Commercial Counsel

Nextdoor • San Francisco, CA

5h • Hybrid

About The Position

Nextdoor (NYSE: NXDR) is the essential neighborhood network, connecting neighbors, public agencies, and businesses in over 340,000 neighborhoods across 11 countries. Nextdoor builds innovative technology to foster local community, share important news, and create neighborhood connections at scale. The Counsel team is a close-knit and collaborative group that supports the entire Nextdoor community, operating with a high-leverage mindset by investing in systems, workflows, and tooling. Each member brings individual expertise and a builder's orientation, designing infrastructure for scalable legal support. They are reliable, trustworthy, and innovative in supporting Nextdoor’s business goals and its purpose of building stronger local communities. As Commercial Counsel, you will serve as both a trusted commercial lawyer and a systems builder. You will support the global revenue team on advertising deals and partner with business teams on various commercial matters. Crucially, you will design, build, and continuously improve workflows, playbooks, templates, and AI-enabled tooling to enable a lean legal team to operate efficiently at the speed of business. You will also advise internal clients on legal risks, business strategies, and other issues related to commercial transactions and general operations.

Requirements

• Minimum of 3 years of relevant experience, ideally with at least 1 year of in-house experience in a fast-paced and rapidly growing technology or digital media company and drafting and negotiating contracts supporting digital ads sales
• Demonstrated track record of building legal operations infrastructure in-house — e.g., CLM implementations, intake systems, playbook development, template libraries, self-serve contracting programs, or AI-driven review workflows. You should be able to point to specific systems you've designed and the measurable impact they had
• Hands-on experience deploying AI tools (contract review, drafting, summarization, knowledge retrieval) in a legal context — including the judgment to know where AI adds leverage and where it doesn't
• A builder's mindset: you see inefficiencies as design problems, you prototype and iterate, and you're comfortable owning tools and processes end-to-end rather than handing them off
• J.D. from a nationally recognized law school, admitted to any state bar
• Strong communication and negotiation skills, and experience communicating and explaining complex legal issues to business partners
• Familiarity with data privacy laws, IP, and advertising business issues and how those play out within legal agreements and commercial relationships
• Ability to work on multiple projects, prioritize and organize workload
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills and presentation skills
• Ability to assess and manage risk — including the risk of over-engineering solutions or under-investing in scale
• Comfortable in highly collaborative environment
• Ability to easily network and build relationships with colleagues and internal clients
• Strong analytical and interpersonal skills
• Genuine enthusiasm for using AI and emerging technologies to reimagine how legal work gets done — and the technical curiosity to go beyond surface-level adoption

Nice To Haves

• Experience as an early legal hire at a startup or scale-up where you had to build the legal function's systems from the ground up
• You have a background in ad-tech, marketing, and/or media buying, and experience in negotiating contracts with customers, agencies and partners in the advertising ecosystem
• Experience with privacy laws, regulations, and industry guidelines, including those relevant for social media and Internet companies
• Diverse knowledge of global advertising, privacy and marketing laws, and experience working with global teams, including in the UK and Canada.

Responsibilities

• Provide day-to-day advice and counsel in commercial transactions for Nextdoor’s revenue team, global Marketing business partners, and commercial transaction support for other teams as required
• Draft, review, negotiate, and manage a variety of contracts, including insertion orders with advertising clients and advertising agencies, contracts with partners in the online advertising ecosystem, strategic partnerships, and contracts and terms of service for promotions, influencers, and sponsorships
• Design and build scalable systems, workflows, and self-service resources that reduce legal bottlenecks, standardize contracting, and empower business teams to move faster without sacrificing quality or risk posture
• Identify, evaluate, pilot, and operationalize AI tools and emerging technologies across the contract lifecycle — from intake and triage to drafting, review, redlining, and post-signature management — and measure their impact
• Develop and maintain contract review playbooks, fallback position libraries, templates, clause banks, and negotiation guidance that enable consistent outcomes across the team and business partners
• Support internal clients through the art of deal making and contracting
• Collaborate cross-functionally across the organization to ensure agreements — and the systems that produce them – are consistent with internal policies and processes
• Research and advise on issues related to doing business in foreign jurisdictions, and update contracts, processes, and legal positions accordingly
• Drive the development and maintenance of internal resources, including contract review playbooks and leveraging AI tools and emerging technologies to implement best practices and increase team efficiency
• Participate in in-person Nextdoor events such as trainings, off-sites, volunteer days, and team building exercises
• Build in-person relationships with team members and contribute to Nextdoor’s company culture

Benefits

• meaningful equity grant for this role. With quarterly vesting, your first vest date will take place within 3 months of your start date.
• Nextdoor employees can choose between a variety of health plans, including a 100% covered employee only plan option
• we also provide a OneMedical membership for concierge care.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree
• Number of Employees: 251-500 employees