Why Upgraded?

Upgraded is building the App Store of AI Work — a place where companies install AI employees the way they install apps. Connect 800+ tools, describe the job, and watch it run. The products are already in market: an AI Workflow Builder, AI Employees, Unified Inbox, Revenue Agent with CRM, Content OS (calendar, AutoEngage, distribution, newsletters), Scorecard, Software Savings, and an Agent Marketplace where those workflows get discovered, forked, and sold. That marketplace is the category. Everything else we have shipped is inventory for it.

In parallel, we run Canada's most AI-native grants practice. We help SMEs secure SR&ED, IRAP, Mitacs, CanExport and the rest of the federal and provincial stack — on success fees. Clients get funded. A meaningful number of them do not pay us. That is why this role exists now.

You will own the legal function at a company that is both a collections problem and a category-defining product company. The grants book is the mandate. The App Store of AI Work is the trajectory — marketplace terms, IP, commercial, employment, and the CLO seat as both sides of the business scale.

The Role

Upgraded helps Canadian SMEs secure grants, SR&ED credits, IRAP, Mitacs and CanExport funding. We work on success fees. Our clients receive their funding; a meaningful number of them do not pay us. We are standing up an enforcement and collections function from scratch and need a BC litigator to own it — from reconstructing the claim to garnishing the bank account. This is the front door to a fractional Chief Legal Officer mandate as the book and the platform business grow.

What we have shipped — and where this is going

This is not a collections shop that happens to have a website. The legal function you are walking into sits on top of a live software business, a Canadian grants practice, and a marketplace we are turning into the App Store of AI Work.

AI Workflow Builder — plain English in, a running automation out.
AI Employees — BDRs, researchers, operators deployed across Slack, email, CRM and 800+ apps.
AI Agent Marketplace — discover, deploy, fork and sell community-built workflows. This is the App Store layer.
AI-Driven Grants & Tax Credits — Funding Explorer, AI-drafted applications, SR&ED, IRAP, Mitacs, CanExport, and earnings strategy.
AI Revenue Agent + Mini CRM — outbound, enrichment, sequences, pipeline.
Unified AI Inbox — email, LinkedIn and social in one place, with AI drafts and summaries.
AI Support Agent — tone-and-guardrail replies from the inbox the team already runs.
AI Content Marketer / Content OS — calendar, AutoEngage, distribution, newsletters.
AI Scorecard — live sales and marketing KPIs.
AI Software Savings — SaaS audit, duplicates, renewal playbooks, discount matching.
800+ OAuth connectors — the substrate everything else runs on.

The book

322 opportunities across 83 companies, $56.25M of grant value. The largest single positions in the awarded tier include files of $3.7M, $2.0M and $1.25M in grant value. Beneath that, 117 awarded opportunities sit in the $10K–$50K band and 47 below $10K — volume that has to be handled by process, not by hand.

A separate set of larger, contested matters sits alongside: an AI Compute Access Fund application of $3.1M plus a $40K break fee, SR&ED and IRAP claims in the $100K–$400K range across four further companies, and a PacifiCan application of $2.0M.

The critical fact about this book: it is a pipeline record, not a receivables ledger. Across all 322 opportunities, success fee amounts are recorded on none, collections to date on none, client cash-received dates on none, and invoice sent dates on five. Almost none of this has been invoiced. Every claim has to be built before it can be collected.

That is the job. This is not a role for someone who wants a clean aged-debtor list handed to them.

Status	Opportunities	Grant value	Fee entitlement @ 20%
Awarded	204	$14,845,832	$2,969,166
Applied — not heard back	77	$18,836,062	$3,767,212
Client has already applied for	41	$22,572,000	$4,514,400
Total	322	$56,253,894	$11,250,779

What you'll own

1. Turn the pipeline into a receivables ledger

This comes first and everything else depends on it.

On the "applied — not heard back" and "client has already applied for" tiers, entitlement often turns on whether the client received an award they never told us about. Cross-referencing the public registry against our own records is where a large part of the value in this book sits. Timing and sequencing matter — we do not want to signal our position before the claim is properly built.

Establish, file by file, whether the grant was actually awarded, when, and for how much — using award notices, client correspondence, call recordings, and the Government of Canada grants registry at search.open.canada.ca/grants.
Establish contractual entitlement: contract entry and end dates, the applicable success fee percentage, and the triggering event.
Determine when the fee became due and whether the limitation period is intact. Priority is the aged window of roughly two years.
Produce a standing evidence packet for each live claim: contract dates, grant application date and amount, proof of award, date of the triggering event, and invoice history.
Build an A/R legal scoring model ranking every file on probability of successful claim and expected net recovery, so effort follows return.

2. Run the escalation ladder

Design, document and run the full sequence, and set the criteria that move a file from one stage to the next. Initial correspondence issues under "Upgraded — Enforcement and Collections." You draft the precedents, approve what goes out, and own the standard.

