Disputes Paralegal

Whatnot•San Francisco, CA

4d•$144,000 - $190,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Whatnot is the largest livestream shopping platform in North America and Europe. We are building live commerce at a scale that's never been done in the West. The Legal team protects the platform, enables the business to move fast, and keeps Whatnot ahead of the legal risk that comes with hypergrowth. We’re hiring a sharp, detail-oriented Disputes Paralegal and Project Manager to work directly with our Litigation Counsel and own the day-to-day engine behind a high and growing volume of disputes — demand letters, pre-litigation matters, arbitration threats, small claims, subpoenas, and related notices. The core of the job is running intake end to end — logging, triaging, and routing every new matter, drafting first responses to users, and keeping matter tracking airtight so nothing slips. Just as importantly, you’ll improve the systems behind that work as the function scales. We use AI as a core part of how the team works, and we expect you to use it to do more, faster, and to catch what manual tracking misses. If your instinct when something breaks is to redesign the process rather than just work harder, you’ll thrive here. This role has real room to grow as our disputes and legal operations functions mature.

Requirements

A bachelor’s degree (required), plus 7+ years of legal support, legal project management, or paralegal experience in litigation, disputes, or a high-volume legal environment.
Strong Communication Skills. Both oral and written communication are important in this role; you can write clearly and concisely, and know how to calibrate tone for sensitive situations.
Demonstrated AI tool fluency. You have used AI (e.g., Claude, Glean, GC AI, Harvey) to build real workflows — not just as an occasional chatbot — and you actively look for ways to use tooling to improve speed, consistency, and coverage. Comfortable learning new platforms fast.
A builder, not just an operator. You have identified gaps in an intake or response workflow and fixed them structurally — templates, automations, tracking systems — so the same problem doesn’t recur. You are comfortable creating process where none exists.
Intake Experience. You have prior experience with demand letter intake and response drafting, or other structured legal correspondence workflows, and a sense for when to escalate versus when to use a template.
Organizational skills and a positive attitude. Excellent organizational skills and the ability to manage a large volume of matters simultaneously without losing track of details. Comfortable working cross-functionally and ramping quickly in an ambiguous, fast-moving environment.
Genuine interest in Whatnot. You’ve used the app (or are excited to), and you get what it means to support a two-sided marketplace community.
Tooling. We run on Slack, Google Docs, Streamline (matter management), and DocuSign (execution); experience with a comparable matter-management or case-tracking system (e.g., LawVu, Ironclad, ServiceNow, Salesforce/CaseCloud, Smartsheet, Jira) transfers well.

Nice To Haves

In-house litigation, legal project management, or regulatory experience is strongly preferred.
Ideally you have previous experience at a marketplace, fintech, or consumer tech platform — though high-volume litigation or project management experience at a large law firm is also a plus.

Responsibilities

Own intake end to end across every channel — logging, categorizing, and routing each new matter to the right attorney with a clear summary of the claim, claimant, type, and any immediate deadlines.
Triage and manage accurately and consistently across claim types (demand letters, pre-litigation disputes, arbitration threats, small claims, subpoenas) — making defensible first-line calls under time pressure.
Draft and send initial responses to users, working from templates and escalation protocols, and calibrating tone for sensitive or adversarial situations.
Maintain case tracking system and disputes files to ensure nothing falls through the cracks. You love consistent matter folders, proactive deadline reminders, calendar invites for hearings and filing dates.
Administer legal holds and preservation — issue and track hold notices under Counsel's direction, maintain custodian lists and acknowledgments, partner with IT/People to prevent deletion for held custodians, and release holds at matter close.
Improve the system as you go — intake workflows, response playbooks, decision trees, trackers, and escalation paths — and audit legacy trackers for active matters that haven’t been migrated, rather than relying on personal heroics to stay afloat.
Use AI tools (Claude CoWork, Glean, GC AI) to drive efficiency, build templates and workflows, and create a safety net so matters don’t get missed.
Partner cross-functionally with Trust & Risk, Customer Experience, and Legal Operations to gather facts and documentation, and communicate matter status to non-legal stakeholders without over-lawyering.

Benefits

Generous Holiday and Time off Policy
Health Insurance options including Medical, Dental, Vision
Work From Home Support
Home office setup allowance
Monthly allowance for cell phone and internet
Care benefits
Monthly allowance for wellness
Annual allowance towards Childcare
Lifetime benefit for family planning, such as adoption or fertility expenses
Retirement; 401k offering for Traditional and Roth accounts in the US (employer match up to 4% of base salary) and Pension plans internationally
Monthly allowance to dogfood the app
16 weeks of paid parental leave + one month gradual return to work company leave allowances run concurrently with country leave requirements which take precedence.