The Legal Counsel (Institutional Legal) role will be based in the US or UK working as part of the Institutional Legal team covering derivatives, international markets and professional trading clients including banks, brokers, hedge funds, market makers corporates and other professional traders. The team consists of a small but highly experienced group of lawyers from a combination of traditional finance and fintech backgrounds. The role reports into a director who leads the markets and financing legal team, and covers institutional products including prime brokerage, exchange, trading and custody, derivatives and financing products. We’re looking for a lawyer with solid product development, regulatory and negotiation skills preferably developed within the traditional derivatives, structured finance and/or prime brokerage sectors. A sense of curiosity, flexibility and adventure combined with the desire to make an impact at the intersection of crypto and traditional global markets is essential.
What you’ll be doing:
- Provide full product life-cycle counseling for a variety of global derivatives, prime brokerage, custody and financing related products, and practical advice on associated legal issues and risks, complex agreement structures and company policies in a risk-tolerant, but compliance-oriented environment.
- Negotiate novel, highly-tailored agreements with strategic partners and sophisticated counterparties in the finance, payments and digital currency space.
- Stay abreast of and advise on digital currency and blockchain technology legal and regulatory issues, particularly in the US, UK, EU and elsewhere.
- Lead and assist with complex and global cross-functional efforts, driving and ensuring cross-functional alignment with other stakeholders (Institutional Sales, Business Development, Product/Engineering, Finance/Tax, Compliance).
- Effectively collaborate with those same cross-functional teams and legal colleagues to solve problems, build partnerships, and ship products.
- Proactively solve problems for the business as they plan and execute on an aggressive global growth plan, develop scaled strategies for addressing risk in business-centric ways and build commercial processes that allow the business flexibility and freedom to move quickly.
- Look around corners and creatively solve problems for the business as they plan, build, and execute their transactional and product roadmap.
- Be a business partner, not just a lawyer.
What we look for in you:
- Qualified solicitor in England and Wales or in a major US jurisdiction with at least 3 years experience working in a financial services institution (e.g. e-money issuer, payment service firm, broker dealer / asset manager, trading firm, bank or brokerage) or in a law firm supporting such clients (ideally with some in-house experience).
- Interest in digital currency and blockchain technology.
- Experience working with product teams launching fintech, financial services, investment or similar products.
- Experience working and leading with cross-functional, globally located teams.
- Familiarity with UK/EU regulatory regimes applicable to financial instruments (including MiFID, EMIR, AIFMD) and crypto assets (e.g. MiCA, AMLD).
- Comfortable challenging the status quo and preconceived notions of what is possible; confidence giving advice on novel products in areas of regulatory ambiguity.
- Excellent judgement, analytical rigour, clear and direct written and oral communication skills, and business pragmatism.
- Top-notch analytical skills with experience owning projects from concept to finish.
- Creativity, comfort and experience with solutions that help scale financial services businesses and technology solutions.
- Sound and practical business judgement.
- Intellectual curiosity and flexibility.
- Team-oriented and collaborative.
Nice to haves:
- Experience supporting critical authorisation and license applications for spot and derivatives expansion in major jurisdictions.
- Experience analyzing the regulatory status of crypto assets and whether they may qualify as regulated financial instruments (e.g. under MiFID).
- Experience of advising on cross-border licensing requirements, safe-harbors and creating client classification procedures.
- Strong negotiation skills and ability to review and negotiate financial agreements (e.g. prime brokerage, lending and derivatives documentation).
- Experience registering and perfecting collateral arrangements.
Position ID: P71115
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