Stage	Timing	Owner
Automated reminders from the grant boards	Monthly	System
Weekly automated follow-up	Day 0–30	System
Personal escalation — email, text, phone	Day 30–60	Management team
Demand letter	Day 60–90	Internal collections, your precedent, your review
Formal collections window	Day 90–180	You
Proceedings	Day 180+	You, with external counsel where needed

3. The legal toolkit

Demand letters — short, standardized, issued immediately on amounts becoming due.
Direction to pay — securing payment at source where the funding flow allows it.
Pre-judgment garnishing orders — the most powerful tool available. Filing the action and obtaining a garnishing order through the registry before serving the claim, on liquidated amounts presently due, with funds held in court pending judgment or settlement. You will need to be fluent in this and comfortable running it at volume, including sourcing debtor bank and branch information.
Post-judgment garnishment and enforcement.
Unjust enrichment as an alternative pleading where contractual entitlement is contested.
BC Supreme Court over Small Claims, including on claims under $35,000 — Small Claims recovers filing fees only and has no pre-judgment garnishment.
Summary trial on affidavit evidence and oral submissions. Most of these files should be capable of reaching summary trial within 9–12 months of filing.

4. Settlement

Let them come to us. We are generally in a strong position and should not be giving much away.

Hold a hard line on success fees, retainers and other objectively calculable amounts.
Concede, where it buys resolution, on interest, legal cost recovery and secondary heads where damages are less precisely calculable.

5. Contract remediation

Our agreements are sound overall. You will make them better.

Full-indemnity legal fees — expressly require reimbursement of reasonable legal and enforcement costs on a solicitor-and-own-client basis, rather than being capped at the court's scheduled tariff.
Section 7.2 (employee departure) — remove the word "penalty" and restructure the amount as a genuine pre-estimate of anticipated loss, with a real methodology behind it (recruitment cost, vacancy period, onboarding, lost productivity, disruption) rather than one year's salary.
Success fees — tighten definitions, triggering events and calculation so entitlement is as close to mechanical as possible and requires minimal proof that something occurred.
Audit and information rights — pre-litigation access to relevant accounting records.
Onboarding — ensure we capture legal names, banking and branch details, and everything enforcement requires, at the point of signing. Half of the recovery problem in this book is a data-capture problem that starts at the front door.

6. Reporting

Record of progress with updates at set intervals. Monthly recovery reporting against the A/R board, aged by tier, with forecast.

The economics you're working inside

10–20 hours per claim, demand letter through to trial.
Internal cost target: $500 — $2,000 per claim.
External counsel: $5,000 — $20,000 per claim. You control that budget and decide what goes out the door.
Full portfolio, demand letter to trial across 100 files: $50,000 — $200,000.
The role only works with leverage. You build precedents and supervise internal staff on the standardized stages, and reserve your own hours for evidence reconstruction on the large files, garnishing applications, settlement negotiations and instructing external counsel.

Compensation

$10,000 per month, or 30% of amounts collected — whichever is greater. The monthly amount is a non-refundable draw against the 30%. Collections are reconciled quarterly with an annual true-up. Full terms in the offer letter.

Modelled against the actual book

Scenario	Fees recovered	Total compensation
Conservative	$622,000	$186,500
Base	$1,173,000	$352,000
Strong	$1,989,000	$597,000

Working arrangement

Hybrid. 3/4 day in the office is fine; the office at 1965 W 4th Ave, Vancouver is available if you want it.
You set your own hours. We work to outcomes.
Keep your own practice — we are not asking for exclusivity.
Roughly one to one and a half days a week, weighted toward set-up in the first quarter.

What We're Looking For

Called in British Columbia, in good standing with the Law Society of BC.
Commercial litigation experience with real debt recovery and enforcement work — specifically pre-judgment garnishing orders and summary trial procedure.
Practising through your own law corporation or as a sole practitioner, with your own Lawyers Indemnity Fund coverage.
Willing to build systems, not just work files. This role fails if everything routes through you.
Comfort doing forensic work on incomplete records. The first quarter is reconstruction, not litigation.
Commercial judgment about which files to press, which to settle, and which to write off.

Helpful

Experience acting for or against small and mid-sized technology companies.
Familiarity with SR&ED, IRAP, CanExport or Mitacs mechanics — or the appetite to learn them fast.
Prior in-house or quasi-in-house work.

Why You'll Love It Here

This is the front door to a fractional Chief Legal Officer mandate as the grants book and the platform business grow.
You will be the first in-house lawyer at a company shipping the App Store of AI Work — marketplace, commercial, IP and employment all still in front of you.
Direct impact on a $56M grant book that has barely been invoiced. The work you do in the first two quarters shows up in cash.
Hybrid Vancouver setup, outcomes over hours, and you keep your own practice. We are not asking for exclusivity.
A compensation structure that pays for recovery — $10k/month draw against 30% of collections, modelled to $186k–$597k against the actual book.

Stand Out

Send a short note, your CV or firm profile, and a paragraph on how you would approach a book of 322 opportunities worth $56M in grant value where the underlying fee entitlements have never been invoiced and award status has to be established from public records. Two conversations and a decision.

Apply Now

Email careers@getupgraded.ca with the subject line "Application: General Counsel". We review on a rolling basis. Upgraded is an equal opportunity employer.

General Counsel