What are the responsibilities and job description for the Counsel - Crypto Firm position at Simmons & Hanbury?
A leading global digital asset trading and market-making firm is seeking a Corporate Counsel to join its growing legal team in New York. This is an opportunity to work at the forefront of institutional crypto markets, advising a sophisticated trading business as it expands across products, jurisdictions, and strategic initiatives.
The role offers broad exposure across commercial, corporate, regulatory, and strategic matters while partnering closely with senior stakeholders across trading, technology, operations, compliance, finance, and business development.
Responsibilities
- Draft, review and negotiate a wide range of commercial agreements, including technology, SaaS, market data, licensing, vendor, services, confidentiality and strategic partnership agreements.
- Support corporate transactions, strategic investments, joint ventures and other growth initiatives.
- Advise on legal issues arising from new digital asset products, trading initiatives and international business expansion.
- Partner with compliance and regulatory teams on legal aspects of evolving crypto, securities, commodities and financial services regulation.
- Provide practical legal advice to senior management on commercial risk and business strategy.
- Assist with corporate governance matters, subsidiary management and board-related activities.
- Manage external counsel across multiple jurisdictions while driving efficient legal processes.
- Develop and improve legal templates, contract management processes and scalable legal infrastructure.
- Work closely with cross-functional teams to support product launches and commercial negotiations.
Candidate Profile
- J.D. from a leading law school with admission to practice in at least one U.S. jurisdiction.
- Approximately 4–8 years' post-qualification experience gained at a leading law firm and/or in-house legal team.
- Strong corporate and commercial contracting experience.
- Experience advising financial institutions, fintech companies, trading firms, digital asset businesses or other highly regulated financial services organisations.
- Excellent drafting, negotiation and stakeholder management skills.
- Commercially minded with the ability to balance legal risk against business objectives.
- Comfortable working in a fast-paced, entrepreneurial environment with significant autonomy.