The Role
Senior Legal Manager – Financial Litigation & Regulatory DisputesCompany: PalmPay
Department: Legal
Reports To: Head of Legal
Location: Lagos, Nigeria (Pan-African Scope)
Employment Type: Full-timeRole PurposeThe Senior Legal Manager – Financial Litigation & Regulatory Disputes will lead PalmPay's litigation, regulatory investigation and complex dispute portfolio across Africa. This role is responsible for litigation strategy, financial crime recovery, court proceedings, regulatory engagement, external counsel management, and executive legal advisory. The successful candidate must be an experienced financial litigation lawyer capable of independently leading high-value, high-profile disputes while protecting the Company's commercial, regulatory and reputational interests.Key Responsibilities
Department: Legal
Reports To: Head of Legal
Location: Lagos, Nigeria (Pan-African Scope)
Employment Type: Full-timeRole PurposeThe Senior Legal Manager – Financial Litigation & Regulatory Disputes will lead PalmPay's litigation, regulatory investigation and complex dispute portfolio across Africa. This role is responsible for litigation strategy, financial crime recovery, court proceedings, regulatory engagement, external counsel management, and executive legal advisory. The successful candidate must be an experienced financial litigation lawyer capable of independently leading high-value, high-profile disputes while protecting the Company's commercial, regulatory and reputational interests.Key Responsibilities
- Develop litigation strategy from pre-action assessment through judgment, appeal, settlement, and enforcement.
- Lead banking, fintech, commercial, regulatory, and financial crime litigation.
- Manage complex fraud, unauthorized transactions, chargeback, and asset recovery matters.
- Lead responses to injunctions, garnishee orders, subpoenas, freezing orders and preservation orders.
- Review and challenge defective court orders where legally appropriate.
- Represent the company before regulators, including CBN, EFCC, NFIU, FCCPC and law-enforcement agencies.
- Coordinate internal investigations involving fraud, AML, sanctions and financial crime.
- Manage external law firms, litigation budgets and legal strategy across jurisdictions.
- Advise executive management on legal risk, crisis response and sensitive matters.
- Establish litigation governance, reporting, KPIs and continuous improvement.
- LL.B and admission to practice in Nigeria. LL.M preferred.
- Minimum 10 years post-qualification experience.
- At least 5 years leading litigation for banks, fintechs or regulated financial institutions.
- Extensive commercial litigation, banking litigation and regulatory enforcement experience.
- Experience drafting pleadings, affidavits, witness statements and legal submissions.
- Strong courtroom strategy, negotiation and advocacy skills.
- Experience managing high-value disputes (preferably NGN 1 billion+).
- Experience supervising external counsel across multiple jurisdictions.
- Financial crime and fraud recovery
- Asset tracing and civil recovery
- Cross-border litigation
- International arbitration
- White-collar crime
- Regulatory investigations
- Digital payments and fintech
- Strategic thinking
- Commercial judgement
- Crisis management
- Executive communication
- Stakeholder management
- Decision-making under pressure
- Litigation success rate
- Financial recovery value
- Regulatory response timeliness
- Court-order compliance
- Reduction in litigation exposure
- External counsel performance
- Legal budget management
- Regional leadership exposure across Africa.
- Opportunity to build a best-in-class litigation function.
- Competitive compensation and performance incentives.
- Career progression to Director/Head of Litigation.
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The Company
What We Do
PalmPay is building the financial superapp for Africa
