Legal Assistant

Job Description

Who We Are

We’re the team behind Matrix—the leading project for secure, open decentralised communication and Element— the all-in-one secure chat app for teams, friends and organisations. Our mission is to make messaging as open as email— allowing everyone to choose where their data is hosted, enjoy private conversations and ultimately be in control of their own communication.

We build open alternatives to apps like WhatsApp, Slack, Teams & more. Our early adopters include The French Government, and open source communities like Mozilla, KDE, GNOME and Wikimedia, while we’re working towards gaining traction in personal messaging.

We build things for everyone, and we know we can’t succeed without a diverse team. Our hiring process is designed to be respectful and give candidates the best chance to show us what you can do. If we ever fall down on this, please let us know.

The Role

We are looking for a Legal Assistant to join our growing Legal & Business Operations team and be an integral partner to a variety of departments, providing pragmatic advice and legal support as Element continues to scale internationally.

This role is ideal for someone who has a keen eye for detail, thrives on coming up with practical solutions and loves to own and manage complex projects.

This is a phenomenal opportunity to be part of a growing team working on cutting edge issues in a fast-paced, globally distributed and ever-changing environment.

Requirements

• Provide legal support on a variety of commercial and corporate matters under time-sensitive conditions.
• Assist both our Head of Legal & Business Operations and our Data Protection Officer with contract and policy reviewing and drafting ( including services agreements, NDAs, DPAs, SaaS license agreements, employment contracts), and project manage contract issuances.
• Managing our licenses and supplier relationships.
• Develop, implement and maintain standard templates, forms, and processes.
• Review and amend internal guidelines, standard terms and policies, and employment contracts.
• Handle legal queries from all areas of the company, involving other members of the Legal and/or Business Operations team and/or outside counsel as needed.
• Contribute towards designing legal and business processes that enable Element to scale internationally.
• Work with other members of the Business Operations team on ensuring our legal records are up to date.
• Support with ad-hoc legal and/or business operations projects as needed.

About You

• Some experience in either an in-house team or private practice, ideally, with experience advising on a range of commercial matters including those involving Open Source Software (OSS):
• You are business minded and practical in addressing legal issues. You can differentiate between legal and commercial issues and understand when to escalate.
• You have exceptional interpersonal skills, including outstanding verbal and written skills in English.
• You are highly detail-oriented, and adept at spotting inconsistencies and anomalies.
• Highly organised with the ability to balance and prioritise multiple tasks.
• You are naturally curious and want to work on a broad variety of matters, with teams across various business functions.
• Interest or experience in technology.
• Energised by a dynamic, fast-paced, and remote-first workplace.

Nice to have

• Qualified solicitor in England and Wales.
• Knowledge of OSS.
• Knowledge of and experience working with global data privacy laws.
• Fluent French and / or German.

Benefits

Our general approach is to treat people like adults and acknowledge that by being flexible we create an environment for people to do their best work. For more details here is our manifesto. That said specific points that differentiate us include:

• Generous holiday allowance, private healthcare for you and your family and opportunities for development and progression as we scale.
• Family friendly environment; many of the team have small children and we look to accommodate that as best we can.
• People tend to stay with the company for a long time, we take this as a sign that we have a cohesive, supportive culture, that we have engaging challenging work and that people can develop their skills and careers here for the long term.

Element does not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, colour, religion, age, national origin, marital status, disability, veteran status, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other reason prohibited by law in provision of employment opportunities and benefits.