Commercial Paralegal

ABOUT GRIFFIN

Hi, we’re Griffin. We’re a fully regulated UK bank that powers the accounts and payments offerings of product-led fintechs and platforms like Uber, Yonder, Prosper, and Sidekick. By doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes, our customers can focus on what they do best - delivering amazing customer experiences.

We’ve grown rapidly since our launch in 2024, and today provide the banking backbone behind products in remittance, payroll, wealth, insurance, proptech, payments, neobanking and more.

We’re moving into card issuing, stablecoin infrastructure, and agentic finance next as we continue to support the next generation of product-led companies.

Learn more about what we do https://griffin.com

OUR CULTURE

We believe that smart, motivated, conscientious people thrive in high-trust, high-autonomy environments and have done our best to create such an environment at Griffin. People who thrive here don’t require much hand-holding, and go out of their way to figure out how to contribute in the most valuable way possible.

We've been remote-first since we were established in 2017 and we remain so today. Work here is asynchronous and fully flexible - because we want to be a part of your life in a way that helps you to get the most out of both your work and home life.

We understand that our culture and ways of working aren’t for everyone, and we’re very intentional about our hiring process as a result. We won't hire people who don’t seem like a strong fit for our core values, even if they're otherwise extremely qualified.

Our strong culture has helped us to remain a mission-driven company as we have scaled, and gives our people a clear, explicit operating framework and the space to focus on delivering real value for our customers.

Learn more about our culture. https://griffin.com/culture

THE LEGAL TEAM

Our Legal team keeps Griffin moving: from the contracts that get customers live to the frameworks that let us grow safely.

You’ll report into and have the support of our Legal Counsel Melissa, who serves as our business’s trusted legal advisor - looking after everything from our contract negotiations, to providing guidance across a broad range of legal matters, identifying and managing legal risk, and helping our business make informed decisions as we scale. This role will be our second hire into the team and, working closely with Melissa, you’ll have real scope to shape how the function grows from here. This role will directly enable the wider business to grow, giving us the capacity to take on more, move faster, and support Griffin's next stage.

THE OPPORTUNITY

We're looking for a Commercial Paralegal to own our day-to-day contract work, including negotiating customer and suppliers contract, managing and maintaining our live contract databases, and become the business's go-to for quick, pragmatic legal advice. As our second legal hire, you'll also play a direct role in building the team itself, helping shape how we work as we grow. It's a great chance to roll up your sleeves, make a real difference, and help scale a fun fintech bank — with real impact in a small legal team where your contributions are visible and valued. You’ll have meaningful responsibility from day one, direct exposure to senior stakeholders, and broad commercial legal work within an FCA and PRA regulated environment.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

In your first 1 to 3 months, you'll understand our embedded banking model well enough to see how it shapes every contract we sign. By month 3 to 6, you'll be running contract negotiations and NDAs with limited oversight, and stakeholders across the business will already be coming to you directly. By month 12, you'll be a trusted advisor in your own right — someone the team can rely on.

TO DO THIS YOU’LL OWN

• Reviewing and negotiating a wide range of commercial contracts — customer agreements, supplier contracts (including SaaS), referral agreements, trust deeds, NDAs and more

• Running legal and risk reviews of contracts and giving stakeholders clear, commercially-minded advice

• Reviewing customers' own terms and conditions to make sure they reflect our embedded banking flow-down requirements, and guiding them through any changes needed

• Managing your own caseload end to end, from instruction through to completion

• Partnering with teams across the business — including our service, chart, connect and craft teams — as their go-to for contractual and legal queries

• Owning and maintaining our contract and NDA database

• Helping us build out legal templates, playbooks and internal processes as we grow

WE EXPECT YOU TO SHAPE THIS ROLE:

This description reflects what we need today. How you achieve these outcomes, where you focus your energy, how this role evolves—that's for you to define as you learn what our customers need and where our technical gaps are. We want someone who will get to know how we work inside out and grow with us.

