Description:
Description:The Corporate Counsel is a hands-on, business-minded attorney who serves as a trusted legal advisor to ASI. Reporting to the General Counsel, this attorney handles a broad range of legal matters for a rapidly-scaling company building autonomous vehicle technology for four product verticals: landscape maintenance, agriculture, logistics, and earthmoving. This will be the second hire for the in-house legal team.
The ideal candidate is a practical problem-solver who can negotiate and close deals, manage risk in proportion to the business opportunity, explain legal issues in clear, actionable terms, and enable the business to act and scale quickly and responsibly. The ideal candidate should have a strong interest in learning how the business operates, what value we offer to customers, and how the technology functions.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities:
Exact duties will be decided based on candidate experience/qualifications and business need. The role is targeted for responsibility in at least some of the following areas. Experience or professional interest in all of these areas is not expected.
- Corporate and governance: Support corporate governance, board materials, entity maintenance and intracompany agreements, equity compensation, financings, and strategic transactions as needed.
- Employment and labor law support: Provide guidance to HR on employment issues and risks. Conduct trainings for managers.
- Disputes and risk management: Help manage pre-litigation disputes, claims, and insurance matters; coordinate with and manage outside counsel on litigation and specialized matters.
- Legal infrastructure building: Help select and deploy legal technology solutions such as contract lifecycle management. Develop and maintain contract templates, negotiation playbooks, approval workflows, and self-service tools. Prepare and deliver legal training to business teams.
- Commercial transactions: Draft, review, and negotiate a wide range of agreements, including customer agreements, software licenses, hardware and systems sales, product pilot and early adopter agreements, supplier and manufacturing agreements, distribution and reseller agreements, and NDAs. Be adept at identifying and addressing the most important business risks with solutions (creative solutions, when called for) that counterparties can accept. Work with bespoke agreements, and agreement templates that are executed in volume.
- Regulatory and compliance: Advise on and help build compliance policies, programs, and expertise to manage a wide variety of compliance issues including export controls, FCC equipment authorization, product safety and liability, data privacy, cybersecurity, anti-corruption.
- Intellectual property: Partner with outside counsel on IP protection strategy, licensing, open-source software use, and IP provisions in commercial agreements.
- Commercial property: Review and advise on purchases and lease of commercial property, zoning and other compliance issues.
- Provide direction to paralegals and legal support staff on assigned matters.
- Perform other duties as assigned by the General Counsel.
- Juris Doctor (J.D.) from an ABA-accredited law school.
- Active license in good standing to practice law in Utah, or active license in good standing in another jurisdiction and able to register as in-house counsel in Utah.
- 5 minimum+ years of legal experience with a significant focus on commercial transactions, gained at a law firm and/or in-house at a technology, manufacturing, or industrial company.
- Experience in several of the Essential Duties and Responsibilities (significant experience in all areas is not expected)
- Demonstrated ability to draft and negotiate complex commercial agreements independently and to close deals on business timelines.
- Demonstrated ability to learn and master new areas of law on-the-job.
- Strong business judgment and the ability to balance legal risk against commercial objectives, then communicate recommendations clearly to executives and non-lawyers.
- Excellent written and verbal communication, negotiation, and interpersonal skills.
- Ability to manage a high volume of matters with competing priorities in a fast-paced, growing company.
- High ethical standards, discretion, and sound judgment in handling confidential and privileged information.
- Must be authorized to work in the U.S.
Preferred Qualifications:
In-house experience at an autonomous vehicle or other tech company, and/or a strong understanding and interest in robotics and autonomous vehicles.