Product Counsel

Job Description

As Product Counsel, you will have a broad range of responsibilities providing end-to-end legal guidance on product and feature development. You will report to Square’s Head of Product Counsel and partner with our product, engineering, and design teams to develop new offerings while managing legal risk and ensuring regulatory compliance. As we expand our offerings, your ideas and contributions will make an immediate impact. 

You are highly motivated, organized, and creative. You are curious, with a desire to understand underlying causes and motivations. You are able to research and master complex legal topics and communicate them to non-lawyers in brief, clear language. You are capable of gaining expertise in an area of the law, but can separate the practical from the academic and provide clear, accurate, balanced, and actionable advice to the business team. 

You will: 

• Provide holistic, solution-oriented legal guidance to product, design, and engineering teams on issues related to products and features throughout the entire product development lifecycle. 
• Hone and leverage your expertise in the relevant US and international laws and regulations applicable to the products and features you support, including laws related to financial services, privacy, intellectual property, and consumer protection.
• Advise business partners on product and feature build-outs and go-to-market strategies, draft terms of use, product policies, and product disclosures, and implement policies required to support legal frameworks. 
• Develop and nurture trusted relationships with business partners and stay informed on key product developments.
• Coordinate closely with other support teams (including compliance, risk, tax, corporate counsel, and accounting) to provide seamless, integrated product solutions to business partners. 
• Actively cultivate creative ideas and insights into how legal frameworks can support new product developments and customer experiences. 
• Support the drafting and negotiation of commercial agreements relevant to your products and services.

Qualifications

You have:

• 7+ years of combined, relevant experience in law firms, governmental agencies, or in-house legal departments (fintech or financial services experience preferred).
• Familiarity and experience with launching products and advising on the legal and regulatory aspects of product development in the technology space.
• Fluency in translating legal advice into actionable guidance for product, design, and engineering teams.
• Ability to apply:
  • Risk-balanced, practical legal guidance to complex product questions. 
  • Creative problem-solving and solution-finding skills.
  • Maturity in judgment, considering short and long-term strategies. 
  • Agility and flexibility in an evolving and ever-changing environment.
• A Juris Doctor (JD) degree and active membership in at least one state bar.

Even better:

• Experience with payments and financial services, and/or lending  regulations and payments/card network industry rules and regulations.
• Expertise in US and global privacy regulations.
• Excellent commercial negotiation and drafting skills.