Description:

The team:
Ironclad is searching for an experienced lead counsel to lead our world-class Product, Privacy, and IP legal function.

We are seeking a collaborative and results-driven product legal leader to lead key company initiatives. This individual will be a strategic partner to the business, driving aggressive growth and operational excellence by leveraging our legal technology. As part of this role, you will join a legal team that is intentionally at the forefront of AI adoption and innovation. We don't just advise on AI products - we use them. The ideal candidate is excited to work this way: you are eager to roll up your sleeves with AI tools, help design and stress‑test AI-powered product features, and continually refine how the legal team operates using data and automation. You bring your own point of view and hands-on experience with AI in legal or product counseling, and you're comfortable leading cross-functional conversations about responsible AI, governance, privacy, IP and risk. You will be a key partner in shaping and scaling an AI-forward legal practice that matches the pace of Ironclad's product innovation.

The ideal candidate excels in the legal product, privacy, and IP space. This is an opportunity to be a power user at a leading legal tech company. You will have early access to the latest product features, and your experience and feedback will directly impact the product that we build for the legal industry.

What You'll Do:

Serve as embedded product counsel for a portfolio of Ironclad products and features, with particular focus on AI-enabled, agentic, data-intensive, and workflow-integrated capabilities. That means you will join product development early—during roadmap, discovery, PRD, design, and testing—to identify legal, regulatory, privacy, IP, ethical, and customer trust considerations before they become launch blockers. In addition, you will provide practical, risk calibrated recommendations that give Product and Engineering clear paths forward rather than one off issue spotting. An essential part of the job is establishing and improving a predictable legal lane for priority AI features, including intake, tiering, review gates, decision records, and escalation paths.
Help operate and mature a scalable product focused AI governance program across our products and features.
Translate evolving AI, privacy, consumer protection, IP, and professional responsibility requirements into product requirements, launch criteria, documentation, and monitoring obligations.
Act as a senior legal advisor on privacy-sensitive product design, data use, retention and deletion, cross-border data flows, data protection agreements, security commitments, and privacy documentation.
Maintain a practical view of operational risk, including incident response, audit readiness, customer inquiries, and the relationship between product behavior and contractual commitments.
Advise Product and Engineering on copyright, trademark, patent, open-source, licensing, data rights, model outputs, and other IP issues arising from product development and AI systems.
Support proactive IP clearance and protection for new product names, features, technical inventions, partnerships, and AI-related innovations.
Support customer-facing and commercial matters when product, AI, privacy, data, IP, or security questions affect a deal, renewal, expansion, or strategic partnership.
Participate in selected customer and prospect conversations as a subject matter expert and help strengthen Ironclad's position as a responsible leader in legal AI.
Turn recurring legal judgments into reusable systems: review rubrics, checklists, templates, decision trees, playbooks, guidance, training, and knowledge assets.

What we are looking for:

JD from an accredited law school and active bar membership, with substantial legal experience spanning a leading law firm and high-growth technology company. 12+ years of legal experience preferred with at least 5 of those in-house.
Deep experience in at least one of product counseling or privacy/data protection.
Demonstrated ability to advise on complex, ambiguous matters involving product design, data, AI systems, emerging regulation, IP, security, and commercial risk.
Experience building or improving scalable legal programs, including governance frameworks, review processes, playbooks, templates, decision tools, training, or knowledge systems.
Strong understanding of how AI products are built and operated, including model or provider selection, training and evaluation, benchmarking, retrieval, prompt or agentic workflows, human oversight, testing, monitoring, and change management.
Ability to translate technical, legal, and regulatory complexity into clear recommendations, workable product requirements, and business decisions.
Consistently strong judgment: able to balance legal risk, customer trust, product usability, delivery timelines, and company goals; identify difficult decisions; and escalate appropriately.
Track record of leading high-stakes, cross-functional initiatives and influencing senior stakeholders without relying on formal authority.
Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to make complex issues understandable and actionable for technical and non-technical audiences.
Intellectual curiosity about AI and the future of legal work, paired with critical thinking about the useful business outcome, the necessary context, and the limits of any tool or analysis.
High EQ, low ego, pragmatism, and a collaborative working style. You are comfortable moving quickly, learning in public, and improving the system as you go.

Base Salary Range: $256,000 - $300,000