Senior Legal Associate (Fintech/Payments)

Senior Legal Associate (Fintech/Payments)

Our client is a technology company solving payments problems for businesses. Their mission is to help businesses in Africa become profitable, envied, and loved. They provide a suite of products to help businesses accept payments online and offline, manage their operations, and grow their business. Our client is driven by a commitment to excellence, innovation, and customer satisfaction.

Role Overview

Our client’s team is looking for a Senior Legal associate to join the Legal team. You have to be a lawyer and you will be part of the team that works to ensure that our client’s products and business operations comply with laws, ethics, and best practices in legal, compliance, and regulatory matters. Your job will be to play a critical role in contract management, corporate governance, legal operations, litigation support and advisory services, while driving process improvements and scalable legal workflows in a regulated, high-growth environment. This is a hands on role requiring strong ownership, sound judgment, and the ability to operate effectively across multiple functions.The successful candidate must be able to work with a wide range of teams, including fraud/disputes, human resources, finance, sales, products, engineers, and customer support, and provide support to the legal team. The role will report to the Head of Legal. It is strongly preferred if the candidate is based in Lagos, Nigeria.

Job Type: Full Time/Permanent

Location: Nigeria

Workplace: Hybrid

Requirements

• A degree in Law.
• 7+ years’ experience in a similar role.
• Prior work experience in the financial services industry is a strong asset.
• Tech savvy and familiar with office productivity tools (e.g., Microsoft Office).
• Strong communication (both written and verbal) skills.
• Strong contract drafting, negotiation, and interpretation skills.
• Experience with legal technology tools (CLM systems, workflow automation, etc.).
• Excellent stakeholder management and cross-functional collaboration skills
• Strong project management skills, with attention to detail, and the ability to manage multiple projects at once, follow through and meet deadlines.
• Action and results-oriented, with the ability to demonstrate good judgment in a fast-paced, high-growth, dynamic environment.
• Strong analytical skills.
• Demonstrate sound judgment even in ambiguous situations.
• An open and curious mind about an evolving industry, humility, and a terrific sense of humor.
• Ability to deal effectively with a variety of individuals at all organizational levels.
• A positive attitude, collaborative mindset, and a desire to be part of a strong, supportive team.

Responsibilities

• Draft, review, and negotiate a wide range of commercial agreements, including merchant agreements, partner agreements, NDAs and vendor agreements.
• Develop and maintain contract templates, clause libraries, and playbooks to improve efficiency and consistency.
• Maintain organized, audit-ready contract repositories and documentation systems.
• Lead corporate governance and board activities across entities, ensuring compliance with applicable laws and internal policies, coordinate board related activities including but not limited to managing board calendars and schedules, and other events.
• Coordinate board and committee meetings, ensuring proper documentation and record-keeping, draft board resolutions and review minutes of meetings.
• Support management of litigation and dispute matters, including coordination with external counsel.
• Support entity management across jurisdictions.
• Monitor and manage potential disputes, providing early risk assessment and mitigation strategies.
• Support management of trademarks, IP registrations, and renewals across jurisdictions.
• Monitor and address potential IP infringements, including drafting cease-and desist communications.
• Develop and maintain dashboards and reports on contract volumes, legal spend and budget tracking and litigation and risk exposure.
• Provide insights and recommendations to leadership to support strategic decision-making.
• Provide day-to-day legal advisory support across business units.
• Ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations, particularly within fintech and payments.
• Manage relationships with external counsel and service providers.
• Respond to requests for information and documents from our internal and external auditors, regulators, partners, and other stakeholders.
• Design, implement, and continuously improve legal workflows, intake processes, and contract lifecycle management systems.
• Assist with the implementation and optimization of legal technology tools to improve workflows and legal processes.
• Drive automation initiatives to reduce manual effort and improve turnaround times.
• Oversee legal billing, budgeting, and spend tracking to ensure cost efficiency.
• Support internal training and awareness initiatives on legal and compliance matters.
• Conduct research on various legal topics, including case law, compliance requirements and industry trends.
• Assist with onboarding new vendors and processing vendor payments.
• Assist with special projects as needed, with the ability to work in an ever changing environment.

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