Ellevation has historically relied on outside legal counsel to support its business. As both the scale of our business and the complexity around data privacy have grown, so have our needs for an internal leader to work with our teams and our partners to guide our growth and ensure that we are properly identifying and controlling for these and other risks. 

Reporting to the Chief Financial Officer, you will work closely with leaders across the business. As the first in-house legal hire, you will define our legal strategy, build our core legal processes, and play an instrumental role in all business issues that include a legal component. You will inform and educate the company about these issues.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Partner contracting. Working with our Sales Operations and Revenue teams, you will review customer contracts, Data Protection Agreements and other related legal documents. When needed, you will negotiate directly with our customers to resolve any differences on contractual terms. 
• Data Privacy. You will work with our privacy consultant and with managers across our organization to refine our data privacy requirements and practices and ensure that we are living up to them.
• Employee Matters. You will work closely with our VP of People Operations on employee agreements and other legal matters related to our employees. 
• Board of Directors. You will work with our CFO and outside counsel on board related matters. 
• Intellectual Property. You will lead our efforts to ensure that our IP is properly documented and protected. 
• Procurement. You will review our vendor contracts and ensure that our vendors are complying with any legal requirements we have with our customers. 
• Fundraising and Acquisitions. You will lead legal diligence work on capital raising and potential acquisitions.

Requirements:

• You are a practicing attorney with over 5 years of experience, starting with a national or regional law firm and potentially including in-house corporate work. 
• You have significant experience working on commercial contracts with state and municipal governmental entities, in particular K-12 school districts. 
• You are skilled at negotiating commercial contracts and figuring out how to get to a closed deal while minimizing risk to your client and maintaining relationships with customers. 
• You have the knowledge and expertise to guide our data and privacy work, with particular knowledge of FERPA and COPPA. 
• You have worked with the operating teams at companies to institute and abide by compliance requirements. 
• You are skilled at explaining complex legal issues in non-technical terms that will enable you to guide our management team. 
• You have learned that you prefer working with nimble, growing tech companies. Bonus for having worked with cloud-based, SaaS, tech companies. 
• You relish the pace of making quick turnarounds on requests from our revenue team in order to keep our team moving and business growing. 
• You appreciate the support of your manager on resolving tough business issues. 
• Have a JD and are a member of the bar in good standing. 

Work Location & Hours:

• Although currently 100% remote, Ellevation is based in Boston. This role could be either Boston-based or remote. 
• If Boston-based, we anticipate that once we return to the office, our teammates will likely have flexibility around time in the office.
• If remote, we would want our Head of Legal to travel to Boston at times to work in-person with their teammates. 
• Our contracting season is busiest from May through September. This role may allow for part-time or flexible work hours throughout the year. 

About Us:

At Ellevation, we develop world-class software to help school districts and educators support the fastest growing population of K-12 students: English Language Learners (ELLs). Ellevation helps school districts transform their EL programs and ensure all students can achieve their highest aspirations with a best-in-class data and instructional planning platform, resources to build teacher capacity, and student-facing programs to teach academic language.

We are a fast-growing, mission-driven technology company, partnering with over 800 public school districts all across the country. We are well-capitalized, have a strong team, and are continuously focused on how to build the best organization so that we can achieve our ambitious social and financial objectives.

Why Ellevation?

In addition to our great benefit plans and competitive salaries, here are some other perks that make us unique:

+ Great location in Boston - a stone’s throw from the Chauncy Street/Downtown Crossing T stop (We are currently working 100% remotely due to COVID-19)

+ Ability to make a significant impact in the education industry

+ Fun Fridays including virtual happy hours with our remote team

+ Free snacks, beverages, fruit, and we even compost!

+ On-site gym, game room and darts to support all levels of athleticism

+ Opportunity to join an open and collaborative work environment!

Learn more about our team in our Culture Deck.

Here at Ellevation, we champion diversity, inclusion, equity, and belonging. We strive to build a team that reflects the diverse communities we serve. We’re an equal opportunity employer, committed to creating an inclusive workplace that promotes and values a range of ideas and opinions. We embrace all types of differences in the development of our organization. We are proud to have been recognized in prior years as “Best Tech Workplace for Diversity” from the Timmy Awards for investing in trainings around inclusive behaviors, microaggressions, unconscious bias, and fostering a culture of sharing educational resources across the company. We are encouraged by our progress, but there’s more work to be done.