Managing Partner - Emerging Companies

About General Legal

General Legal is an AI-native law firm built to deliver high-quality corporate legal work faster and more predictably than traditional firms. We combine top-of-market, U.S.-barred attorneys with AI-native workflows to handle drafting, review, and negotiation end to end—without billable hours, bloated process, or junior handoffs.

We operate like a startup because we are one. That means modern tooling, outcome-based pricing, remote-friendly work, meaningful ownership for the people doing the work, and a focus on building repeatable processes that scale. By using AI to make the routine parts of legal work effortless, we give our attorneys the space to focus on judgment, negotiation, consistently advising clients on what actually matters, and mentoring the next generation of lawyers.

We’re starting with commercial and emerging companies work for growing companies and building a modern law firm where great lawyers can do their best work—and help reshape how legal services are delivered.

The Role

We’re hiring a veteran emerging companies attorney to lead and scale our Emerging Companies practice, running financings and corporate work for our growing roster of startup clients—from pre-seed through later-stage rounds—while setting consistent guidance and process across the practice and helping us reinvent how that work gets done.

This is a hybrid practitioner-builder leadership role. You’ll run deals start to finish and hire/manage a small team emerging companies lawyers, but you won’t be doing it the way you did at your last firm. Imagine having a personal forward-deployed engineer building tools alongside you, to help you set and enforce the standard for how our AI-native workflows reshape every step of a financing, from term sheet through closing binders—and how the practice delivers consistent, repeatable guidance across industries, stages, and the ancillary issues emerging companies face (employment, IP, and related matters). You’ll also help define how the next generation of associates gets trained, mentored, and scaled in a world where routine work is no longer the bottleneck.

What you’ll do:

• Lead venture financings (priced rounds, SAFEs, convertible notes), formations, equity issuances, secondaries, and related emerging companies matters (including key employment, IP, and commercial issues) for both companies and investors from start to finish.
• Serve as primary outside counsel to emerging companies clients, advising founders and management teams on the full lifecycle of decisions a growing company faces, including related employment, IP, and other ancillary issues, and setting consistent practice-wide guidance and standards across industries and stages.
• Negotiate directly with investor counsel—and represent funds on the other side of the table as needed—drawing on your understanding of market terms across stages to shape consistent, practical guidance across our practice.
• Partner with our engineering team to design, test, and deploy tools that make every part of the deal process meaningfully faster and enable consistent practice-wide guidance.
• Define and continuously improve the playbook, training systems, and quality standards for how junior attorneys are trained, mentored, and leveled up—so emerging companies work is delivered consistently and efficiently in an AI-native practice.
• Help shape firm and practice strategy, pricing, and service design, including defining consistent guidance and scalable processes across the Emerging Companies practice, as an early senior hire.

Who You Are

• 7+ years of emerging companies / venture capital experience at a top firm, with substantial company-side and investor-side work. Backgrounds at Cooley, Orrick, Fenwick, Wilson Sonsini, Gunderson, Goodwin, Latham, or similar are preferred.
• You’ve taken clients from idea to IPO (whether or not you handled the IPO) and you can handle anything that comes up along the way, including the ancillary employment, IP, and governance issues that arise for emerging companies. You know where the real risks (and the real wasted hours) live, and you can translate that judgment into repeatable playbooks and training for others.
• Deep experience representing both emerging companies and investors and funds across stages. You understand both sides of the table and what “market” actually means at each stage.
• Deep working knowledge of NVCA documents, SAFEs, convertible notes, 409A and 83(b) mechanics, equity plan administration, and the corporate governance and ancillary emerging companies issues (including employment, IP, securities, tax, and commercial matters) that arise at each stage of growth, with the ability to standardize guidance through clear playbooks and process.
• Excellent judgment and a clear, direct communication style. Founders, GCs, and your teams trust you because you tell them what matters, skip what doesn’t, and can translate that judgment into repeatable guidance, process, and training.
• Admitted to practice law in at least one U.S. jurisdiction and in good standing, and able to obtain additional admissions as reasonably necessary for client needs.

What We’re Really Looking For

Beyond the resume, we want to hear from attorneys who can lead, scale, and standardize an emerging companies practice:

• Have spent the last year actually using modern AI tools—not just reading about them—and have opinions about what works, what doesn’t, what’s coming next, and how to operationalize those tools into repeatable workflows that scale across a team.
• Are frustrated by how slowly the rest of the legal industry is moving—and want to lead that change by setting practice standards and building scalable, repeatable processes.
• Want to build the tools and playbooks, not just use whatever a vendor ships. The chance to work directly with engineers to custom-build workflows that scale across the practice—and to help train and level up a generation of emerging companies lawyers to deliver consistent, efficient guidance—should sound like the best part of the job, not a distraction from it.
• Are excited to help reshape what a law firm looks like—by building repeatable, high-quality processes, training the next generation of emerging companies attorneys, and doing the best work of their career in the process.

Compensation & Benefits

• Anticipated base salary of $300,000, with room above for the right candidate based on experience and vision.
• Equity
• Eligibility for company benefits.
• Modern tooling. No billable hours.
• Meaningful ownership opportunity.

How to Apply

Send us your resume along with a few sentences on what you’d build first if you joined, and one example of how you’ve scaled a process or trained teams to deliver consistent, high-quality emerging companies counsel across company-side and investor-side matters. We read every application.