[Remote] Legal Counsel
Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia and other free knowledge projects. They are seeking a Legal Counsel to provide legal advice to product, engineering, and design teams on matters related to feature development, product changes, and privacy issues.
Responsibilities
- Advising product, engineering and design teams on legal issues related to feature development, launches, experiments and ongoing platform operations
- Supporting legal review of new products, product changes, and technical initiatives around the Wikimedia projects
- Supporting the draft, review and maintenance of user-facing terms, disclosures, policies, FAQs and internal guidance
- Counseling on product, privacy, data use, consumer protection, intellectual property, accessibility, online safety and related product issues
- Partnering with cross-functional teams to identify legal risk early and develop practical, mission-aligned solutions
- Monitoring and helping assess legal and regulatory developments that may affect Wikimedia’s projects globally
Skills
- J.D. from accredited U.S. law school or equivalent foreign degree, and admission to practice law in that jurisdiction
- 2-5 years experience with legal review of technical products or online services
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills and attention to detail, full fluency in written and spoken English
- Dedicated, hardworking, passionate, and able to complete projects independently
- Ability to learn on the job, spot issues, think fast, and comfortably deal with complex and ambiguous issues with sound judgment
- Comfortable in a highly collaborative, multicultural, transparent environment
- Ability to assess and manage complex risks, and triage issues appropriately
- Mission-driven with a public service orientation and high personal integrity
- An understanding of, and commitment to, a free and open internet, to the open source and free culture movements, and to Wikimedia's mission
- Experience with open source, free culture, free software, or online communities
- A degree in computer science, engineering, or related experience, and have a good understanding of software engineering processes and issues
- Experience with public policy, government relations or other policy-facing functions
- Ability to speak other languages, experience living or working outside the United States, or past work on international legal issues are a major plus
Company Overview