Senior Counsel, Litigation (Safety)

About the Team

OpenAI's Legal team plays a crucial role in furthering OpenAI's mission by tackling innovative, fundamental legal issues in AI. If you're passionate about doing significant and unique work as a technology lawyer, this team is for you. The team comprises legal professionals from diverse fields, including technology, privacy, IP, corporate, cybersecurity, employment, tax, regulatory, and litigation.

About the Role

We’re growing our world-class Litigation and Regulatory team and seek an experienced counsel to support litigation matters related to AI model outputs, such as products liability and mass torts. This role is highly cross-functional across OpenAI, including work across our Legal, Communications, Global Affairs, and Executive teams. This role reports to our Deputy General Counsel.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

In this role, you will:

• Provide legal advice and counsel on a wide range of global litigation matters, including first-of-kind products liability, mass torts, model output liability, and commercial disputes.

• Manage and oversee outside counsel in all aspects of litigation matters, including discovery, motion practice, trial preparation, and settlement negotiations.

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to gather relevant information, assess risk, and develop legal strategies to resolve disputes.

• Stay current on relevant laws, regulations, and industry trends, and provide updates and legal guidance to company leadership and stakeholders.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have at least 10+ years of combined litigation experience, including several inhouse at software/online technology companies.  This will not be your first inhouse role.

• Have prior experience working on MDLs/JCCPs and other large litigations.

• Have a strong sense of ownership, are inquisitive and enthusiastic about AI technology/online platforms, enjoy being continually challenged, and can demonstrate sound judgment in ambiguous/unstructured/dynamic situations.

• Have a JD and license or qualification to practice in CA

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity. 

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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