Commercial Counsel

Job description

## About Morpho Morpho is a leading Decentralized Finance (DeFi) lending protocol backed by a16z crypto, Paradigm, Ribbit Capital, Apollo, Vaneck, Coinbase Ventures, Variant and 50 others to build an open credit network giving anyone, anywhere, access to the best possible terms. Morpho is experiencing exponential adoption, with over billion in deposits on the network and used by institutional clients including Bitwise, Galaxy, and Anchorage Digital and the largest crypto exchanges, such as Coinbase, Binance, and Kraken. Now, Morpho is scaling its team of contributors to establish itself as the open credit network, not just of DeFi, but of the world. ## Why Morpho Exists Everyone has the potential to build something great for the world. But fulfilling that ambition almost always requires more: people willing to trust you with their capital. Yet access to capital still depends on where you live, who you know, and which institutions are willing to trust you. Even when capital is available, it sits fragmented across disconnected networks and hidden behind intermediaries. The result is a system that fails most of the people it should serve. Borrowers overpay. Lenders earn less than they should. Many are shut out entirely, not because they are unworthy of credit, but because today's infrastructure was never built to connect them. Morpho exists to solve this. Full article [here](https://morpho.org/blog/why-morpho-exists/). ## **Location** Hybrid New York or Remote (EST timezone). ## **Role** Morpho's commercial activity is growing fast, and the partnerships, integrations and vendor relationships behind it now outpace what Legal can cover. Reporting to the General Counsel, you will own the contract lifecycle for our partnerships end to end (intake, standard paper, signature, post-signature obligations) and build the tooling behind it, so that standard deals close without waiting on senior lawyers. ## **Responsibilities** - Deal desk: intake and triage of partnership team requests, NDAs on our paper and the counterparty's, and first drafts and negotiation of our standard partnership and incentive agreements, through to signature packs and signing summaries. - Post-signature tracking: a single contract repository linked to our CRM, and an obligations register (milestones, grant tranches, exclusivity periods, notice windows, renewals) with alerts to deal owners and Finance. Be the go-to person for the conditions of signed deals. - Legal ops infrastructure: negotiation playbooks, a clause library, a consolidated set of templates, a Legal FAQ for recurring partner questions, AI workflows and agents for intake, drafting and review, outside counsel budget tracking, and a monthly report on legal throughput. - Vendor and compliance ops: standard vendor and SaaS terms, renewals and insurance calendar, due diligence and security questionnaires, internal policy upkeep and data room hygiene. - As capacity allows: corporate housekeeping for Morpho's legal entities, and support on employment, IP and privacy matters with outside counsel. - Work daily with the partnership team, Finance, RevOps, BizOps and outside counsel. ## **What Success Looks Like** ### **First 30 days** You understand Morpho's products and main commercial relationships, own the partnership legal queue and all NDAs, and have read every live partnership agreement and our standard templates. ### **First 3 months** Counterparty-paper NDAs are turned around within 2 working days. Every signed agreement sits in one repository linked to its CRM record, and the obligations register is live for all agreements in force, with alerts to deal owners and Finance. ### **First 6 months** Standard template deals run without senior lawyer involvement, except for listed deviations. Partner categories are consolidated into an agreed set of templates, each with a playbook. You deliver a monthly throughput report (volume, cycle time, deviations), vendor renewals and insurance sit on a single calendar, and you have proposed the 2027 legal operations roadmap. ## **Must Have Skills & Experience** - Legally trained (qualified lawyer or equivalent law degree), with 5 to 8 years in commercial contracting, part of it in-house at a fast-growing technology company. - Has negotiated partnership, integration or licensing agreements alone, on both own and counterparty paper. US-style commercial drafting is essential. - Has built legal operations in practice (contract lifecycle tooling, playbooks, intake, reporting), not only used them. - Builds with AI tools: writes prompts and skills, automates document workflows, and knows where review by a lawyer is still required. - Comfortable working with Finance on payment mechanics, milestones and budgets, and with a CRM as the source of truth. - Able to hold a position with a deal team under time pressure. - Clear, concise communication with non-lawyers. - Strong ownership and autonomy at startup pace with limited support: doesn't wait to be told. - Comfort operating in fast-changing, ambiguous contexts. - Ability to work across US Eastern time zones with shifting priorities. - Team-first mindset, low ego. ## Perks & Benefits We design benefits around deep work and growth, so you can do the best work of your career. Expect fair, top-tier compensation, real flexibility, time together in Paris, great health coverage, and support to keep learning. ## Equal Opportunity We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and hire based on talent, potential, and values alignment.