Case Study - Public, Fortune 1000 FinTech Company

The Client

Public, Fortune 1000 FinTech Company

The Challenge

Due to a recent acquisition and expansion of business, our client’s legal department had experienced some reorganization and their internal resources were operating at capacity. A senior member of the legal department who is responsible to several global business units was about to go on maternity leave. Given the fast-paced nature of the business and the multiple business units, our client needed to identify an interim resource to act as lead counsel for the business units with minimal oversight, prioritizing and triaging issues and elevating them to the leadership team as needed.

The Solution

The fintech client was referred to Major, Lindsey & Africa’s Interim Legal Talent team by our In-House Counsel Recruiting colleagues. Our client provided the profile of their desired interim resource: someone with at least seven years of experience drafting, reviewing and negotiating fintech-related agreements including payments, merchant acquisition and referral agreements. The qualified candidate also needed the business acumen to independently advise our client’s business units.

Within eight business days of beginning the search, we identified, screened and submitted three qualified candidates with the required fintech experience. One lawyer had 12+ years of direct experience negotiating payments agreements with some of the largest financial institutions in the world, while another had 20+ years of fintech experience including having previously as an SVP and general counsel. From there, our client conducted interviews and made their hiring decision in less than a week. Because of the heavy transactional nature of the position, our client selected the candidate with 12+ years of experience negotiating payments agreements. They noted, however, that they would consider the former SVP and general counsel for a permanent in-house position with more general responsibilities.

The Results

Due to the expedience of the search and interview process, our interim payments attorney was able to onboard a full six-weeks before the scheduled leave of our client’s in-house attorney. Having an extended ramp-up period has been beneficial in terms of familiarizing our interim attorney with the client’s agreement templates and systems and making introductions to key contacts in our client’s internal business units. Our interim payments attorney has received strong reviews for her experience negotiating and also her emotional intelligence and ability to quickly build a rapport with the team. With an experienced interim payments attorney in place, our client’s legal department is confident that it will continue to provide excellent service to its internal business units and their end-customers during the leave period.