Disputes Paralegal

Role

The Legal team protects the platform, enables the business to move fast, and keeps Whatnot ahead of the legal risk that comes with hypergrowth. We’re hiring a sharp, detail-oriented Disputes Paralegal and Project Manager to work directly with our Litigation Counsel and own the day-to-day engine behind a high and growing volume of disputes — demand letters, pre-litigation matters, arbitration threats, small claims, subpoenas, and related notices.

Responsibilities

• Own intake end to end — logging, triaging, and routing every new matter, drafting first responses to users, and keeping matter tracking airtight so nothing slips.

• Triage and manage accurately and consistently across claim types (demand letters, pre-litigation disputes, arbitration threats, small claims, subpoenas) — making defensible first-line calls under time pressure.

• Draft and send initial responses to users, working from templates and escalation protocols, and calibrating tone for sensitive or adversarial situations.

• Maintain case tracking system and disputes files to ensure nothing falls through the cracks.

• Administer legal holds and preservation — issue and track hold notices under Counsel's direction, maintain custodian lists and acknowledgments, partner with IT/People to prevent deletion for held custodians, and release holds at matter close.

• Improve the system as you go — intake workflows, response playbooks, decision trees, trackers, and escalation paths — and audit legacy trackers for active matters that haven’t been migrated, rather than relying on personal heroics to stay afloat.

• Use AI tools (Claude CoWork, Glean, GC AI) to drive efficiency, build templates and workflows, and create a safety net so matters don’t get missed.

• Partner cross-functionally with Trust & Risk, Customer Experience, and Legal Operations to gather facts and documentation, and communicate matter status to non-legal stakeholders without over-lawyering.

Requirements

• A bachelor’s degree (required), plus 7+ years of legal support, legal project management, or paralegal experience in litigation, disputes, or a high-volume legal environment.
• In-house litigation, legal project management, or regulatory experience is strongly preferred.
• Strong Communication Skills. Both oral and written communication are important in this role; you can write clearly and concisely, and know how to calibrate tone for sensitive situations.
• Demonstrated AI tool fluency. You have used AI (e.g., Claude, Glean, GC AI, Harvey) to build real workflows — not just as an occasional chatbot — and you actively look for ways to use tooling to improve speed, consistency, and coverage.
• Comfortable learning new platforms fast.
• A builder, not just an operator. You have identified gaps in an intake or response workflow and fixed them structurally — templates, automations, tracking systems — so the same problem doesn’t recur. You are comfortable creating process where none exists.
• Intake Experience. You have prior experience with demand letter intake and response drafting, or other structured legal correspondence workflows, and a sense for when to escalate versus when to use a template.
• Organizational skills and a positive attitude. Excellent organizational skills and the ability to manage a large volume of matters simultaneously without losing track of details. Comfortable working cross-functionally and ramping quickly in an ambiguous, fast-moving environment.
• Genuine interest in Whatnot. You’ve used the app (or are excited to), and you get what it means to support a two-sided marketplace community.
• Tooling. We run on Slack, Google Docs, Streamline (matter management), and DocuSign (execution); experience with a comparable matter-management or case-tracking system (e.g., LawVu, Ironclad, ServiceNow, Salesforce/CaseCloud, Smartsheet, Jira) transfers well.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of legal experience, plus: A bachelor’s degree (required).
• Previous experience at a marketplace, fintech, or consumer tech platform — though high-volume litigation or project management experience at a large law firm is also a plus.
• Comfortable working cross-functionally and ramping quickly in an ambiguous, fast-moving environment.
• Genuine interest in Whatnot. You’ve used the app (or are excited to), and you get what it means to support a two-sided marketplace community.
• Experience with Slack, Google Docs, Streamline, and DocuSign.

Skills

• Legal Project Management
• Dispute Resolution
• Legal Hold Administration
• AI Tools Fluency
• Communication Skills
• Organizational Skills
• Legal Correspondence Workflows

Benefits

• Generous Holiday and Time off Policy
• Health Insurance options including Medical, Dental, Vision
• Work From Home Support
• Home office setup allowance
• Monthly allowance for cell phone and internet
• Care benefits
• Monthly allowance to dogfood the app
• Parental Leave
• Compensation Range: $144K - $190K