Legal Counsel (commercial partnership, vendor contract & litigation)

ABFinance is a US-based firm building digital finance for the future. Our vision is to create a full financial ecosystem where digital assets, traditional finance, and everyday money management live in one seamless experience that is made available to everyone. Founded by a team of innovators, traders, and compliance professionals, our mission is to bring digital assets to the mainstream through secure, regulated products. Our flagship ecosystem combines a compliant, security-first crypto exchange serving both retail and institutional clients, alongside a Debit Card that enables everyday spending and smooth bridging between fiat and digital assets, supported by core capabilities such as spot trading and yield generation products. Key Responsibilities Commercial partnership contracts: Draft, review, and negotiate commercial agreements for strategic partnerships, institutional clients, market makers, liquidity providers, payment processors, fiat on/off-ramp partners, custody providers, technology vendors, data providers, token issuers, service providers, and other crypto ecosystem partners. Contract risk management: Advise internal stakeholders on contractual risk allocation, including indemnities, limitation of liability, service levels, data use, confidentiality, IP ownership, compliance obligations, termination rights, audit rights, regulatory cooperation, sanctions, AML, cybersecurity, and dispute resolution clauses. Business-facing legal advice: Serve as a primary legal contact for business development, institutional sales, product, operations, procurement, compliance, and finance teams on commercial contracting and partnership issues. Template and playbook development: Develop and maintain contract templates, clause libraries, fallback positions, escalation rules, approval matrices, and negotiation playbooks for recurring commercial partnership arrangements. Litigation management: Manage or support litigation, arbitration, mediation, and pre-litigation disputes involving commercial partners, vendors, customers, counterparties, service providers, or other third parties. Dispute resolution: Lead early case assessment, issue spotting, document review coordination, settlement strategy, demand letter responses, negotiation of resolutions, and internal reporting on dispute exposure. Outside counsel coordination: Manage outside counsel on litigation, arbitration, enforcement, and commercial dispute matters, including budgeting, strategy alignment, workstream coordination, and invoice review. Regulatory and enforcement support: Support responses to subpoenas, regulatory inquiries, enforcement requests, and investigations involving commercial relationships, trading activity, custody, fraud, sanctions, AML, market integrity, or customer disputes. Internal investigations: Assist with internal fact-gathering, witness interviews, document preservation, privilege management, and cross-functional investigations related to contractual breaches, partner conduct, fraud, operational failures, or customer-impacting incidents. Cross-functional collaboration: Partner with compliance, AML, sanctions, fraud, cybersecurity, finance, product, engineering, customer support, and operations teams to resolve disputes and ensure contract positions align with regulatory and operational requirements. Policy and process improvement: Identify recurring commercial and dispute risks, recommend process improvements, and help build scalable contracting, escalation, dispute management, and litigation-readiness processes. Executive reporting: Prepare concise legal risk summaries, dispute updates, settlement recommendations, and escalation materials for senior legal and business leadership. Qualifications J.D. from an accredited U.S. law school and membership in good standing with at least one U.S. state bar. Approximately 5 to 8 years of relevant legal experience, preferably including law firm and in-house experience in commercial contracting, litigation, arbitration, dispute resolution, financial services, fintech, crypto, securities, commodities, payments, broker-dealer, exchange, or technology businesses. Strong experience drafting, reviewing, and negotiating commercial contracts, including partnership, vendor, technology, platform, data, SaaS, payment, custody, institutional client, or financial services agreements. Experience managing litigation, arbitration, pre-litigation disputes, regulatory inquiries, subpoenas, internal investigations, or enforcement-related matters. Familiarity with U.S. legal and regulatory issues relevant to cryptocurrency exchanges, including securities, commodities, money transmission, AML, sanctions, fraud, cybersecurity, consumer protection, and market conduct considerations. Ability to provide practical, business-oriented advice in a fast-moving, highly regulated environment. Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain complex legal issues clearly to non-legal stakeholders. Excellent judgment, attention to detail, project management skills, and ability to manage multiple time-sensitive matters. Preferred Qualifications Prior experience at a cryptocurrency exchange, fintech platform, broker-dealer, futures commission merchant, securities exchange, trading platform, payments company, digital asset custodian, or financial technology business. Experience with AI tool development for legal contract drafting and dispute resolution cases Experience with disputes involving trading platforms, digital assets, market data, institutional clients, liquidity providers, payment processors, custody, fraud, account restrictions, cybersecurity incidents, or financial services vendors. Experience drafting and negotiating dispute resolution provisions, regulatory cooperation clauses, indemnities, liability caps, audit rights, data protection provisions, and financial services compliance undertakings. Experience coordinating with compliance, AML, sanctions, fraud, cybersecurity, investigations, finance, and customer operations teams. Experience managing outside counsel budgets and litigation strategy.