Description:
The Opportunity:Column is growing its in-house commercial legal team to own the legal infrastructure behind our most important commercial and strategic relationships. This isn't your typical in-house commercial counsel role reviewing SaaS contracts - you'll architect novel partnership structures that enable modern banking experiences, navigating complex regulatory requirements along the way. You'll work closely with Column's Sales & Partnerships, Risk, and Compliance teams to define how we structure our deals, serve our customers, and scale our platform safely. If you're excited about combining legal acumen with a builder's mindset - and want you work to have a direct impact on how financial services are delivered at scale - we think you'll be excited about this role!
This role can be either based in our Presidio office — one of the most beautiful locations in SF — 3–4 days per week -- or remote. For those in San Francisco, we offer up to $2,000/month in post-tax rent subsidy for employees who live within 2 miles, and welcome candidates who would relocate.
What You'll Do:
- Own complex agreements end-to-end: Structure, draft, and negotiate complex customer, and vendor, and third-party agreements covering a broad range of banking products and services, including agreements related to payments and money movement service and banking partnerships inclusive of deposit account, card, and lending programs.
- Build and manage legal playbooks and templates that scale: Develop and maintain templates and inventories of contracts, terms of services, notices, and disclosures for the Bank's products, services, and distribution channels that enable speed without sacrificing quality.
- Negotiate: Lead negotiations with high-growth fintechs and enterprise customers, balancing commercial priorities with regulatory requirements.
- Develop strong cross-functional partnerships: Work closely with the Sales and Business teams to understand the Bank's goals, strategy, and risk tolerance for each deal in order to develop an efficient and risk-based contracting strategy.
- Expand into additional areas of law: As the fourth member of our growing Legal team, you'll support each other with novel research, product and regulatory advice, exam management, subpoena responses, litigation deliverables, and corporate governance materials.
- Help us level up how Legal operates: Serve as a thought partner to the business and legal to support Column's ongoing growth through improvements to bank agreements, policies, and legal processes.
What you'll need to be successful
- 5+ years as a practicing lawyer; priority given to candidates with law firm experience in a technology transactions or fintech practice and/or in-house experience at a fintech or financial institution
- Ability to independently draft and negotiate commercial agreements, with a strong understanding of both contract law and commercial transactions
- Experience with complex commercial negotiations
- Comfort with project management, deadlines, and juggling execution across multiple initiatives for multiple stakeholders
Nice to haves:
- Understanding of traditional commercial banking products and services including ACH and wire transactions, accounts, lending, cards, cash management, sweeps, and check issuance/deposit, among others
- Experience in structured finance or with lending products
- Understanding of money transmission
