Commercial Counsel

Job Description

Job Description

#Team Nextdoor

Nextdoor (NYSE: NXDR) is the essential neighborhood network. Neighbors, public agencies, and businesses use Nextdoor to connect around local information that matters in more than 350,000 neighborhoods across 11 countries. Nextdoor builds innovative technology to foster local community, share important news, and create neighborhood connections at scale. Download the app and join the neighborhood at nextdoor.com .

The Counsel team is a close-knit and collaborative team that supports the entire Nextdoor community. We operate with the mindset that a small, high-leverage team can outperform a larger one by investing in the right systems, workflows, and tooling. Each member brings individual expertise and a builder's orientation: we don't just deliver legal advice, we design the infrastructure that makes great legal support scalable. We are reliable, trustworthy, and innovative in our support of Nextdoor's business goals and our purpose of building stronger local communities.

At Nextdoor, we operate in an AI-first environment and expect every team member to actively use AI tools as part of their workflow. We aren't looking for prompt engineers; we're looking for people who use tools like Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, and Glean to challenge their own thinking and take full ownership of AI-assisted outputs.

We also offer a warm and inclusive work environment that embraces a hybrid employment model, blending an in office presence and work from home experience for our valued employees. The hiring team will go over these expectations with you if you are being considered for a role near one of our offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, New York, and London.

As Commercial Counsel at Nextdoor, you'll be both a trusted commercial lawyer and a systems builder. You'll support our global revenue team on advertising deals and partner with business teams on a range of commercial matters — but equally important, you'll design, build, and continuously improve the workflows, playbooks, templates, and AI-enabled tooling that allow a lean legal team to move at the speed of the business. You will also advise internal clients on the various legal risks, business strategies, and other issues related to commercial transactions and general operations.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Provide day-to-day advice and counsel in commercial transactions for Nextdoor's revenue team, global Marketing business partners, and commercial transaction support for other teams as required
• Draft, review, negotiate, and manage a variety of contracts, including insertion orders with advertising clients and advertising agencies, contracts with partners in the online advertising ecosystem, strategic partnerships, and contracts and terms of service for promotions, influencers, and sponsorships
• Design and build scalable systems, workflows, and self-service resources that reduce legal bottlenecks, standardize contracting, and empower business teams to move faster without sacrificing quality or risk posture
• Identify, evaluate, pilot, and operationalize AI tools and emerging technologies across the contract lifecycle — from intake and triage to drafting, review, redlining, and post-signature management — and measure their impact
• Develop and maintain contract review playbooks, fallback position libraries, templates, clause banks, and negotiation guidance that enable consistent outcomes across the team and business partners
• Support internal clients through the art of deal making and contracting
• Collaborate cross-functionally across the organization to ensure agreements — and the systems that produce them – are consistent with internal policies and processes
• Research and advise on issues related to doing business in foreign jurisdictions, and update contracts, processes, and legal positions accordingly
• Drive the development and maintenance of internal resources, including contract review playbooks and leveraging AI tools and emerging technologies to implement best practices and increase team efficiency
• Participate in in-person Nextdoor events such as trainings, off-sites, volunteer days, and team building exercises
• Build in-person relationships with team members and contribute to Nextdoor's company culture

• Minimum of 3 years of relevant experience, ideally with at least 1 year of in-house experience in a fast-paced and rapidly growing technology or digital media company and drafting and negotiating contracts supporting digital ads sales
• Demonstrated track record of building legal operations infrastructure in-house — e.g., CLM implementations, intake systems, playbook development, template libraries, self-serve contracting programs, or AI-driven review workflows. You should be able to point to specific systems you've designed and the measurable impact they had
• Hands-on experience deploying AI tools (contract review, drafting, summarization, knowledge retrieval) in a legal context — including the judgment to know where AI adds leverage and where it doesn't
• A builder's mindset: you see inefficiencies as design problems, you prototype and iterate, and you're comfortable owning tools and processes end-to-end rather than handing them off
• J.D. from a nationally recognized law school, admitted to any state bar
• Strong communication and negotiation skills, and experience communicating and explaining complex legal issues to business partners
• Familiarity with data privacy laws, IP, and advertising business issues and how those play out within legal agreements and commercial relationships
• Ability to work on multiple projects, prioritize and organize workload
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills and presentation skills
• Ability to assess and manage risk — including the risk of over-engineering solutions or under-investing in scale
• Comfortable in highly collaborative environment
• Ability to easily network and build relationships with colleagues and internal clients
• Strong analytical and interpersonal skills

• Experience as an early legal hire at a startup or scale-up where you had to build the legal function's systems from the ground up
• You have a background in ad-tech, marketing, and/or media buying, and experience in negotiating contracts with customers, agencies and partners in the advertising ecosystem
• Experience with privacy laws, regulations, and industry guidelines, including those relevant for social media and Internet companies
• Diverse knowledge of global advertising, privacy and marketing laws, and experience working with global teams, including in the UK and Canada

Compensation, benefits, perks, and recognition programs at Nextdoor come together to create our total rewards package. Compensation will vary depending on your relevant skills, experience, and qualifications.

The starting salary for this role is expected to range from $220,000 to $240,000 on an annualized basis, or potentially greater in the event that your 'level' of proficiency exceeds the level expected for the role. The salary range will be determined by the candidate's geographic location.

We expect to award a meaningful equity grant for this role. With quarterly vesting, your first vest date will take place within 3 months of your start date.

When it comes to benefits, we have you covered! Nextdoor employees can choose between a variety of health plans, including a 100% covered employee only plan option, and we also provide a OneMedical membership for concierge care.

At Nextdoor, we empower our employees to build stronger local communities. To create a platform where all feel welcome, we want our workforce to reflect the diversity of the neighbors we serve. We encourage everyone interested in our mission to apply. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, or any other trait that unfairly targets a group of people. In accordance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we always consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

For information about our collection and use of applicants' personal information, please see Nextdoor's Personnel Privacy Notice, found here.