YOUR BACKGROUND

To ensure this, we're looking for people who have:

• Solid experience reviewing and negotiating commercial contracts

• In-house experience, or a clear understanding of how advising a company as an internal function differs from private practice

• The confidence to work directly with senior stakeholders and to hold your own in a negotiation

• Comfort switching between very different types of work in the same day

• An interest in banking or SaaS — you don't need deep expertise in either, but you'll enjoy getting stuck into how they work

• A love of writing - we have a major amount of written documentation that you will be contributing to, and we place a high degree of importance on clarity and readability (you can find out more here about how we write https://griffin.sh/how-we-write )

Ideally, you would also:

• Be keen to get involved with streamlining processes

• Have experience with advising on and negotiating supplier contracts

• Experience working within a bank, fintech, payments business or other regulated financial services organisation.

We're open to applications from experienced paralegals, newly qualified solicitors, and candidates with equivalent commercial legal experience.

Qualifying Work Experience

For candidates pursuing qualification through the SQE route, this role may provide the right candidate with an opportunity to gain Qualifying Work Experience (QWE).

WHAT CAN WE OFFER YOU?

We are an early stage startup and we're working hard to expand our benefits package. We're planning to add to this list in the future.

• Salary: up to £45,000 (DOE)

• Remote-first flexibility: Work from anywhere in the UK

• Work from abroad: Up to 20 days a year

• Time off: 25 days’ holiday, bank holidays and a winter break (we shut down between Christmas and New Year)

• Share options: Own a part of what we’re building together

• Pension: Auto-enrolment into our Penfold scheme

• Insurance: Private medical with Bupa (including family cover) and life insurance with AIG

• Wellbeing: 1:1 coaching and therapy session available through Oliva

• Family leave: Enhanced parental leave with up to 6 months on full pay after two years’ service

• AI tools: Everyone has a Claude subscription on us and access to other premium tools

• Your setup: We’ll support you in creating a comfortable and effective WFH environment.

As a bank, we’re committed to maintaining the highest standards of security. This means that the successful candidate will need to complete background screening, and our offer will be conditional upon satisfactory review of these checks. This would include verification of right to work, criminal record, credit history, social media and professional reference checks

HOW LONG WILL THE PROCESS TAKE?

We move as fast as possible, but it normally takes us about 2-3 weeks to get to know to each other.

• Step 1: An initial phone call with our Talent Team for us to tell you more about Griffin and learn about your recent experience.

• Step 2: A task based on what you’ll be doing on a day to day at Griffin.

• Step 3: Meet your manager to talk through your experience and how that relates to the requirements.

• Step 4: Meet with peers in your team for a more in-depth technical interview.

• Step 5: Culture and Founder interview: Learn more about this here https://griffin.com/blog/how-to-design-culture-interviews.

HOW DO I APPLY?

Are we your next move? Apply via the link below, if there's a match our Talent team will reach out to schedule an initial conversation and talk you through what happens next.

WE’RE REMOTE-FIRST

We trust people to do great work wherever they are. We hire across the UK and most of our team works remotely full-time. We have a small London office in Moorgate for those who want it, and about a third of the company is close enough to use it occasionally, but there's no expectation to be there. What matters is the work, not where you do it.

UNDER REPRESENTATION

Our goal is for Griffin to proportionally represent the diversity of the working population in society. We’re working to ensure that Griffin is a supportive, empowering and inclusive environment for every member of our team — whatever your combination of race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, physical ability, nationality, neurodiversity, and religious beliefs. If you’re part of a group that is under-represented in fintech, we’d love to hear from you.

GRIFFIN BANK LTD REQUEST THAT RECRUITMENT AGENCIES DO NOT SPECULATIVELY SUBMIT CVS TO ANY EMPLOYEE OR ASSOCIATE OF OUR COMPANY UNLESS EXPLICITLY ASKED TO DO SO BY A MEMBER OF OUR TALENT TEAM.

ANY CVS SENT TO ANY MEMBER OF OUR TEAM ON A SPECULATIVE BASIS WILL NOT BE RECOGNISED AND WE WILL NOT ACCEPT LIABILITY FOR ANY FEE OR COMMISSION SHOULD WE SUBSEQUENTLY EMPLOY A CANDIDATE WHO APPLIED TO US DIRECTLY OR WAS INTRODUCED BY AN INSTRUCTED AGENCY THAT MAY ALSO HAVE BEEN SUBMITTED SPECULATIVELY BY AN UNINSTRUCTED AGENCY.