Commercial Counsel - Morpho

About Morpho

Morpho is a leading Decentralized Finance (DeFi) lending protocol, backed by prominent investors such as a16z crypto, Paradigm, and Coinbase Ventures. It is experiencing exponential adoption, with billions in deposits on the network and usage by institutional clients including Bitwise, Galaxy, and Anchorage Digital, as well as major crypto exchanges like Coinbase, Binance, and Kraken. Morpho is scaling its team to establish itself as a global open credit network.

The Opportunity: Commercial Counsel

Morpho's commercial activity is rapidly expanding, and the current legal capacity is outpaced by the volume of partnerships, integrations, and vendor relationships. Reporting to the General Counsel, you will take full ownership of the contract lifecycle for partnerships, from intake and standard paper to signature and post-signature obligations. A key part of this role involves building the necessary tooling to streamline standard deals, reducing reliance on senior lawyers.

Responsibilities

• Deal Desk: Manage intake and triage of partnership team requests, draft and negotiate NDAs (both Morpho's and counterparty's paper), and handle first drafts and negotiation of standard partnership and incentive agreements, including signature packs and signing summaries.
• Post-Signature Tracking: Establish a centralized contract repository linked to the CRM and an obligations register (covering milestones, grant tranches, exclusivity periods, notice windows, renewals) with alerts for deal owners and Finance. Serve as the primary point of contact for conditions of signed deals.
• Legal Operations Infrastructure: Develop negotiation playbooks, a clause library, a consolidated set of templates, and a Legal FAQ for recurring partner questions. Implement AI workflows and agents for intake, drafting, and review. Track outside counsel budgets and provide monthly reports on legal throughput.
• Vendor and Compliance Operations: Manage standard vendor and SaaS terms, maintain a renewals and insurance calendar, handle due diligence and security questionnaires, and ensure internal policy upkeep and data room hygiene.
• Ad Hoc Support: As capacity allows, provide corporate housekeeping for Morpho's legal entities and support on employment, IP, and privacy matters in collaboration with outside counsel.
• Collaboration: Work daily with the partnership team, Finance, RevOps, BizOps, and outside counsel.

What Success Looks Like

First 30 Days

• Understand Morpho's products and main commercial relationships.
• Own the partnership legal queue and all NDAs.
• Have reviewed every live partnership agreement and standard template.

First 3 Months

• Counterparty-paper NDAs are turned around within 2 working days.
• All signed agreements are in a single repository linked to their CRM record.
• The obligations register is live for all in-force agreements, 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.
• Deliver a monthly throughput report (volume, cycle time, deviations).
• Vendor renewals and insurance are managed on a single calendar.
• Propose 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, including in-house experience at a fast-growing technology company.
• Proven ability to negotiate partnership, integration, or licensing agreements independently, on both own and counterparty paper. US-style commercial drafting is essential.
• Practical experience building legal operations (contract lifecycle tooling, playbooks, intake, reporting), not just using them.

•  Proficiency in building with AI tools: writing prompts and skills, automating document workflows, and understanding when lawyer review is still required.
  

• Comfortable collaborating with Finance on payment mechanics, milestones, and budgets, and utilizing a CRM as the source of truth.
• Ability to maintain a position with a deal team under time pressure.
• Clear, concise communication skills when interacting with non-lawyers.
• Strong ownership and autonomy, thriving in a startup environment with limited support; proactive and self-driven.
• Comfort operating in fast-changing, ambiguous contexts.
• Ability to work across European and US Eastern time zones with shifting priorities.
• Team-first mindset, low ego.

Perks & Benefits

Morpho designs benefits to support deep work and growth, enabling you to perform at your best.

• Fair, top-tier compensation
• Real flexibility
• Time together in Paris (for team collaboration/offsites)
• Great health coverage (health, dental, vision)
• Support for continuous learning

Equal Opportunity

Morpho welcomes applicants from all backgrounds and hires based on talent, potential, and values alignment.