Special Counsel, Transactions (M&A and Bank Partnerships)

Overview

This Transactions Attorney role supports corporate development and ventures activities and financial partnerships agreements within the Legal department. Responsibilities span mergers and acquisitions, strategic transactions, venture investments, and agreements with banks and other financial institutions related to reserve, treasury, and payments operations.

In addition, this position includes using AI as a core part of day-to-day transactional work—accelerating diligence, improving review and drafting workflows, and helping shape how a modern transactions practice operates—while ensuring the attorney remains responsible for all work product, judgment, accuracy, confidentiality, privilege, and risk.

Responsibilities

• Lead transactions end-to-end, from inception through negotiation, signing, closing, and, where relevant, implementation or integration.
• Support mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, asset purchases, and other strategic transactions, including:
  • Structuring
  • Conducting due diligence
  • Drafting definitive agreements
  • Coordinating signing, closing, and integration matters
• Advise on joint ventures, minority and venture investments, strategic partnerships with an equity component, and other non-ordinary-course transactions, including:
  • Term sheets
  • Investment agreements
  • Side letters
  • Ancillary agreements
• Structure, draft, and negotiate agreements with banks and financial institutions supporting reserve, treasury, and payments operations, including:
  • Deposit, custody and safeguarding, account control, and cash management arrangements
• Serve as a trusted advisor to internal stakeholders across Corporate Development and Ventures, Treasury, and Financial Partnerships; coordinate with Legal, Regulatory, Risk, Compliance, Tax, Corporate Governance, Product, and other teams, and engage outside counsel as appropriate.
• As needs arise, support select commercial transactions for banks and other financial institutions involving products, services, or technology.
• Develop and expand transaction templates, playbooks, diligence tools, processes, and metrics to improve speed, consistency, and effectiveness across recurring transaction types.
• Help design and lead adoption of AI-enabled workflows across the Transactions team by:
  • Rethinking how transactional legal work is structured and delivered
  • Improving diligence, contract review, issues lists, drafting, deal tracking, and other recurring workflows
  • Experimenting with new approaches and developing scalable processes and playbooks
  • Reviewing and validating AI-assisted work product for accuracy, confidentiality, privilege, and risk

How This Role Uses AI

• Use AI tools to accelerate due diligence, review counterparty drafts against established playbooks and prior positions, prepare first drafts of issues lists, term sheets, and ancillary documents, and keep deal trackers and precedent current.
• Identify recurring workflows where AI can improve speed and consistency.
• Design and test new approaches; build and refine prompts, templates, and playbooks for AI-enabled work.
• Support adoption of effective practices by other attorneys, interns, and business partners.
• Maintain full responsibility for work: review and validate AI-assisted outputs for accuracy and legal judgment; protect privilege, confidentiality, and material non-public information; and follow internal AI, security, and data policies.

Requirements

• J.D. or foreign equivalent.
• Active membership in good standing of at least one U.S. State Bar.
• 7+ years of transactional legal experience at a leading law firm, an in-house legal department, or a combination of both.
• Substantial experience with M&A and other corporate transactions and/or financial services transactions, including:
  • Structuring
  • Drafting first-turn agreements
  • Leading negotiations and diligence
  • Independently driving complex matters through signing and closing
• Strong knowledge of corporate and commercial law and sound business judgment, including ability to coordinate legal, regulatory, tax, accounting, securities, and operational considerations while balancing legal risk and commercial objectives.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Strong ownership and organization skills, with ability to manage multiple matters simultaneously in a fast-moving environment with rapid change.
• Demonstrated familiarity with and practical use of generative AI in legal or other professional workflows, including when and how to use AI, validating outputs, and protecting privileged, confidential, and material non-public information in a public company environment.
• Passion for financial technology and the potential of stablecoins, digital assets, and blockchain technology.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with banking and financial services agreements, including deposit, custody, safeguarding, treasury, or related arrangements, and/or seller-side technology or financial services transactions involving regulated financial institutions, digital assets, stablecoins, payments, cross-border transactions, or other fintech businesses.
• Experience building, implementing, or scaling AI-enabled workflows, prompts, templates, playbooks, or tools for a legal team.

Compensation & Benefits

• Base Pay Range: $200,000 - $262,500
• Starting pay is determined by factors including relevant experience, skill set, qualifications, and other business and organizational needs. Compensation ranges may differ for candidates in other locations.

Location

This role supports hiring in locations where the employer hires; compensation ranges may differ by candidate location.