategy. Develop, execute and own Reflection’s approach to threatened and active disputes, including copyright and other intellectual property claims, commercial disputes, privacy and consumer claims, and other significant matters. Coordinate with specialist counsel on employment, corporate, and other disputes as appropriate.

• Drive matters from initial assessment through resolution. Develop case strategy, assess exposure and business implications, oversee factual development and discovery, guide briefing and witness preparation, and recommend settlement, trial, and appellate strategies. Pursue affirmative claims when they advance Reflection’s interests.

• Build the litigation function. Establish practical systems for matter intake, escalation, deadline management, case assessment, budgeting, reporting, and knowledge management. Define the function’s operating model and processes, and develop its resourcing and team-building plan as company needs evolve.

• Own litigation readiness and discovery. Design and oversee legal-hold, preservation, collection, review, and production processes in partnership with IT, Security, Research, Privacy, and outside specialists. Help develop information-governance practices that account for Reflection’s technical systems, data, and model-development lifecycle.

• Manage subpoenas and other legal demands. Establish and operate workflows for civil discovery requests, government demands, and requests for information, including assessment of validity and scope, objections and negotiations, confidentiality protections, and timely responses.

• Lead regulatory investigations and enforcement responses. Manage investigative inquiries and contested matters in close partnership with Product & Regulatory counsel and other relevant legal colleagues. Develop response strategies, coordinate factual submissions and witness preparation, and assess the implications of proposed resolutions.

• Advise proactively on product and business risk. Partner with Research, Engineering, Product, and Legal colleagues on material disputes exposure associated with training data, model development and releases, licensing, commercial relationships, and public representations. Translate evolving litigation and enforcement developments into practical advice.

• Support sensitive investigations and leadership decisions. Lead or coordinate internal investigations as appropriate, protect confidential information, and provide clear recommendations to the General Counsel and senior leadership on consequential legal, business, and reputational issues.

• Build effective cross-functional practices. Deliver training and playbooks, coordinate with Communications on sensitive matters, and work with Finance and relevant legal colleagues on litigation reporting, insurance, indemnification, and potential financial exposure.

What We’re Looking For

• A J.D. and active membership in good standing with at least one U.S. state bar, with the ability to satisfy applicable requirements to practice in the role’s location.

• ~12+ years of relevant litigation experience, combining law-firm practice with in-house experience at a technology company. Demonstrated scope, functional ownership and operational capacity matter more than a precise number of years.

• A strong record of independently leading complex matters, making strategic decisions, directing outside counsel, and advising business leaders through uncertainty.

• Broad civil litigation experience and strong command of procedure, discovery, evidence, motion practice, and dispute resolution, including meaningful experience with technology or intellectual property disputes.

• Experience building and implementing legal systems, workflows, or programs, with the ability to translate a policy or playbook into a process that people actually follow.

• Experience handling government or regulatory investigations, subpoenas, or other investigative demands, and the judgment to identify when additional specialist expertise is needed.

• Excellent legal analysis, writing, and communication skills, including the ability to explain complex risks clearly to executives and technical colleagues.

• The curiosity and technical fluency to understand AI development and deployment, investigate complex factual records, and work credibly with researchers and engineers.

• Strong business judgment and the ability to distinguish material risks from manageable uncertainty, prioritize effectively, and recommend a course of action.

• A collaborative, low-ego approach and willingness to move between strategic leadership, detailed execution, and urgent operational work.

Bonus Points

• Substantial copyright litigation experience involving software, training data, digital platforms, licensing, or emerging technology.

• Experience establishing or scaling a litigation function at a growing company.

• Experience with open-source software, open-weight models, AI systems, or technically complex discovery.

• Experience coordinating cross-border disputes or investigations and managing counsel in multiple jurisdictions.

• Experience developing legal talent, leading teams, or using legal technology to improve matter management and discovery.

What We Offer:

We believe that to make intelligence open and accessible to all, you need to start at the foundation. Joining Reflection means building from the ground up as part of a talent-dense team. You will help define our future as a company, and help define the future of open foundational models.

We want you to do the most impactful work of your career with the confidence that you and the people you care about most are supported.

• Top-tier compensation: Salary and equity structured to recognize and retain our talent globally.

• Stock options: Everyone who joins and contributes to Reflection's success gets to share in the upside through stock options.

• Health & wellness: Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and life, with an annual wellness allowance.

• Meals: Lunch and dinner are provided in the office daily.

• Life & family: 22 weeks paid parental leave for all new birthing and non-birthing parents, including adoptive and surrogate journeys.

• Vacation days: Unlimited paid time off in the U.S. and 30 days in the U.K.

• Sponsorship support: We sponsor visas to help exceptional talent join our team and support long-term immigration pathways where applicable.

• Team building: We have regular off-sites, happy hours, and team celebrations.

Export Control Notice: This position may require access to technology or source code subject to the U.S. Export Administration Regulations. Any offer of employment for this role may be conditioned on the Company's ability to provide the candidate with access to such technology or source code in compliance with applicable U.S. export control laws, which may require the Company to seek government authorization.

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement
Reflection AI is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, disability, genetic information, veteran or military status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We encourage applicants from all backgrounds to apply.

We provide reasonable accommodations throughout the hiring process for applicants with disabilities, pregnancy-related limitations, or religious needs. If you need an accommodation, contact us at [email protected].

We will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records in accordance with applicable law, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and the California Fair Chance Act.

Candidate and Employee Privacy Notice: We collect and process personal data about applicants for the purposes described in our Candidate and Employee Privacy Notice