Counsel

About the Role

Reporting to the Senior Legal Counsel, the Counsel is a specialist individual-contributor role within Wiley’s Legal function supporting the company’s content licensing, intellectual property, and technology transactions work. The role partners with business and legal stakeholders to draft, review, and negotiate a range of commercial agreements – with a particular focus on emerging technologies and content licenses, text-and-data-mining (TDM) rights, and platform/partner agreements under different frameworks. Working independently with guidance on the most complex matters, the Counsel applies in-depth IP and licensing knowledge to interpret business issues, recommend balanced positions, and help mitigate risk, while building expertise in emerging AI and technology legal questions and supporting the development of templates, playbooks, and legal-technology workflows.

Responsibilities

• Draft, review, and negotiate copyright, data-licensing agreements, and other IP transactions – including partner and platform agreements, and tech-driven transactions – negotiating directly with customers, partners, and vendors and their counsel, with senior-counsel support and escalation on novel or high-value issues.
• Identify, assess, and help mitigate legal risk in assigned contracts, conduct legal research on emerging technology, TDM, copyright, and data-rights questions, and manage workflows to ensure proper alignment between internal stakeholders.
• Support and improve contracting infrastructure: develop and maintain templates, clause libraries, and playbooks; collaborate with contracts team on adoption of Contracts Lifecycle Management (CLM) system for business lines supported; help build and adopt legal-tech / AI-assisted review and automation workflows.
• Act as a liaison between Legal and other business units, provide training and guidance on IP/licensing issues.

Requirements

• Juris Doctor (JD)/LL.M. or equivalent law degree; admitted/qualified to practice law in New York and in good standing.
• 1–4 years’ post-graduation from law school experience in copyright, commercial/transactional, and technology law (law firm and/or in-house); demonstrated contract drafting and review experience and negotiating commercial agreements directly with external parties and their counsel.
• Demonstrated copyright licensing experience.
• Strong contract drafting and negotiation; sound knowledge of copyright and licensing principles; clear communication; high attention to detail; sound independent judgment.
• Proficiency with MS Office and document/contract tools (expert), AI tools such as Claude, Copilot, ChatGPT (intermediate), and/or specialized legal tools such as Westlaw (intermediate); ability to translate commercial drivers into balanced contract terms; risk identification and escalation.
• Organized and detail-oriented; manages a varied workload and competing deadlines independently; takes ownership and accountability for outcomes.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with AI and data services licensing and negotiations, SaaS/platform agreements, or similar rights; exposure to publishing, media, or information-services businesses and related legal issues.
• Genuine interest in AI and emerging technologies; comfort learning new legal-tech tools; analytical, process-improvement mindset.

Benefits

• Meeting-free Friday afternoons for focused work and professional development.
• Robust employee programming to foster community, learning, and growth.
• Comprehensive benefits package.

Pay

The salary range for this role in the United Kingdom, Canada, USA, Austria, Czechia, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Romania, or Spain is 140,000.00 USD to 200,733.33 USD. The ultimate salary offered may vary based on geographic location, skills, and competencies.