Founding Legal Counsel

About the Role

Basis builds real agents that do real work in the real economy. Our agents operate for hours at a time, performing end-to-end work for some of the largest accounting firms in the world. We recently raised $100M at >$1B valuation and are racing to deploy the most advanced applied ML at production scale. Our investors include: Khosla Ventures (Keith Rabois & Vinod Khosla), Accel (Miles Clements), Google Ventures, Nat Friedman & Daniel Gross, Adam D'Angelo, Jeff Dean, Jack Altman, Noam Brown, Kyle Vogt, Amjad Masad, Clem Delangue and many other operators/technical leaders.

"Basis is on the frontier of building production-grade, long-horizon agents. They've pushed the limits of what we thought our models could do on real-world, economically valuable, complex accounting tasks. They've been a great collaborator in helping us shape what the future of agents looks like." — Prashant Mital, Applied AI Lead, OpenAI

Basis is looking for our first in-house Legal Counsel to help build the legal foundation for our next stage of growth. You’ll work closely with company leadership and teams across Finance, Sales, People, and Operations, owning a broad range of commercial and corporate legal matters.

Responsibilities

• Manage the company’s day-to-day contracting needs, including reviewing, drafting, and negotiating customer and vendor agreements.
• Improve the systems behind the work: developing templates and playbooks, strengthening approval and escalation processes, tracking ongoing obligations, and helping the company move quickly while staying buttoned up.
• Support corporate governance and board-related matters, including cap table management, board and stockholder approvals, meeting preparation, equity administration, and fundraising.
• Ensure that our corporate records, governance processes, and legal obligations remain accurate and current as the company scales.
• Advise on strategic partnerships and other business arrangements that do not fit neatly into an established playbook.
• Support personnel matters such as employment agreements, policies, employee relations, compensation and equity questions, and other workplace issues in partnership with the People team.

This is a high-ownership opportunity for an ambitious attorney who wants broad exposure, direct access to company leadership, and the chance to build a legal function from an early stage.

Requirements

• 2-5 years of experience practicing corporate or commercial law at a leading law firm
• A J.D. from a top law school and membership in good standing with at least one US state bar
• Experience reviewing, drafting, and negotiating commercial agreements, ideally including SaaS agreements, vendor contracts, NDAs, data-processing terms, and strategic partnership agreements
• A strong grounding in corporate law, including governance, capitalization, equity matters, board processes, and financing transactions
• Excellent judgment and the ability to distinguish meaningful legal or business risks from issues that should not slow the company down
• Clear, precise writing and the ability to explain complex legal questions in practical business terms
• Strong attention to detail, organization, and follow-through across multiple concurrent matters
• A hands-on approach: you are comfortable doing the work yourself, building processes from scratch, and operating without a large legal team or established playbook
• Intellectual curiosity and the ability to learn unfamiliar products, technologies, and areas of law quickly

Preferred Qualifications

• Commercial Judgment: Examples of negotiating complex agreements while preserving important protections and maintaining deal momentum
• Corporate and Transactional Range: Experience across venture financings, board governance, capitalization matters, strategic transactions, or emerging-company work
• Operational Mindset: A history of building templates, playbooks, approval processes, contract-management systems, or other infrastructure that made legal work faster and more reliable
• Business Partnership: Evidence that business teams view you as a practical partner who helps them reach sound decisions—not simply someone who identifies risk
• Ownership in Ambiguity: Experience independently driving unfamiliar or loosely defined matters from initial question through resolution
• Growth Potential: The ambition and capability to take on increasingly broad responsibility as the company and legal function grow

What Success Looks Like

• Commercial Velocity: Sales and vendor agreements move efficiently, with clear standards for review, negotiation, approval, and escalation
• Contract Discipline: Basis has reliable templates, playbooks, records, and systems for managing contractual commitments and ongoing obligations
• Strong Governance: Board materials, approvals, cap table records, equity matters, and corporate documentation are accurate, timely, and well maintained
• Practical Risk Management: Leadership receives clear, commercially grounded advice and understands the legal implications of important decisions
• Transaction Readiness: Strategic partnerships, financings, and other significant transactions are handled thoughtfully and driven to completion
• Trusted People Partnership: Personnel matters are addressed promptly, consistently, and with sound judgment
• A Scalable Legal System: Each agreement, process, template, and decision makes the legal function more effective as Basis grows

Location

NYC, Flatiron office. In-person team, five days a week.

Benefits

• Health & Wellness: Premium Medical, Dental, and Vision coverage; Life Insurance; and 6 coaching & 6 therapy sessions through Spring Health.
• Basis will cover 100% of your Wellhub Gold membership. Wellhub gives you access to gyms like Lifetime, SoulCycle, NYSC and so many more—as well as access to wellness apps like Strava & Headspace!
• Time off: Unlimited PTO + 12 paid company holidays.
• In-Office Perks: Daily meal stipends, a fully stocked kitchen, and $300 toward your custom desk setup.
• Financial Benefits: Pre-tax commuter benefits and 401(k) retirement plan.
• Team Culture: Monthly office activities and frequent optional team happy hours.
• Parental Leave: Available.