Founding Product Manager

General Legal; New York, San Francisco (NY, CA); Hybrid; USD 130,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

General Legal in San Francisco or New York City is hiring its first product manager to work with the CPO, CTO, product operations manager, and engineering team. You will own improvements to how our firm delivers legal services: understand how our attorneys work, learn how our clients experience that work, and turn those insights into software improvements that ship.

We want someone with at least 3 years of product management experience and a strong record of delivering useful software.

Qualifications

• At least 3 years of product management experience building software with an engineering team.
• You can point to products or features you personally took from problem discovery to launch and explain the results.
• You show strong prioritization and execution with a high bar for quality.
• You communicate clearly with engineers, lawyers, and founders.
• You adapt to ambiguity at an early-stage company.

Responsibilities

• Understand where our legal service breaks down and identify improvements.
• Turn interviews, support requests, usage data, and workflow observations into a prioritized backlog.
• Own features from discovery through launch: define the problem, scope the solution, write requirements and acceptance criteria.
• Bring product and design judgment to complex workflows; test ideas with wireframes or lightweight prototypes.
• Test what we build, coordinate releases, and follow up with users to confirm impact.
• Measure improvements in turnaround time and reduction of manual work for attorneys.
• Keep founders, engineers, product operations, and attorneys aligned on priorities.

Skills

Product management

User research

Technical fluency

Cross-functional collaboration

Prioritization

Tools

Analytics

SQL

Prototyping tools

AI coding tools

Job description

General Legal | Full time

San Francisco or New York City preferred Remote candidates considered

About General Legal

General Legal is a YC-backed, AI-native law firm. Our attorneys deliver legal services to our clients, using software we build in-house to make that work faster, better, and more affordable. Our product team builds the internal tools our attorneys use to do the work, along with the bots and web portal through which our clients work with us.

In our first eight months, we have grown to approximately 1,000 clients, millions in annualized revenue, and 20 attorneys. We have raised a $15 million seed round. Two of our three co-founders previously sold their company for $650 million in 2023.

The role

We are hiring our first product manager to work closely with our CPO, CTO, product operations manager, and engineering team. You will own improvements to how our firm delivers legal services: understand how our attorneys work, learn how our clients experience that work, and turn those insights into software improvements that ship.

We want someone with at least 3 years of product management experience and a strong record of delivering useful software. You should be comfortable getting into the details: watching a lawyer work, reproducing a bug, testing a prototype, writing a clear spec, and following through after launch. This is a hands‑on individual contributor role with substantial ownership and room to grow.

What you will do

• Work directly with our attorneys and clients to understand where our legal service breaks down, how our software contributes, and which improvements would make the biggest difference.


• Turn interviews, support requests, usage data, and workflow observations into a prioritized backlog. Make clear tradeoffs between bugs, usability improvements, and new capabilities.


• Own features from discovery through launch: define the problem, scope the solution, write requirements and acceptance criteria, and work with engineering through delivery.


• Bring strong product and design judgment to complex workflows. Use wireframes or lightweight prototypes to test ideas and make the experience easier to understand.


• Test what we build, catch edge cases, and coordinate releases. Follow up with users to confirm that the change solved the problem.


• Measure whether changes improve our legal service: faster matter turnaround, less manual work for our attorneys, fewer client handoffs, and clearer communication. Use the results to decide what to improve next.


• Keep our founders, engineers, product operations manager, and attorneys aligned on priorities and decisions. Bring enough structure to keep a small team moving quickly.

What we are looking for

• At least 3 years of product management experience building software with an engineering team. You can point to products or features you personally took from problem discovery to launch and explain the results.


• Excellent product judgment. You can distinguish a recurring user problem from a one‑off request, identify the smallest useful solution, and make hard prioritization calls.


• A high bar for execution and quality. You take ownership, move quickly, notice details, and close the loop without needing someone else to chase the work.


• Strong user research skills and empathy for people doing complicated work. You ask good questions, observe actual behavior, and turn what you learn into concrete decisions.


• Clear writing and communication. Your specs are concise, your decisions are understandable, and you can work effectively with engineers, lawyers, and founders.


• Technical fluency. You can discuss APIs, integrations, data flows, and AI product limitations with engineers. You do not need to be a software engineer.


• Comfort with ambiguity and changing priorities at an early‑stage company. You can make progress with incomplete information and update your view when the evidence changes.

Especially useful experience

• Building internal tools, operations software, or customer experiences for a business that delivers a service. Experience improving complex professional workflows is especially useful.


• Working on AI products and evaluating reliability, user trust, and when a human should stay involved.


• Using analytics, SQL, prototyping tools, or AI coding tools to investigate problems and test solutions.


• Experience at a startup or with legal, financial, or other document‑heavy workflows. A legal background is not required.

You will work alongside the attorneys who use what you build and see the effect on the clients our firm serves. You will collaborate closely with the founders and shape how product management works as we grow. The purpose is concrete: help our attorneys deliver excellent legal work to more people and businesses at a lower cost.

We offer market‑competitive compensation and equity. We have offices in San Francisco and New York City and prefer candidates in either location, but are open to a strong remote hire. We work with urgency and generally keep weekends free.