Experience: New calls and early-career lawyers welcome
About the Role
We are a growing Canadian deep-technology group building companies across biotechnology, scientific instrumentation, software, advanced manufacturing and research.
We are looking for a smart, entrepreneurial and commercially minded junior lawyer to work closely with our CEO across both legal matters and corporate strategy.
You will help manage contracts, corporate matters and legal infrastructure, while also working directly with the CEO on strategic projects, new ventures, partnerships, transactions and important business decisions.
We are looking for someone who wants to understand the business behind the legal question.
Newly called lawyers and candidates with 0–3 years of experience are encouraged to apply.
What You'll Do
Work Directly With the CEO
A significant part of the position involves helping the CEO research, evaluate and execute strategic initiatives.
You may:
- Research new markets, technologies and business opportunities
- Evaluate potential partnerships and strategic relationships
- Research potential acquisitions and investments
- Analyze competitors and industry structures
- Prepare concise briefing and decision memos for the CEO
- Help evaluate whether capabilities should be built, acquired, licensed or partnered
- Help develop new businesses from initial concept through launch
- Research potential business models and corporate structures
- Support decisions involving intellectual property ownership and commercialization
- Prepare for important meetings and negotiations
- Participate in strategic planning discussions
- Turn strategic ideas into actionable projects
- Coordinate information across technical, financial, commercial and legal teams
- Identify legal and commercial risks associated with strategic decisions
- Follow up on important CEO initiatives and help move them toward completion
You may be given an open-ended question such as:
“We're considering entering this market. Figure out whether we should.”Your job is to research the opportunity, understand the competitive landscape, identify important legal and commercial considerations, develop options and return with a clear recommendation.
Legal & Corporate Responsibilities
You will also support the day-to-day legal requirements of a growing group of technology companies, including:
- Drafting and reviewing NDAs
- Reviewing and redlining customer contracts
- Supplier and procurement agreements
- Employment agreements
- Consulting and contractor agreements
- Intellectual property assignments
- Technology licensing agreements
- Research and collaboration agreements
- Government and grant agreements
- Corporate records and minute books
- Incorporations and corporate changes
- Commercial leases
- Contract renewals and obligation tracking
- Legal research
- Collections and demand letters
- Supporting commercial negotiations
- Maintaining contract templates and clause libraries
- Coordinating patent and intellectual property counsel
- Coordinating corporate, tax, employment and litigation counsel
- Preparing first drafts and organized briefing packages for specialized external counsel
You will not be expected to be an expert in every area of law.
Part of the role is learning to determine what can be handled internally and when specialized external counsel is required.
Help Us Build Better Systems
We don't want routine legal work recreated from scratch every time.
You will help turn recurring legal and corporate work into scalable systems:
Templates → Playbooks → Clause Libraries → Checklists → Approval Processes → Contract Records → Repeatable Workflows
The goal is to make legal work faster, more consistent and easier to manage as the organization grows.
Who We're Looking For
Required:
- JD, LLB or equivalent law degree
- Licensed to practise law in Ontario, or approaching licensing
- Excellent research and writing ability
- Strong analytical thinking
- Highly organized
- Strong attention to detail
- Good judgment
- Commercial curiosity
- Comfortable learning unfamiliar subjects quickly
- Able to communicate complicated issues simply
- Comfortable working with ambiguity
- Comfortable working directly with senior leadership
- Willing to develop and defend a recommendation rather than simply identify problems
- High level of initiative and follow-through
0–3 years of experience is welcome.
Previous in-house experience is not required.
Experience with corporate/commercial law, contracts, startups, technology, intellectual property or business is helpful but not essential.
You Might Be a Great Fit If...
You went to law school but find yourself equally interested in:
business technology entrepreneurship strategy investing
You don't want to spend the first several years of your career working on one narrow category of legal matters.
You want to understand how companies are actually built.
When presented with a complicated problem, you don't want to simply say:
“There are risks.”You want to be able to say:
“These are the three issues that matter. Here are our options. I recommend option B, and here's why.”You enjoy researching unfamiliar subjects and developing an informed point of view.
You like moving from:
question → research → analysis → recommendation → negotiation → agreement → execution.
What You'll Get Exposure To
This position offers unusually broad exposure for an early-career lawyer, including:
- Corporate strategy
- New company creation
- Commercial contracts
- Acquisitions and investments
- Intellectual property
- Technology licensing
- Partnerships
- Employment matters
- Government contracting
- Research agreements
- Biotechnology
- Scientific instrumentation
- Software
- Advanced manufacturing
- Corporate finance
You will have the opportunity to see decisions across the full lifecycle of growing technology companies.
Flexible Work Environment
We care more about finding an exceptional person than following a conventional career path.
We welcome applications from:
- Newly called lawyers
- Lawyers with 0–3 years of experience
- Lawyers returning to practice
- Lawyers interested in moving in-house
- Lawyers looking for more predictable hours
- Candidates seeking some flexibility in their working schedule
We are open to discussing 30–40 hour-per-week arrangements for the right candidate.
There are no billable-hour requirements.
Please submit your resume and briefly answer the following two questions:
1. Tell us about a business, technology or industry you became interested in without being required to. What interested you about it?
2. The CEO tells you: “I think we should acquire a small company rather than build this capability ourselves. Figure out whether I'm right.” How would you approach the problem?
We want to understand how you research an unfamiliar problem, structure your thinking, exercise judgment and communicate a recommendation.
Pay: $65,000.00-$80,000.00 per year
Work Location: In person
