Legal Officer at Appzone Limited: Driving Innovation in African Financial Services
Appzone Limited is at the forefront of transforming financial services accessibility in emerging markets, fueled by a steadfast belief in Africa's potential to produce world-class IT software. Since its inception as Price and Networks Limited in July 2006, commencing full operations in June 2008, Appzone has dedicated itself to creating sophisticated e-Banking and payment software solutions.
Starting with custom solutions for leading commercial banks, Appzone rapidly built an impressive portfolio of e-payment software products and intellectual property. Recognizing a critical gap in IT infrastructure for smaller financial institutions, the company embarked on a two-year journey to develop an affordable yet world-class core banking platform for Microfinance Banks (MFBs) and other retail financial institutions. This ambitious project culminated in Appzone owning a fully integrated suite of IT infrastructure, now consolidated under the brand BankOne – a shared, managed Banking and payment automation IT infrastructure.
Appzone's success is rooted in the vision of its young, dynamic, and driven co-founders, who combined their extensive technical, administrative, and entrepreneurial expertise. Their mission is clear: to transform the financial services industry across Africa and other emerging markets globally, thereby creating immense value and facilitating overall economic growth and development.
Your Role as a Legal Officer
As a Legal Officer at Appzone, you will be an integral part of our legal team, Qore, supporting the company's dynamic growth and ensuring legal compliance across our innovative business lines. This role offers a unique opportunity for a diligent mid-level lawyer to develop into a strong commercial legal advisor within a fast-paced fintech environment.
Key Responsibilities:
- Review, draft, and support the negotiation of diverse commercial agreements, including platform agreements, vendor contracts, NDAs, data processing agreements, service agreements, and standard terms.
- Conduct thorough legal research, preparing clear notes, summaries, draft positions, and advisory support materials for review by the Senior Legal Lead.
- Manage the contract lifecycle for assigned matters, encompassing intake, review, execution coordination, filing, and tracking of renewals and obligations.
- Review counterparty mark-ups, identify deviations from standard positions, and prepare comprehensive comparison notes for the Senior Legal Lead.
- Prepare first drafts of routine legal documents, correspondence, notices, amendments, consents, contract summaries, and internal legal notes.
- Provide support for regulatory-adjacent legal matters, Board-facing legal preparations, governance-adjacent legal work, and transaction documentation as directed.
- Maintain high standards for documentation, ensure template currency, manage precedent library records, clause libraries, and overall legal repository hygiene.
- Coordinate execution logistics for agreements, including signature block checks, document collation, filing, and tracker updates.
- Collaborate with LRCC Operations & Controls to ensure all assigned legal matters are accurately logged, tracked, and updated in the task management system.
- Review AI-assisted legal outputs diligently before escalating to the Senior Legal Lead or utilizing them for research, drafting, or contract review.
- Offer occasional cross-functional support to other LRCC teams during crisis or high-priority matters, providing legal execution support or generalist LRCC exposure.
What We're Looking For
We are seeking a highly motivated and detail-oriented legal professional who thrives in a structured, yet innovative environment.
Essential Qualifications & Experience:
- Nigerian-qualified lawyer with both an LLB and BL.
- 3–5 years of post-call experience.
- Proven experience in a reputable commercial law firm combined with an in-house or industry role, preferably within a regulated business, financial services institution, fintech, payments company, or technology company.
- Strong working knowledge of Nigerian commercial law, contract fundamentals, corporate law basics, and the legal environment for fintech, payments, or digital financial services.
- Excellent contract drafting, review, and issue-spotting skills.
- Strong legal research ability and clear, concise legal writing.
- Good generalist legal exposure across contracts, regulatory-adjacent advisory, corporate governance support, compliance-adjacent matters, data protection clauses, and legal operations.
- Strong organizational, matter tracking, and deadline management skills.
- Ability to manage multiple assigned matters simultaneously and effectively escalate matters requiring senior legal judgment.
- Exceptional attention to detail, sound judgment, and a willingness to work within defined templates, playbooks, trackers, and approval gates.
- Comfortable and responsible use of AI-assisted tools for legal research, drafting, document review, and matter tracking.
Highly Valued Skills & Experience:
- Experience in fintech, payments, banking infrastructure, SaaS, lending, financial services, or technology contracting.
- Experience supporting contract repositories, legal operations, task management systems, or document automation.
- Exposure to data protection, AML/KYC, regulatory filings, or Board-facing documentation.
Who You Are
The ideal candidate is a disciplined mid-level lawyer eager to grow into a strong commercial legal advisor. You are meticulous with drafting, reliable with deadlines, transparent about escalations, and comfortable working within a structured legal team where quality, documentation, and speed are paramount. You possess the initiative to support the Senior Legal Lead effectively without requiring every instruction to be broken down, yet you instinctively know when a matter exceeds your authority and must be escalated.
Method of Application
Interested and qualified? Go to Appzone Limited on appzonegroup.zohorecruit.com to apply
