Counsel

Summary

Join Open Philanthropy as a Counsel or Senior Counsel to contribute to the legal team's mission of providing well-calibrated legal advice and engaging in collaborative problem-solving. You will handle legal issues related to grantmaking, contracts, and various aspects of operations for causes including potential risks from advanced AI, biosecurity and pandemic preparedness, global health and wellbeing, and farm animal welfare. As a member of a growing team, you will report to the General Counsel and collaborate with staff to generate solutions. Your responsibilities will include providing legal advice to program and operations teams, resolving complex legal questions, expanding services available to grantees, driving internal legal projects, supporting corporate compliance tasks, updating legal agreements, answering internal HR questions, and developing an understanding of Open Philanthropy's broader priorities. Open Philanthropy is a philanthropic funder and advisor with a mission to help others as much as possible with the resources available. The organization prioritizes openness to many possibilities and has chosen its focus areas based on importance, neglectedness, and tractability. Open Philanthropy is made up of several affiliated organizations, including a 501(c)(3) private foundation, a 501(c)(3) public charity, a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization, and donor-advised funds at outside charitable organizations. The organization makes general support and project grants to U.S. nonprofits, international grants requiring additional diligence and reporting, scholarships and research grants, investments in for-profit companies, and contributions to support lobbying and political work.

Requirements

• Clearly communicate legal considerations to non-legal audiences
• You are impatient with unnecessary legalese, delay, and overcomplication, and are comfortable seeking creative or unconventional solutions to help us achieve our programmatic goals
• Our priority is generally to get resources to grantees as simply and efficiently as possible while still protecting the organization’s interests
• Are practical about risk and don’t default to “worst-case scenario” assessments
• You are comfortable comparing and communicating the likelihood of different risks
• We’re looking for someone who flags and quantifies risks rather than prohibits them, and who communicates clearly about the degree of uncertainty in a situation and where that uncertainty stems from
• Are comfortable quickly getting up to speed in unfamiliar areas of law
• No prior knowledge or experience with nonprofit law, LLCs, non-traditional philanthropic funding models, intellectual property, lobbying, grants management, and/or international grantmaking is required (though we would consider experience here as a bonus), but you should be excited to learn new areas of law while on the job
• Are flexible and ready to help in many different capacities
• We’re a small organization, and your day-to-day responsibilities would span from reviewing basic contracts to advising on complex legal matters to managing operational projects
• Have been admitted to the bar in at least one U.S. jurisdiction
• We are open to candidates working remotely, including outside the U.S., so long as they meet this criterion and can work in a time zone to collaborate with colleagues based on the East and West Coasts of the U.S
• We’d expect candidates to have at least 7 years of experience practicing in the legal field, and at least 2 years of experience in-house or equivalent (e.g., many legal roles in government would qualify)

Responsibilities

• Providing legal advice to program and operations teams and developing creative solutions to legal issues faced by staff
• Resolving a wide range of complex legal questions from grantmaking staff and/or grantees, as well as handling compliance, structural, and contractual issues related to grantmaking (examples could include: conducting due diligence on international grants, offering advice to the grants team on the optimal vehicle for routing a given grant, drafting grant agreements and leading term negotiations or discussions with grantees, investigating whether to add access provisions to grants, and training staff on legal issues related to grantmaking)
• Expanding services available to our grantees, such as legal entity creation guidance, consultation programs, or information sessions
• Driving internal legal projects, such as spinning up new entities or drafting policies and guidance documents
• Supporting corporate compliance tasks, such as recurring board meetings, state-mandated harassment trainings, or wage and hour postings
• Updating our contractor, employee, grant, scholarship, and other legal agreements
• Answering internal HR questions related to hiring processes, offer letters, NDAs, contracts, terminations, and other employee relations issues
• Developing an understanding of OP’s broader priorities and proactively seeking out ways to help us achieve our goals

Preferred Qualifications

Exceptional candidates with especially relevant experience and context on our work

Benefits

• Excellent health insurance (we cover 100% of premiums within the U.S. for you and any eligible dependents) and an employer-funded Health Reimbursement Arrangement for certain other personal health expenses
• Dental, vision, and life insurance for you and your family
• Four weeks of PTO recommended per year
• Four months of fully paid family leave
• A generous and flexible expense policy — we encourage staff to expense the ergonomic equipment, software, and other services that they need to stay healthy and productive
• A continual learning policy that encourages staff to spend time on professional development with related expenses covered
• Support for remote work — we’ll cover a remote workspace outside your home if you need one, or connect you with an Open Phil coworking hub in your city