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San Francisco, California, United States
Onsite
Whatnot is the largest live shopping platform in North America and Europe to buy, sell, and discover the things you love. Whether it's trading cards, fashion, electronics, or live plants, our sellers are building real businesses across hundreds of categories. We're building live commerce at a scale that's never been done in the West, and there's no playbook to copy. The people here are shaping how an entirely new industry develops.
As a remote co-located team, we're inspired by our values and anchored in hubs across the US, UK, Ireland, Poland, Germany, and Australia. We move fast, stay close to our users, and focus on the work that drives the most impact.
We're one of the fastest growing marketplaces and were recently named the #1 Best Startup Employer in America by Forbes. Check out the latest Whatnot updates on our news and engineering blogs and join us as we enable anyone to turn their passion into a business and bring people together through commerce.
The Legal team protects the platform, enables the business to move fast, and keeps Whatnot ahead of the legal risk that comes with hypergrowth. We're looking for a litigation attorney who understands how platform enforcement decisions and consumer complaints become legal disputes. As Litigation Counsel, you'll manage active disputes matters across our growing docket while serving as the embedded legal advisor to our Trust & Risk and Customer Support teams, who do the day to day work of keeping the platform safe. You'll report to our Head of Litigation and sit at the operational heart of our legal function — keeping our disputes docket moving and translating Whatnot's real-time enforcement actions into defensible legal positions..
There's no playbook for what we're doing — you'll be creating the processes and infrastructure as we go. That means real ownership early, but it also means you need to be comfortable operating with ambiguity and creating structure where none exists yet.
This role has real room to grow as our disputes and legal operations functions mature. In this role, you will:
Manage a docket of active litigation and arbitration matters involving Whatnot sellers and buyers end-to-end: responding to demand letters, initiating legal holds, driving litigation and resolution strategy, coordinating with outside counsel, reviewing briefs and submissions, and keeping matters moving under the supervision of our Head of Litigation.
Investigate misconduct on the Whatnot platform and work with the team to develop our enforcement strategy, including pursuing offensive arbitration or litigation.
Serve as the real-time legal advisor and partner to our Trust & Risk and Customer Support teams on account enforcement decisions with legal exposure, including fraudulent activity, seller bans, payout holds, offboarding actions, and account restrictions.
Support engagement with regulators and state AGs, including analyzing state AG complaints and drafting clear, consistent, and confident responses.
Partner with our Trust & Risk and Customer Support teams to proactively update user communications to improve customer experience and minimize legal risk, develop complete and accurate documentation of enforcement decisions, and translate investigation outputs into legal positions and arguments.
Use AI tools (such as Claude CoWork, Glean, GC AI) to drive efficiency, build templates and workflows, and create a safety net so matters don’t get missed.
Assess ongoing areas of risk surfacing through Trust & Risk and Customer Support in the docket and work collaboratively with those teams to implement process improvements and business-oriented solutions that reduce platform fraud and downstream legal exposure.
Build the playbooks, escalation frameworks, and response templates that don't exist yet — you're energized by creating structure, not just working within it.
We offer flexibility to work from home or from one of our global office hubs, and we value in-person time for planning, problem-solving, and connection. Team members in this role must live within commuting distance of our Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City, or Seattle hubs.
People who do well at Whatnot tend to be comfortable figuring things out as they go, biased toward action, and genuinely curious about what they're building. They care more about outcomes than credit and stay close to the product and the people using it.
As our next Litigation Counsel, you should have 8+ years of legal experience plus:
A J.D. degree, and active bar membership in at least one US state.
8+ years of experience litigating at scale. You have significant complex litigation experience and ideally have also spent time in-house at a tech platform, marketplace, or consumer-facing company litigating emerging legal issues. Prior experience at the government or a large law firm is a plus.
Consumer dispute expertise. You have handled high-volume consumer disputes and understand balancing customer experience with keeping the platform trustworthy. Platform liability knowledge (Section 230) and IP/DMCA experience is a plus.
Fluency in trust, safety, and risk operations. You have first-hand experience with platform enforcement actions and understand how these decisions are made and how they create legal exposure downstream. New situations surface every day that no policy fully anticipates — good judgment in the grey matters more than waiting for the perfect rule.
Strong oral and written communication skills. You understand that all external communication reflects the company and have high standards for your own work product and a keen attention to detail. You have the ability to tailor tone and content to the audience at hand – whether that is a junior Whatnot employee, senior executive partner, external regulator, or federal court.
Real intellectual curiosity. You ask why a pattern is emerging in the docket before anyone asks you to, and you're energized by novel legal questions — not slowed down by them. You are interested in developing creative solutions to the risks facing the platform and know that litigation isn’t always the right answer.
Sharp judgment. You know what to handle yourself and what to escalate — you can tell the difference between routine matters, and real risks, and you can identify the difference at speed.
Genuine interest in Whatnot. You’ve used the app (or are excited to), and you get what it means to support a two-sided marketplace community.
Nice to Have
Two-sided marketplace experience. Experience in a two-sided or multi-sided marketplace, balancing buyer and seller interests
Fraud and trust & safety investigation background. You have investigated fraud or platform abuse concerns (e.g., payments fraud, account takeover, marketplace abuse) and know how to turn investigative findings into legal action.
Demonstrated AI tool fluency. You have used AI tools (e.g., GC AI, Claude CoWork, or Glean) to do real legal work and are excited to have the opportunity to leverage these tools to improve the efficiency, consistency, and quality of our work.
International consumer protection knowledge. You're familiar with consumer protection frameworks outside the US (UK, EU, Australia), which will matter as Whatnot's disputes docket grows across its global hubs.
Generous Holiday and Time off Policy
Health Insurance options including Medical, Dental, Vision
Work From Home Support
Home office setup allowance
Monthly allowance for cell phone and internet
Care benefits
Monthly allowance for wellness
Annual allowance towards Childcare
Lifetime benefit for family planning, such as adoption or fertility expenses
Retirement; 401k offering for Traditional and Roth accounts in the US (employer match up to 4% of base salary) and Pension plans internationally
Monthly allowance to dogfood the app
All Whatnauts are expected to develop a deep understanding of our product. We're passionate about building the best user experience, and all employees are expected to use Whatnot as both a buyer and a seller as part of their job (our dogfooding budget makes this fun and easy!).
Parental Leave
16 weeks of paid parental leave + one month gradual return to work *company leave allowances run concurrently with country leave requirements which take precedence.
Please note: Whatnot will only contact you through official @whatnot.com email addresses. If you see an email impersonating a Whatnot recruiter, please disregard and report it as spam.
Whatnot is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We value diversity, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, parental status, disability status, or any other status protected by local law. We believe that our work is better and our company culture is improved when we encourage, support, and respect the different skills and experiences represented within our workforce.
