Legal Research Associate (German)
Designer Fund is a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage tech companies using design to improve health, sustainability, or prosperity for people. It backs founding teams, particularly those with design backgrounds, across sectors like fintech, healthcare, climate tech, and developer tools.
About Designer Fund
Designer Fund is an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in tech companies leveraging design to drive positive outcomes in health, sustainability, and financial prosperity. Its portfolio spans a wide range of sectors including financial infrastructure (Stripe), preventative health (Omada), collaborative tools (Notion), developer tools (Netlify), product management (Linear), payroll and benefits (Gusto), design tools (Framer), and healthcare infrastructure (Commure), among dozens of other companies across fintech, climate tech, healthcare, EdTech, and AI. The firm also runs 'Designer Founders,' a community and platform highlighting designers who have gone on to found and lead companies, reflecting its focus on backing design-driven founders and design-centric startups from early stages through growth and acquisition.
Skills
About the Role
You will join a dynamic and global legal team working closely with lawyers based in Europe, Israel, and New York. Supported by a mentor, you will get hands-on exposure to the multi-layered tasks of an in-house lawyer and gain unique insight into the legal department of a high-growth scale-up. You will help review and coordinate contracts, conduct legal and regulatory research, track compliance with data privacy laws, and drive improvements in the efficiency of legal team processes and systems.
Requirements
- Currently completing legal study or Rechtsreferendariat, eligible to undertake a station placement with an in-house legal team
- Some exposure to or interest in tech, data privacy, or regulatory law; familiarity with GDPR is a plus
- Comfortable working with internal systems and data, able to pull insights from databases to support business decisions
- A clear and precise communicator, both written and verbal, able to translate complex legal concepts for non-legal stakeholders
- Organised and detail-oriented, with the ability to manage multiple workstreams at once
- Proactive and eager to learn
- Fluent in English and German; additional languages are a plus
Responsibilities
- Review and coordinate completion of contracts such as NDAs, SaaS agreements, vendor contracts, and lease agreements, ensuring accuracy and flagging key risks
- Help maintain and organise contract databases and templates
- Conduct legal and regulatory research across areas relevant to the business, including transportation network services, gig economy, insurance, open source data, and data privacy laws
- Track compliance with GDPR and other data privacy laws through oversight of Data Protection Agreements (DPAs) with vendors and partners
- Support internal compliance and corporate governance
- Develop a working knowledge of internal databases and systems to pull insights from data for business decisions
- Develop and implement ways of improving the efficiency of the legal team through ticketing systems, document management, filing systems, and KPI tracking
- Lead and support the continuous maintenance and improvement of forms, processes, and systems
- Assist with the development of legal processes to enhance scalability and efficiency
- Provide administrative support and assist with special projects as needed
Benefits
- Weekly team lunch and breakfast
- Urban Sports Club membership