About ProxyLink
At ProxyLink, we specialize in building meaningful connections between exceptional talent and leading employers across Canada. As a trusted recruitment partner, our mission is to create impactful career matches by combining innovative hiring strategies with a personalized, people-first approach. We’re driven by the belief that investing in people today builds a stronger workforce for tomorrow.
About the Opportunity
ProxyLink’s client is seeking a highly organized, detail-oriented, and motivated Law Clerk to join its Legal Affairs team. This is an excellent opportunity for a legal professional with strong interests in contract law, intellectual property law, and corporate legal operations who enjoys working in a fast-paced business environment and supporting a broad range of legal and commercial matters.
The successful candidate will provide legal and administrative support across commercial contracts, contract administration, intellectual property, corporate governance, litigation, compliance, legal research, and document management. A significant focus of the role will be supporting the Legal Affairs team with the review, administration, tracking, and organization of commercial agreements and intellectual property matters.
The ideal candidate is a proactive self-starter who can manage competing priorities, exercise sound judgment, maintain strict confidentiality, and work effectively with internal business teams, external counsel, vendors, and other stakeholders.
Key Responsibilities
Contract Law & Commercial Agreements
- Provide day-to-day legal and administrative support to the Legal Affairs team, with a particular focus on commercial contracts and contract administration.
- Assist with the review, drafting, organization, tracking, and routing of contracts and agreements, including NDAs, vendor agreements, service agreements, licensing agreements, marketing agreements, technology agreements, and other commercial arrangements.
- Assist legal counsel with the review of contractual terms and identification of key provisions, obligations, deadlines, and potential areas requiring legal review.
- Support the administration and interpretation of contractual obligations, including renewal dates, termination provisions, payment terms, confidentiality obligations, indemnification, limitation of liability, warranties, intellectual property ownership, and other key commercial terms.
- Coordinate contract review workflows and follow up with internal stakeholders, business teams, vendors, and external counsel to ensure timely completion of reviews and approvals.
- Maintain accurate and up-to-date contract databases, agreement records, templates, and contract-related documentation.
- Track contractual obligations, renewal dates, notice periods, deliverables, and other important deadlines.
- Assist with contract lifecycle management, including intake, review, approval, execution, storage, renewal, amendment, and expiration.
- Support the Legal Affairs team in identifying and escalating contractual issues, inconsistencies, missing information, or unusual provisions for further legal review.
- Assist with the development, organization, and maintenance of standard contract templates, clauses, checklists, and legal processes.
Intellectual Property Law
- Provide legal and administrative support relating to intellectual property matters, including patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, licensing, and IP-related agreements.
- Assist with the administration and maintenance of the company’s intellectual property portfolio, including patents, trademarks, registrations, renewals, correspondence, and related documentation.
- Conduct and assist with freedom-to-operate (FTO) searches, including preliminary patent and trademark research and review of publicly available IP information.
- Assist with preliminary patent, trademark, and copyright research and organize findings for review by legal counsel.
- Assist with tracking intellectual property rights, registrations, renewals, deadlines, filings, and related obligations across multiple jurisdictions.
- Assist with the review, organization, and tracking of information relating to counterfeit products, trademark infringement, unauthorized use of intellectual property, and other IP enforcement matters.
- Support the Legal Affairs team with IP-related agreements, including licensing, assignment, confidentiality, technology, distribution, and commercial agreements.
- Assist with reviewing agreements for key IP ownership, licensing, usage, confidentiality, and protection provisions.
- Maintain accurate records of IP-related correspondence, filings, registrations, agreements, and supporting documentation.
- Liaise with external IP counsel, agents, and service providers as required.
- Support IP due diligence and research activities associated with new products, business initiatives, vendors, partnerships, and commercial transactions.
Corporate, Litigation & Legal Operations
- Assist with legal filings across multiple jurisdictions, primarily relating to corporate governance and intellectual property.
- Assist with the organization and administration of litigation matters, including document collection, file management, legal correspondence, and e-discovery activities.
- Assist with the review of marketing and promotional materials to support legal, regulatory, IP, and compliance requirements.
- Maintain, organize, and coordinate the Legal Affairs filing room and electronic filing/database systems.
