Legal Counsel, Employment

Company Description

Shopify is a leading global commerce company, providing trusted tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business of any size. Shopify makes commerce better for everyone with a platform and services that are engineered for reliability, while delivering a better shopping experience for consumers everywhere. Shopify powers millions of businesses in more than 175 countries and is trusted by brands such as Allbirds, Gymshark, PepsiCo, Staples, and many more.

**Job Description**:
**About the Team**
Shopify’s Employment Legal Team focuses on legal issues that affect Shopify as a global employer. Our core goal is to ensure that Shopify remains a trusted employer that can strike a balance between compliance with legal requirements and maintaining our amazing, mission-driven work environment.

From hiring, to employee relations, to exits - this work is varied and constantly evolving. Real talk: being a member of a fast-moving team that’s doing cutting edge legal work is not always easy. We find fulfilment practicing at the top of our games with our amazing team and coming up with creative solutions to complex problems

**About You**
We’re looking for a curious, passionate, and dedicated employment lawyer with at least a few years of post-qualification experience dealing with employment standards, occupational health and safety, human rights, and litigation matters. You must be able to juggle competing priorities, directly manage high pressure situations, and be equally adept at playing a lead role on some projects and a supporting role on others. Effective, confident communication skills and the ability to provide user-friendly legal advice is paramount to the success of this role. You will also need to leverage a combination of your existing knowledge, great instincts, and strong research skills to extrapolate into new areas of law, new geographies, and areas of ambiguity.

Success on the Shopify legal team requires intellect, humility and a sense of humour. You need to take the work seriously, but not take yourself too seriously. You also need to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, able to work with many different types of personalities, and be ready to navigate uncharted waters and frequent change.

**Responsibilities**
- Providing frontline advice to members of the Talent Team relating to issues like conflicts of interest and/or business side hustles, policy violations, workplace accommodations, employee compensation, employee mobility, employment standards and employee terminations
- Reviewing and updating internal policies, practices and documents to ensure compliance with applicable laws as they evolve
- Drafting responses to demand letters, internal policies/communications, and key employment documents
- Working on cross-functional projects as the employment law expert
- Advising on workplace investigations and employee grievances
- Providing employment law support for M&A
- Conducting legal research and contributing to knowledge management and systems building within the Talent and Legal teams
- Providing employment support with entity set up in new international jurisdictions
- Assisting with some employment litigation matters and negotiations with opposing counsel as needed

**Qualifications**:

- A J.D. or LL.B
- A license to practice law in any Canadian province or U.S. state - note, you do not need to live in a major urban centre For Shopify, home is where the Internet is
- 3-6 years of relevant experience advising in all aspects of employment law, having honed your skills as a practicing employment lawyer at a law firm and, ideally, in-house
- Strong writing skills, with the ability to match your tone to your audience and write plainly and concisely - no Latin or legal citations, ever
- A desire to work on an agile & lean team. You will get asked to help with issues that have no clear answer, that may be in locations you are unfamiliar with, and you should feel comfortable working through these issues and learning on the job
- The ability to be a self-starter who thrives without regular oversight, as you (and your lead) will be working remotely
- Comfort navigating and making decisions in the midst of ambiguity and frequent change
- The knowledge and confidence to provide quick, pragmatic advice on a variety of employment law issues, and develop actionable solutions to complex problems while mitigating risk
- A strong desire to understand Shopify as a business and its workplace culture
- A willingness to learn about employment law in new jurisdictions and lean in to support, particularly in APAC

**Bonus If You Have**:

- Experience with employment law in multiple jurisdictions
- Experience working at a global company
- Experience working in tech and/or start-up environments
- Experience managing external legal counsel
- Fluency in French

Additional Information
- At Shopify, we understand that experience comes in many forms. We’re dedicated to adding ne