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Name one thing every engineer should have.
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I think it depends on each company. For some, commercial counsels handle contracts, while product attorneys advise product, engineering, and UX teams during the product development cycle. There is overlap, because the way the product is designed would inform the terms of the contract. So, sometimes the two attorneys have to work together, and in smaller companies it might be one role. A regulatory counsel looks at complex laws and advises the business on how to comply. If they’re advising product teams, then a lot of time, the product attorney also does the work of a regulatory counsel. There is overlap between the three roles, and exactly how the roles are divided or combined is company specific.
Speaking as a commercial counsel, I interface with the sales team and business as we work to contract for the sale/license of our products to customers.
Product counsel I view as generally being responsible for ensuring the way the product has been developed and rolled out into the marketplace was originally legally compliant.
Regulatory counsel I see as more of an ongoing monitoring type of role to make sure our offerings stay compliant as new regs come into effect.
*Note I’m only confident that my job description is correct.
this checks out for my company too
Commercial counsel primarily works with contracts - they draft and negotiate contracts with counterparties. Product counsel at big companies is primarily a counseling role - they work with product and engineering teams to provide advice and may not do much contract work at all.
At one of the WITCH companies. Product counsel and Commercial are merged into the same role.
When OP said “tech,” I think OP may have had FAANG in mind, not Indian IT companies.
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its all the same, all corporate legal drones
One way to look at it (which may vary depending on company):
- product counsel are legal generalists that serve as the business primary POC for legal issues; they typically will have a counseling role but may write memos depending upon company culture. Depending on the company, they may leverage various Legal SMEs that are dedicated to understanding particular areas of law in depth (privacy, IP, regulatory, antitrust)
- commercial counsel act as contracts legal SMEs and own the process of getting agreements negotiated.
- regulatory counsel are legal SMEs and know the relevant regs agencies for a given business well.
Commercial counsel are often just extensions of the sales teams. Your schedule is beholden to them. You deal constantly with salespeople who just want their commissions and weaponize learned incompetence when convenient to make your job super fun. They forget your client is the company and not them, and often bring in other executives on their team or otherwise to tattle on you if you move too slow or make moves to protect the company that could jeopardize their precious commissions.
Some teams split up this role into people who handle negotiations on the company’s form and people who negotiate on counterparty form.
More sophisticated teams will have a “playbook” to guide contract negotiations. Some will have internal SLAs that govern response times for markups and the like. Most companies want to hire midlevel TTG attorneys for their commercial contracts roles. There isn’t much upward mobility unless you start in this role as first hire and expand it yourself. Careful joining a larger company in this role as you could be pigeon holed.
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You forgot to mention how much fun it is…
Assuming these roles are different at a company, which would open the most doors? Assume the goal is to become a general counsel.
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60%? Nah, it's M&A and securities.
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