Legal Counsel, Emergency Cash & U.S. Programs

About the role

GiveDirectly has delivered more than $1B in cash directly to 2+ million people living in poverty across 15 countries since 2011. We believe cash transfers are one of the most scalable, cost-effective, and dignified forms of aid, with the research to back it up. Our work has been covered by The Economist , NPR , TED , and The Washington Post . We are one of Time100’s Most Influential Companies of 2026. We’re now preparing to deliver billions of dollars a year to people in extreme poverty, if funding allows. Read our CEO’s essay on what that will take. Our culture is candid, analytical, and non-

Requirements

• Serve as the primary legal partner to Emergency Cash across program strategy, design, launch, and delivery.
• Build a repeatable legal model for emergency responses, including approaches to country entry, regulatory review, government engagement, contracting, data use, and the engagement of local counsel.
• Develop response-readiness tools, templates, and decision frameworks that allow common issues to be addressed quickly while escalating matters requiring legal judgment.
• During active responses, lead the legal work needed to launch and operate on emergency timelines, providing clear recommendations when information is incomplete.
• Coordinate with country teams, program-facing Counsel, and local advisors to use existing knowledge and relationships while retaining legal ownership of the response.
• Apply GiveDirectly’s global standards for MNO data and remote enablement to individual responses, working with the Corporate & Strategic Affairs Counsel on novel or cross-cutting issues.
• Draft and negotiate the partnership, technology, vendor, data-sharing, and other agreements required to deliver emergency programs.
• Capture lessons from individual responses and use them to strengthen the EC legal model over time.