Senior Corporate Counsel

Turn experience into opportunity. Leverage your accomplishments to get the kind of employment you’ve always wanted: cutting edge issues, world class clients with the collaboration and support of a global community of seasoned professionals. If you are ready to work directly with business leaders and their teams to solve problems and drive change, then a career with the Microsoft legal team is for you.

We have an immediate opening for a highly motivated commercial attorney to join the Microsoft Israel subsidiary’s Corporate, External and Legal Affairs team (CELA). We are looking for an energetic, innovative, and team-spirited Principal Corporate Counsel to provide commercial legal services to Microsoft’s business teams in Israel across a range of commercial matters and across the full breadth and depth of Microsoft’s customers’ industries.

The successful candidate will work as part of the Central Europe, Middle East and Africa (CEMA) Commercial CELA team, report to the CEMA CELA Head of Legal, and will be based at our offices in Herzliya.

This Attorney will work closely with the CELA team in Israel, consisting of a CELA Legal Lead and a Government Affairs professional. The successful candidate will be responsible for providing comprehensive commercial legal guidance to the business across our intelligent cloud, operating system and other products (including Azure, Azure Open AI, AI Copilots, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Windows, Surface, data security & artificial intelligence) as well as our consumer products and services. This will include commercial legal advice for both enterprise and consumer. The successful candidate will closely work with Microsoft customers in Israel including Defense, Intelligence and Public Sector customers.

Our customers are in the midst of game-changing digital transformations and this commercial attorney will have frequent contact with all levels of Microsoft account teams, industry teams, technical experts, outside partners, customer service, customers and vendors as well as our regional and global CELA teams. Excellent commercial legal skills and experience are a must. Experience as a generalist supporting a range of matters and the operational elements of legal services provision is a bonus.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

Responsibilities

Primary Duties

• Acts as the primary commercial legal contact for the breadth of Microsoft Israel.
• Develops creative solutions to provide repeatable standard transactional support to prioritize higher-impact or more complex commercial matters.
• Provides input into the review, drafting and negotiation of a wide range of commercial contracts, including licensing and framework agreements, letters of support, MoU’s, term sheets and responses to RFPs and tenders.
• Provides proactive commercial legal counseling on a broad range of topics that typically come up in commercial transactions, including related Israeli laws, contracting issues, data protection, security, intellectual property and licensing, responsible design of AI, competition/anti-trust, general commercial law, contract interpretation, contentious matters and regulatory compliance.
  
  

Legal Advice and Counsel

• Serves as an important contributor to clients and colleagues by providing actionable advice on deal and business matters impacted by commercial transaction (e.g., privacy, intellectual property, regulatory compliance) grounded in in-depth understanding of Microsoft’s products.
• Identifies and anticipates legal risks in commercial transactions and develops solutions to mitigate future risk.
• Manages day to day interactions with outside counsel or other service providers on deals.
• Structures, drafts, and negotiates transactional documents (e.g., standard agreements with third parties).
• Conducts, reviews, interprets, and analyzes legal and business information in the context of structuring complex transactions and legal agreements; cultivates an understanding of commercial legal principles within primary legal practice areas and a basic understanding of legal principles outside of primary areas.
• Monitors structuring deals and related engagements to ensure legal compliance policies/standards are followed; advises and helps clients understand compliance issues, identifies risks including anti-trust/anti-corruption, and offers solutions.
• Identifies and engages appropriate stakeholders in Corporate, External and Legal Affairs and business to escalate issues.
  
  

Representing Microsoft

• Actively participates in commercial legal, work, or industry associations (e.g., presenting at meetings, conferences, hearings, consultations, assisting in planning or preparing presentations); contributes to external commercial outreach initiatives.
• Develops positive relationships with external commercial legal professionals, customers, or partners in an effort to protect and advocate Microsoft’s interests;
• Works closely and coordinates with the Regional, Subsidiary, Legal Lead and government affairs professionals to obtain alignment in commercial and policy strategy for public entities.
  
  

Operational Excellence

• Engages with legal and other business colleagues (e.g. finance, tax and trade, compliance) to identify and share best practices.
• Provides continuous feedback and contributes to the improvement of project operational efficiencies; provides recommendations to improve efficiencies within work group and for the delivery of commercial legal services to clients.
• Manages project work expenses according to budget and proposes efficiencies.
• Models compliance and maintains confidentiality, attorney-client privilege, privacy, and the security of data.
  
  

Communication

• Collaborates effectively within work group and across Corporate, External and Legal Affairs functions on commercial transactions.
• Organizes and simplifies issues and ideas in written and verbal communication.
  
  

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• Juris Doctorate Degree or Equivalent International Degree
• OR Completion of a Legal Apprenticeship.
• Active license to practice law in Israel and capable of meeting admission requirements in Israel.
• 7+ years experience as a practicing attorney
• OR equivalent practice of law.
• Fluent in English and Hebrew language (written and oral).
• Eligibility to obtain Israeli Security defense clearance
  

Additional Or Preferred Qualifications

• Experience as a commercial attorney in specialized practice area (e.g., IT, data protection, copyright).
• In-house commercial and transactional experience
• Existing Israeli security defense clearance.
  
  

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.