General Counsel - Chicago

Location: US-based
Type: Full-Time or Contract-to-Hire

About Human Agency

We're scaling rapidly and have a growing pipeline of opportunities that demand exceptional talent across disciplines. Our mission is to bring on individuals, from creative producers to technical experts to entrepreneurial leaders, who can help us realize this next chapter of growth.

We are a company of doers. Leaders roll up their sleeves, teams work flat, and everyone contributes to what ships. Titles don't insulate us from feedback or basics. We invite critique, learn quickly, and keep raising the bar. The best ideas win here, no matter where they come from, because clients trust us to deliver the strongest outcomes every time.

Our clients' missions, products, and bottom lines are sacred. We immerse ourselves in their world, becoming stewards of their goals and partners in solving big problems. Every product, strategy, or asset we create must be both beautiful and functional; practical, usable, and designed for real-world impact.

Humans are our most valuable resource, and we only grow by hiring people who push us forward. Across strategy, engineering, design, data, and operations, we seek out teammates who raise the bar and make us better. Always hire up, never down.

We partner with organizations of all sizes to explore, design, and implement AI strategies that are secure, scalable, and human-centered. We believe AI should amplify human potential, not replace it, and we build with that conviction in every engagement. From advisory and tooling to implementation and education, we meet clients where they are and help them integrate AI in ways that align with their mission and values. Our goal is to empower teams to work smarter, move faster, and unlock new possibilities through thoughtful, responsible innovation.

And through it all, we lead with purpose, love, and adventure. We do meaningful work with people we care about, and we make the ride an adventure worth taking. Because at Human Agency, who we are and how we work are one and the same.

The Opportunity

Human Agency is not a single company. We're an expanding architecture of companies. We run a core AI consultancy, we're forming an investment fund, we're standing up an operating company, and we're building a portfolio that will grow into the hundreds alongside a broad product suite. We also create and support nonprofits and political entities. The legal complexity that comes with all of that is real, and it's growing faster than any outside counsel arrangement can gracefully handle.

This is the role that holds the structure together. The General Counsel will own the legal function end-to-end, designing the entity architecture, running transactions and acquisitions, building governance across a diverse set of legal forms, and advising senior leadership directly. There is no legal team waiting underneath you. You will be the function, with outside counsel reserved for narrow specialist work that genuinely warrants it.

The right person for this role is a transactional lawyer who has outgrown the billable-hour model and wants to own something. You'll work directly with the Founder and CEO, influence strategy, and build the legal infrastructure for an enterprise that intends to scale significantly. If you've ever wanted to be the architect rather than the contractor, this is that opportunity.

What You'll Own

Entity Architecture & Corporate Structure

• Design and maintain a coherent legal structure spanning the consulting company, fund, operating company, portfolio companies, nonprofits, and political entities. Optimize for tax efficiency, liability containment, clean ownership, and operational clarity.

Fund Formation & Investment Work

• Structure and stand up the fund and its related vehicles, including the general partner, management company, and fund entities; draft and negotiate partnership agreements, subscription documents, and side letters; manage securities compliance and support investor onboarding.

Transactions & Acquisitions

• Lead the legal execution of acquisitions and roll-ups across a portfolio built to scale into the hundreds. Run purchase agreements, diligence, financing, and integration from start to close.

Tax-Aware Structuring

• Own entity selection, inter-company arrangements, related-party transactions, equity and incentive design, and multi-state exposure; coordinate with tax advisors where helpful, and make the structuring calls yourself where you can.

Commercial Contracts & IP

• Draft and negotiate the agreements that run the business (MSAs, vendor and partner contracts, licensing, and confidentiality terms) while protecting the portfolio's IP across trademarks, trade secrets, copyrights, and AI-generated work product.

Governance & Compliance

• Maintain corporate formalities, ownership records, and board materials across every entity; keep each one compliant with the rules that apply to it, including tax-exempt requirements for nonprofits and campaign finance and lobbying rules for political entities.

AI-Enabled Legal Operations

• Use AI tools to do the legal work faster and at higher quality, build repeatable workflows that let a lean legal function support a large enterprise, and advise the business on the legal questions our AI products and services raise, from IP and liability to client terms.

Who You Are

Experience & Skills

• 4-6+ years of substantive corporate and transactional experience, with real depth across some mix of fund formation, M&A, entity structuring, commercial contracts, and corporate governance.
• Deep fluency in Delaware law and solid working knowledge of New York, Massachusetts, and Missouri law.
• Demonstrated ability to structure entities and transactions with tax consequences in view, not just an awareness that tax matters, but the judgment to design structures that hold up.
• A track record of owning matters from strategy through drafting and filing without requiring support staff beneath you.
• Genuine, working fluency with AI tools, not curiosity, not interest, but actual integration of AI into how you practice law today.
• Experience in at least one of: fund formation and securities, nonprofit governance, political or campaign finance law, or litigation and dispute resolution.
• Background in a startup, holding company, private equity, search fund, or roll-up environment, somewhere that required building legal infrastructure rather than inheriting it.

Mindset & Traits

• You are a builder. You are not here to manage outside counsel relationships or protect your calendar. You want to own the work, design the architecture, and see it hold under pressure.
• You operate with low oversight and high accountability. Ambiguity doesn't stall you; it's where you do your best thinking.
• You communicate clearly to non-lawyers, including the Founder and CEO, without losing precision or hedging everything into uselessness.
• You treat legal risk as a business problem, not a compliance checklist, and you structure around it, advise on it, and help leadership make better decisions because of it.
• You are genuinely excited about AI, not as a productivity gimmick, but as a fundamental shift in how legal work gets done, and you're already building that into your practice.
• You care about the mission, not just the matter. You'll be a steward of an enterprise that is trying to do something meaningful, and that context will show up in how you work.

Compensation & Logistics

• This is a fully remote position based in the United States. 
• Full-time employment with competitive compensation, discussed during the interview process.
• Performance-based incentives tied to company outcomes, with room for meaningful upside as the portfolio grows.
• Comprehensive benefits, including health insurance and retirement.
• Some travel required for closings, key meetings, and matters that call for an in-person presence.

Equal Opportunity Commitment

Human Agency is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We value diverse perspectives and are committed to building inclusive, high-performing teams where everyone can do their best work.