Commercial Legal Counsel in London

Job type: Full Time

Department: Operations

Work type: On-Site

Location: London (4 days/week in our Fitzrovia office)

Team: Legal Operations

Reports to: COO

About Lorum

Global payments are not broken. Incentives are. Clearing has been deprioritized inside balance sheet driven institutions whose models rely on lending and interest. When liquidity takes priority over settlement, payments slow and certainty drops. The same financial institutions that distort clearing as providers are disadvantaged as users. They are forced into fragmented setups, inconsistent rails, duplicated compliance, and unpredictable timelines. Stablecoin shortcuts and treasury pooling treat symptoms at the surface, but almost no one is rebuilding the underlying infrastructure in each market.

We are rebuilding clearing as its own specialist function. We act as a clearing and transaction banking partner for regulated institutions, with treasury built into the core so liquidity, settlement, and reconciliation sit in one controlled system. Our platform unifies global and local licenses, direct central bank clearing, and access to domestic rails. We allow clients to open named customer accounts in every market we operate, collecting funds and paying out through a single network while retaining full ownership of their customer relationships. Market expansion becomes as simple as one correspondent relationship, not hundreds.

Why Lorum

Joining Lorum means contributing to one of the most ambitious clearing infrastructure projects in global finance. You will help shape settlement systems that perform under real regulatory standards and institutional volumes. You will build for regulated institutions that rely on precision, predictable timelines, and regulatory integrity. It is about working across currencies, markets, and supervisory frameworks to deliver reliable, final settlement.

Role purpose

We're hiring a Legal Counsel to join our small, high-velocity Legal Operations team in London. You'll work directly with our COO and our Legal Counsel in Dubai, partnering closely with the commercial team to keep deals moving.

What you'll do

• Draft, review and negotiate a wide range of commercial agreements with B2B clients and partners – MSAs, service agreements, vendor contracts, NDAs.
• Partner with the commercial team (Sales, AEs, Commercial Lead) to keep deals moving and unblock sales cycles.
• Make pragmatic, commercial risk calls – we value "good enough and shipped" over "perfect and stuck."
• Build and improve our contract templates, playbooks and negotiation guidelines.
• Help us level up our CLM workflows and processes.

Corporate & governance (supporting role)

• Support board and shareholder meetings, including agendas, minutes and filings.
• Help maintain statutory registers and corporate governance compliance across multiple jurisdictions.
• Work with local external counsel where needed.

Legal advisory (cross-functional)

• Provide practical, business-oriented legal advice to internal teams on day-to-day matters.
• Support cross-border expansion, liaising with external counsel on new market entry and licensing.
• Stay across legal and regulatory developments in fintech and payments (deep regulatory work sits with our Reg Counsel team – you don't need to be a regulatory specialist).

What we're looking for

• 3–5 years PQE, qualified in England & Wales (or commonwealth equivalent with UK experience).
• In-house experience at a fintech, payments company, challenger bank, VASP, merchant acquirer, or high-velocity B2B SaaS.
• A strong track record of drafting and negotiating B2B commercial contracts at volume, ideally with international counterparties.
• A commercial mindset – you balance risk management with business priorities and you know when to elevate and when to make the call.
• Resilient, autonomous, scrappy and collaborative. You're comfortable in a high-pace environment, you partner well with non-legal stakeholders, and you don't get defensive when pushed by sales.
• Excellent written and verbal communication; able to explain legal concepts to non-legal stakeholders clearly.
• Confident working independently, while knowing when to escape or pull in external counsel.

Nice to have

• Experience supporting cross-border expansion, especially into emerging markets.
• Exposure to corporate governance / company secretarial work.
• Experience working with international external counsel on licensing or market entry.

Why join us

• Global client base. You'll negotiate with counterparties from London to Lagos to Mumbai – the work is genuinely international, not a UK-only book.
• Real ownership. Small team, direct line to the COO, real influence on how the function scales.
• Growth path. As the team grows, there's a clear path toward leadership in Legal Operations.
• Collaborative culture. A team that takes the work seriously but not itself.

Compensation: Competitive base, equity, and 1 day a week from home.

If you're a commercially-minded in-house lawyer who wants to own a real pipeline in international fintech, we'd love to hear from you.