Commercial Counsel

Ashby • ,

8d • $200,000 - $250,000 • Remote

About The Position

This is Ashby's first commercial counsel hire, and depending on the caliber of candidates, they may bring on more than one. The role is hands-on and execution-focused, at the center of deal flow, primarily focused on sales commercial contracting with a meaningful procurement blend. A core part of the opportunity is building best-in-class, in-house support for sales contracting and the foundations that let it scale as the company grows. The commercial counsel will be in commercial contracts every day, partnering closely with Sales to close deals and drive revenue, while building the scalable processes and playbooks that unblock commercial negotiations and let the business grow efficiently. For someone who excels at the core, there will be room to get involved in broader initiatives across the legal function and cross-functionally, based on where genuine passion and aptitude are shown. Strong candidates will bring demonstrable commercial contracting experience with a heavy focus on sales and GTM, and be equally comfortable in vendor and procurement work. They should have succeeded in a lean, scaling legal team, pairing sound judgment and business acumen with the ownership and soft skills to drive solutions through to implementation. The ideal candidate brings ideas and drives adoption rather than waiting to be told how a process should change, earns trust through responsiveness and pragmatism, advocates firmly and thoughtfully with customers and internal stakeholders alike, and protects key risk positions while keeping negotiations constructive. They care about strong execution today and building the right foundations for tomorrow. This role is best suited for self-starters who prefer a remote environment.

Requirements

• JD from an accredited law school and active license to practice law in the US (or equivalent qualification in a relevant jurisdiction).
• 6-8 years of legal experience, ideally combining law firm training with in-house experience at a start-up or a company going through a significant period of growth, ideally as an early hire and ideally with SaaS experience.
• Familiarity with SaaS business models and standard SaaS contract terms.
• Strong experience in commercial contract negotiation (customer-side and vendor-side) contributing directly to strong growth.
• Excellent interpersonal skills; you genuinely enjoy working with sales teams and building trusted relationships internally and externally.
• Good judgment and ability to balance legal risk with business objectives.
• Exceptional written communication: able to explain legal concepts, net-new processes, and internal communications in plain, precise language and develop playbooks and GTM-facing enablement materials.
• You pride yourself on being organized and able to manage multiple deals and priorities simultaneously, keeping the transactional day-to-day turning while carving out time for builder projects.

Nice To Haves

• Experience collaborating with a legal operations function.
• Exposure and strong familiarity with AI regulations and with privacy and data protection frameworks (DPAs, GDPR, CCPA).
• Experience building or scaling contract operations, including implementing legal tech tools.

Responsibilities

• Be the go-to reviewer for all things commercial contracting, with a primary focus on sales and a strong secondary focus on procurement, plus other opportunities such as partnerships and cross-functional work.
• On the sales side, be an early, high-impact part of establishing full suite in-house sales support.
• Review, draft, and negotiate customer NDAs, MSAs, Order Forms, and DPAs with a focus on speed, commercial pragmatism, and scalability.
• Develop best-in-class sales enablement, internal guidance, and external collateral.
• Build efficient processes and smart workflows that make commercial contracting scalable, including playbooks, cross-functional enablement, and new SOPs and workflows across a wide variety of repeatable tasks, partnering with our Legal Ops Manager where appropriate.
• Be a responsive, reliable partner to the sales team and other internal stakeholders, someone they want to work with, not around.
• On the procurement side, manage a steady flow and wide variety of procurement and vendor requests, reviewing and negotiating contracts in partnership with business owners to keep marketing, events, and tooling moving quickly and to meet turnaround expectations, while iterating on our procurement process as we grow.
• Partner closely with security, IT, and product to ensure prospect and customer questionnaires are answered accurately and promptly, and to build scalable solutions.
• Help shape and improve legal operations, including the workflows, technology, and tools relevant to contract work such as CLM and CPQ. Be excited about what AI and new tools bring to the practice of law, with proven experience driving adoption internally.
• Identify and get involved in other areas as our legal team's bandwidth grows, bringing clarity, insight, and an ownership mentality to everything you touch.
• Exercise solid judgment and business acumen, including knowing how to balance ownership with flagging issues and escalating appropriately, and knowing when to pull the hiring manager in.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and equity.
• 10-year exercise window for stock options.
• Unlimited PTO with four weeks recommended per year.
• Twelve weeks of fully paid family leave in the US.
• Generous equipment, software, and office furniture budget.
• $100/month education budget with more expensive items (like conferences) covered with manager approval.
• Top-notch health insurance for you and your dependents with all premiums covered by us (for US employees).

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree