Legal Associate (Cape Town)

About The Team

Yoco is a dynamic, fast-growing fintech company committed to helping small businesses thrive through innovative payment and financial solutions. As part of Yoco’s legal team, you will contribute to a high-impact function that supports business growth while ensuring sound legal and risk management across a range of legal domains.

About The Role

As a Legal Associate at Yoco, you will provide practical, commercially minded legal support across the business. This role is suited to a lawyer with approximately 3–5 years’ post-qualification experience who is ready to operate with increasing autonomy, manage routine matters independently, and contribute to scalable legal frameworks in a fast-paced fintech environment.

You will draft, review and negotiate routine commercial contracts; support legal operations and process efficiency; help manage and protect Yoco’s intellectual property; and support litigation, disputes, fraud-related matters, regulatory requests and demands. You will be expected to take ownership of appropriate matters and escalate complex, high-risk or strategic issues to senior legal stakeholders.

The role requires translating legal complexity into practical business solutions, building strong internal relationships, and communicating legal guidance in a way that non-legal stakeholders can understand and act on.

Working closely with the legal team and stakeholders across the business, you will help maintain legal policies, playbooks, templates, knowledge resources and self-service tools that enable the business to access legal support efficiently.

Work is allocated by type and seniority rather than by business unit, with escalation to the Head of Legal based on complexity, risk and strategic significance.This role offers broad exposure across Yoco and a strong opportunity to develop into a trusted legal partner with appropriate guidance, mentorship and increasing autonomy.

What you will be doing

Commercial Contracts

• Draft, review and negotiate routine commercial agreements, including supplier, partnership, service, vendor, SaaS and reseller agreements.
• Provide practical first-line guidance on routine commercial terms, including web service agreements and standard-form agreements that cannot be negotiated.
• Escalate complex, high-risk or non-standard contracting matters as appropriate.
• Support the development and maintenance of contract templates, clause libraries and negotiation playbooks to enable faster, more consistent and scalable contracting.

Legal Operations & Efficiency

• Administer the contract lifecycle management platform, including user access, permissions, signed contract uploads, contract tracking and template maintenance.
• Allocate incoming legal matters fairly, equitably and timeously through the Legal Ticketing System.
• Maintain and update Legal Notion pages and other knowledge resources to support self-service and operational efficiency.
• Identify opportunities to streamline legal processes, reduce turnaround times and introduce automation or templated solutions.
• Use AI-assisted tools effectively as part of standard practice, while maintaining appropriate legal, confidentiality, data protection and quality controls.

Intellectual Property

• Support Engineering, Product and Tech teams on new service offerings and assist with related updates to terms and conditions.
• Assist with the management, registration, maintenance and protection of Yoco’s intellectual property portfolio, including trade marks and brand assets.
• Support Brand, Marketing and Revenue teams on marketing, sponsorship and partnership campaigns, ensuring IP and regulatory considerations are addressed.
• Help safeguard Yoco’s IP rights and coordinate with external advisors on enforcement matters where required.

Fraud, AFC & Anti-Financial Crime Support

• Own day-to-day fraud matters, merchant disputes, escalations and related legal issues within the Legal Associate mandate.
• Handle subpoenas, letters of demand and law enforcement enquiries related to fraud and AFC matters, escalating non-routine or sensitive matters to the Head of Legal.
• Support the development of practical processes and guidance to help the business respond to fraud and financial crime matters efficiently and consistently.
• Report to the Head of Legal on AFC and fraud matters, involving the Head of Legal where external counsel instruction is required.
• Maintain a clear working interface with the Risk & Compliance function on AFC matters, ensuring appropriate coordination and escalation where legal and compliance workstreams intersect.

Dispute Management

• Own the day-to-day legal risk management of disputes, complaints and pre-litigation matters, focusing on traffic-managing matters to resolution or appropriate escalation rather than running complex litigation independently.
• Handle subpoenas, letters of demand and law enforcement enquiries, applying sound process knowledge and escalating non-routine, sensitive, high-value or reputationally risky matters.
• Liaise with and instruct external counsel under the direction of the Head of Legal, managing mandates and costs within approved parameters.
• Draft and review correspondence, letters of demand and responses to claims and complaints.
• Track disputes and maintain accurate records to support reporting, cost management and lessons-learnt processes.
• Escalate immediately to the Head of Legal on law enforcement subpoenas or search warrants; novel or interpretive regulatory requests; disputes above R500,000 or carrying reputational risk; IP enforcement or third-party infringement claims; and any matter where the appropriate course of action is uncertain.
• Identify patterns in disputes and emerging legal risks, flagging these to the Head of Legal for strategic input and resolution.

Legal Policies & Governance

• Assist with developing, drafting and maintaining legal policies, standard operating procedures, guidelines and playbooks.
• Help embed policies across the business through clear guidance, training materials and self-service resources.
• Provide limited company secretarial support, including CIPC filings, statutory register maintenance, board and committee resolutions, and the circulation and filing of board minutes under Head of Legal direction.

About You

• LLB or equivalent qualification and admission as an attorney, or equivalent professional qualification.
• 3–5 years’ post-qualification experience, gained in-house and/or at a reputable law firm.
• Solid commercial contracting experience, including the ability to draft, review and negotiate routine agreements independently.
• Expected to work fluently with AI-assisted legal tools for drafting, contract review and legal research, while applying appropriate confidentiality, data protection and quality-review controls.
• Familiarity with legal technology and contract management tools, such as Juro, Notion or similar, is advantageous.
• Strong attention to detail, sound judgement and the ability to manage multiple matters and competing priorities.
• Prior experience in dispute management is strongly preferred, including subpoenas, pre-litigation procedures and external counsel engagement.
• Banking, financial services or fintech experience is beneficial, but dispute-management capability should take priority where both cannot be found in one candidate.
• Exposure to intellectual property, fraud, anti-financial crime and law enforcement matters is advantageous.

Key Behaviours & Cultural Fit

• Take initiative to identify and address legal risks and opportunities.
• Work autonomously and adapt to Yoco’s fast-paced environment.
• Apply a commercial mindset, ensuring legal guidance supports Yoco’s business objectives.
• Balance risk management with practical, growth-oriented legal solutions.
• Keep stakeholders updated and ensure alignment across teams.
• Communicate legal advice and documentation with clarity and transparency.
• Build trusted relationships across the business, listening to understand the business problem before applying the legal lens.
• Take ownership of assigned matters and follow them through to resolution, with appropriate guidance and escalation.
• Follow up timeously on pending legal issues to drive resolution.
• Follow processes diligently and complete administrative tasks consistently.
• Maintain and update knowledge resources to support operational efficiency.
• Commit to ongoing professional development, including staying current with fintech and legal technology developments.