Litigation Counsel

About the role

🚀 Join the Future of Commerce with Whatnot! Whatnot is the largest live shopping platform in North America and Europe to buy, sell, and discover the things you love. Whether it's trading cards, fashion, electronics, or live plants, our sellers are building real businesses across hundreds of categories. We're building live commerce at a scale that's never been done in the West, and there's no playbook to copy. The people here are shaping how an entirely new industry develops. As a remote co-located team, we're inspired by our values and anchored in hubs across the US, UK, Ireland, Poland, Germany, and Australia. We move fast, stay close to our users, and focus on the work that drives the most impact. We're one of the fastest growing marketplaces and were recently named the #1 Best Startup Employer in America by Forbes. Check out the latest Whatnot updates on our news and engineering blogs and join us as we enable anyone to turn their passion into a business and bring people together through commerce.

Responsibilities

• Manage a docket of active litigation and arbitration matters involving Whatnot sellers and buyers end-to-end: responding to demand letters, initiating legal holds, driving litigation and resolution strategy, coordinating with outside counsel, reviewing briefs and submissions, and keeping matters moving under the supervision of our Head of Litigation.
• Investigate misconduct on the Whatnot platform and work with the team to develop our enforcement strategy, including pursuing offensive arbitration or litigation.
• Serve as the real-time legal advisor and partner to our Trust & Risk and Customer Support teams on account enforcement decisions with legal exposure, including fraudulent activity, seller bans, payout holds, offboarding actions, and account restrictions.
• Support engagement with regulators and state AGs, including analyzing state AG complaints and drafting clear, consistent, and confident responses.
• Partner with our Trust & Risk and Customer Support teams to proactively update user communications to improve customer experience and minimize legal risk, develop complete and accurate documentation of enforcement decisions, and translate investigation outputs into legal positions and arguments.
• Use AI tools (such as Claude CoWork, Glean, GC AI) to drive efficiency, build templates and workflows, and create a safety net so matters don’t get missed.
• Assess ongoing areas of risk surfacing through Trust & Risk and Customer Support in the docket and work collaboratively with those teams to implement process improvements and business-oriented solutions that reduce platform fraud and downstream legal exposure.
• Build the playbooks, escalation frameworks, and response templates that don't exist yet — you're energized by creating structure, not just working within it.

Requirements

• 8+ years of legal experience
• A J.D. degree, and active bar membership in at least one US state
• Significant complex litigation experience; ideally also in-house at a tech platform, marketplace, or consumer-facing company litigating emerging legal issues
• Prior experience at government or a large law firm is a plus
• Consumer dispute expertise: handled high-volume consumer disputes and understand balancing customer experience with keeping the platform trustworthy
• Platform liability knowledge (Section 230) and IP/DMCA experience is a plus
• Fluency in trust, safety, and risk operations: first-hand experience with platform enforcement actions and understanding how these decisions are made and how they create legal exposure downstream
• Strong oral and written communication skills; ability to tailor tone and content to audience
• Real intellectual curiosity: interested in developing creative solutions to risks facing the platform
• Sharp judgment: ability to discern routine matters from real risks and escalate appropriately
• Genuine interest in Whatnot: used the app (or excited to) and understand supporting a two-sided marketplace community
• Nice to have: Two-sided marketplace experience
• Nice to have: Fraud and trust & safety investigation background
• Nice to have: Demonstrated AI tool fluency (GC AI, Claude CoWork, Glean)
• Nice to have: International consumer protection knowledge (UK, EU, Australia)

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 for wellness
• Annual allowance towards Childcare
• Lifetime benefit for family planning, such as adoption or fertility expenses
• Retirement; 401k offering for Traditional and Roth accounts in the US (employer match up to 4% of base salary) and Pension plans internationally
• Monthly allowance to