- Maintain accurate and up-to-date legal records, agreements, correspondence, corporate documents, and other confidential materials.
- Conduct legal research and assist with preparing summaries, reports, correspondence, and other legal materials as required.
- Prepare expense reports, invoices, and other Legal Affairs-related documentation.
- Track legal deadlines, filings, renewals, contracts, IP registrations, and other departmental deliverables.
- Assist with maintaining legal calendars and monitoring upcoming deadlines and obligations.
- Communicate professionally with internal departments, external counsel, vendors, IP professionals, and other stakeholders.
- Maintain strict confidentiality and exercise sound judgment when handling sensitive legal, commercial, and intellectual property information.
- Identify opportunities to improve legal administration, contract management, IP administration, document management, and workflow efficiency.
- Support special projects and strategic initiatives undertaken by the Legal Affairs team.
- Perform other duties and responsibilities as assigned.
Required Skills & Competencies
- Strong understanding or demonstrated interest in contract law, commercial agreements, and intellectual property law.
- Ability to review and understand key contractual provisions and identify matters requiring escalation to legal counsel.
- Strong organizational and time-management skills, with the ability to prioritize competing demands and manage multiple projects and deadlines.
- Exceptional attention to detail and a high level of accuracy, particularly when reviewing contracts, IP records, legal documents, and deadlines.
- Strong analytical, legal research, and problem-solving skills.
- Ability to work independently with minimal supervision while contributing effectively as part of a collaborative legal team.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
- Strong ability to maintain confidentiality and exercise discretion when handling sensitive legal, commercial, contractual, and IP information.
- Ability to proactively identify outstanding items, follow up with stakeholders, and drive matters through to completion.
- Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to build effective working relationships with internal and external stakeholders.
- Ability to coordinate multiple stakeholders throughout contract review, negotiation, approval, execution, and renewal processes.
- Strong ability to manage competing deadlines relating to contracts, litigation, IP filings, renewals, and corporate matters.
- Ability to adapt quickly to changing priorities in a fast-paced corporate environment.
- Strong desire and aptitude to learn new legal concepts, systems, technologies, and processes.
- Demonstrated ability to exercise sound judgment, professionalism, and discretion.
Qualifications
- Post-secondary education in Law, Legal Administration, Business, Paralegal Studies, Intellectual Property, Project Management, or a related discipline.
- 3–5 years of related experience, preferably within a corporate legal department, law firm, in-house legal environment, or consumer-packaged goods organization.
- Practical experience or demonstrated knowledge in one or more of the following areas:
- Contract law and commercial agreements
- Contract review and administration
- Contract lifecycle management
- Intellectual property law
- Patent and trademark administration
- Corporate governance
- Litigation support
- Legal compliance
- Legal research
- E-discovery
- Legal operations
- Experience assisting with contract drafting, review, negotiation support, or contract management is strongly preferred.
- Experience with commercial contracts and IP provisions, including confidentiality, licensing, ownership, indemnification, limitation of liability, and related provisions, is an asset.
- Experience conducting or assisting with patent freedom-to-operate searches is an asset.
- Experience supporting patent and trademark portfolios is an asset.
- Experience with intellectual property filings, registrations, renewals, or correspondence is an asset.
- Experience supporting IP enforcement, counterfeit investigations, or trademark-related matters is an asset.
- Experience with legal filing and document management systems.
- Experience with IP management software such as ProLaw is an asset.
- Experience with contract lifecycle or contract management software is preferred.
- Strong knowledge and proficiency in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
- Demonstrated ability to manage confidential information with discretion and professionalism.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
- Excellent organizational skills, with the ability to manage multiple priorities and meet established deadlines.
- Demonstrated willingness to learn and take on progressively increasing responsibilities.
What Success Looks Like
The successful candidate will bring a combination of strong legal administration skills, attention to detail, commercial awareness, and an interest in contract and intellectual property law. They will be comfortable working with contracts and legal documents, tracking IP and contractual obligations, conducting legal research, coordinating with multiple stakeholders, and ensuring that important legal matters move forward efficiently and accurately.
This role offers an opportunity to develop broad in-house legal experience while gaining meaningful exposure to commercial contracting, contract law, intellectual property law, corporate governance, litigation support, and legal operations.
