Legal Network Director

About the role

The Connect pillar of HandsUp depends on one thing: when a user taps the lawyer button, a verified, licensed, qualified attorney has to actually answer. That requires a real network. Today we have 2,400 verified attorneys across 50 states. We want to triple that, raise quality, shorten response times, and build the operations and tooling around them so the experience scales.

You will be our first dedicated head of legal network, reporting to the CEO and working daily with product, engineering, and brand. You will own attorney recruitment, vetting, onboarding, performance management, and the partnerships and infrastructure that keep our bench healthy.

What you will do

• Own the strategy and execution of our verified attorney network including recruitment, vetting, onboarding, performance, and retention.
• Build relationships with state bars, civil rights legal organizations, plaintiffs’ firms, and law schools to expand our recruiting top of funnel.
• Define and operate the attorney vetting process including bar-status verification, malpractice history checks, conflict screening, and fit interviews.
• Operate attorney performance management. Define what good looks like (response time, conversion, user satisfaction, settlement outcomes), measure it, and act on it.
• Work with product and engineering to design the tooling our attorney network actually uses, from intake to triage to billing to dispute resolution.
• Negotiate and manage partnership agreements with bar associations, civil rights organizations, and large multi-state firms.
• Build the operations team around the network including network managers, attorney success, and member support, as we scale.
• Stay on top of regulatory developments across states that affect attorney advertising, fee splitting, and consumer-facing legal services.

What you bring

• 10 or more years of legal industry experience with at least five managing attorney networks, marketplaces, or BD at major firms.
• Active or formerly active bar admission in at least one US jurisdiction. We need someone who has actually practiced or operated within the legal industry.
• Demonstrated track record building or scaling an attorney network, legal marketplace, or large in-house legal operation.
• Sharp judgment on attorney quality. You can read a CV, sit in on an interview, and tell whether someone will actually be good for our users.
• Excellent operations chops. You know how to define a process, instrument it, and improve it.
• Strong negotiation and partnership skills, including experience with state bars and civil rights organizations.
• Comfort with technology and product. You will spend significant time in the tools our attorneys use and you will have opinions on them.
• Mission alignment. This role only works for someone who genuinely cares about access to legal help.

Bonus points

• Experience at a legal-tech consumer marketplace (LegalZoom, Rocket Lawyer, Avvo, Atrium) or large legal operations team.
• Personal injury, civil rights, or insurance defense practice background.
• Experience scaling a multi-state operation across regulated jurisdictions.
• Existing relationships with civil rights organizations or plaintiffs’ bar associations.
• Background managing fee-split and revenue-share arrangements with attorneys.

The team you would join

You will report directly to the CEO and work daily with product, engineering, and brand. You will be the senior-most person in our legal network function and a key member of the leadership team. You will help define what HandsUp’s relationship to the legal industry looks like for the next decade.

Compensation and benefits

The salary range for this role is $230,000 to $300,000 plus meaningful equity. Range is determined by experience, scope, and impact. We benchmark against top-quartile cash compensation at comparable legal-tech and consumer marketplace companies and re-benchmark every year.