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Every week I go through the legal and compliance openings at fashion and luxury brands so I can put the good ones in front of you. You see the list. I see the pile it came from.
The pile is more interesting than the list.
Here's what stood out this month.
1. "Brand protection" is now its own job, not a corner of the IP role
Lululemon posted a Brand Protection Manager for EMEA. Not IP Counsel. Not Trademark Counsel. Brand protection, sitting on its own.
This is a real shift. Counterfeiting, grey market, marketplace takedowns and enforcement used to be one line in an IP lawyer's job description. At the bigger brands it has become a function with its own headcount, and increasingly it hires people who are as comfortable with data and platform policy as with trademark law.
If you like the enforcement side more than the filing side, this is the fastest growing door into a fashion house right now.
2. Privacy has walked straight into fashion
Chanel posted a Privacy Legal Counsel role in Seoul. Sit with that for a second. A house best known for its archive is hiring a dedicated privacy lawyer.
It makes complete sense once you look at what these brands now run. Loyalty programmes, clienteling apps, in-store tracking, virtual try-on, a direct-to-consumer channel that collects more customer data than the wholesale model ever did.
If you have any data protection experience at all, you have a fashion-relevant skill and you probably don't know it.
3. Legal operations is quietly hiring
Levi Strauss posted a Senior Manager, Legal Operations and Innovation in San Francisco.
That title would have been unusual in a fashion company five years ago. It's a legal role that is mostly about process, tooling, vendor management and, increasingly, AI. There is far less competition for these roles than for the glamorous counsel jobs, and they pay well.
Worth knowing if you are technically minded and tired of being told that makes you a strange fit for legal.
4. Asia Pacific is where the roles are
Two of the most senior openings I saw this month were in Seoul. Chanel and adidas, both hiring legal counsel there.
Everyone applying to fashion legal roles fixates on Paris, Milan, London and New York. Meanwhile the regional legal teams in Asia Pacific are staffing up, the competition is lighter, and the work is often broader because the teams are smaller.
If you're geographically flexible, that flexibility is worth more than another line on your CV.
5. The internships are posted a year ahead
Chanel's IP internship in Geneva was posted for a January 2027 start.
Every year I watch people start looking for internships two months before they want to begin. By then the good ones closed months ago. If you want a house internship, you need to be applying roughly twelve months out, and checking the careers pages of specific brands rather than waiting for a job board to surface them.
That last one is the whole reason this newsletter exists, by the way.
What I'd do with this
If you're early career, the honest read is that brand protection, privacy and legal ops are where the doors are actually open. They are less crowded than the classic IP counsel path and they are growing faster.
If you're already in-house somewhere else, the privacy and legal ops routes are your cleanest lateral move into fashion.
I'll keep doing this. Same time next month.
And next week you'll have a fresh batch of hiring opportunities from me. I'm pulling that list together now.
Come say hello
Hit reply and tell me what you're aiming for. I read every reply myself, and it genuinely shapes what goes into the jobs list.
If you'd rather talk outside the inbox, I'm @anujonrecord on Instagram, where I post the behind-the-scenes of building this, and Anuj Kumar on LinkedIn for anything industry or career related.
And if this was useful
Anuj
Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Fashion Law Journal
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