Junior Legal Counsel (3-6 PQE) - FORTUNE 100 Technology - London or Thames Valley

In House Legal Counsel
Fortune 100 technology company
Location: either Central London, Twickenham area or Reading
Commutable from London, Richmond, Citi, Slough, Bracknell, Reading, Hounslow, Twickenham, Kingston upon Thames, Wokingham, Newbury, Swindon etc.

Company
Our client is one of the biggest IT-companies in the world with a multi-billion dollar turnover making for a busy 400-strong global legal team. A highly sought after Fortune 100 employer consistently leading Best Companies to Work For lists.

New role
Due to the continuous business growth and internal promotions they are looking to hire a talented lawyer for their UK & Ireland team.

This is an excellent chance to join a highly regarded legal team that is central to a dynamic, fast moving global technology business in an exciting and varied commercial role, supporting the business on a broad range of commercial matters.

Both the company and the legal team are growing. The hiring manager has been promoted twice and now has a team of 11 to manage. Essentially this role will be the right hand of the hiring manager.

People and Culture
The management has succeeded in creating an exceptionally supportive and collaborative corporate culture that helps people thrive.

The quality of people is outstanding – the organisation is very selective. 92% of employees are proud to tell others they work there. Most of the people who have worked here consider their years at the company to be the best years of their lives.

There is a strong focus around culture, integrity and respect for the individual – the atmosphere is trusting and empowering.

Legal Team
This legal team is known for its remarkable collegiality. There is great camaraderie at all levels, people are friendly and helpful. The team like each other and there is a very low level of politics.

The team features some of the brightest legal professionals in technology. The scale of the team allows for huge expertise in every area. The legal department follows the company structure which is organised by function which ensures the people with the correct experience are handling each matter.

GC
The GC is held in awe and admiration by his team - he is funny, strategic, intelligent and hard-working. His philosophy is to “hire people smarter than himself”. This attitude is cascaded down to Regional Legal Directors and the GC acknowledges that the team members are the pillars of the success of the legal function.

Legal Innovation
The legal team are a truly innovative bunch and a benchmark for in-house legal innovation, having started using advanced technology for legal processes already back in 2005.
As a new member of the team you will find the degree of sharing of knowledge and resources truly amazing.

Every conceivable task has been automated. The tracking of contracts is brilliant; the approval process is totally automated; no lawyer has touched a standard NDA since 2005 and no lawyer ever has to chase a contract signature or copy – it is all taken care of by a specialist global function.
There is constant sharing of information and experience.

Some of the current legal innovation projects include: 

• Digitizing legal (e.g. currently the team are developing a dashboard to sit on your home screen with an overview of all key contract info - so you do not have to manually go through contracts).
• Catching the legal know-how.
• Being part of global legal innovation team - how can we do better what we do and what does not work?

Value of in-house counsel
In-house counsel here are business enablers and often the people recommending a decision to their executive teams — and in some cases making the judgment calls themselves. The legal team is viewed and respected as business enablers, strategic agents and opportunity makers.

Role
This role supports UK & Ireland Regional Legal Manager in all global commercial legal matters for a number of high ranking company clients including leaders of FTSE 100 index.

The work is varied and exciting – the company operates at the absolute forefront of internet, network and cloud technology.

You will act as a trusted legal advisor to the business with regards sales transactions with customers headquartered in UK and Ireland. Responsibilities will include:

• Structuring sales transactions in a way that will implement company strategy and minimise legal risk
• Drafting and negotiating a wide range of legal agreements including: sale and purchase agreements, support agreements, software licensing agreements, cloud related agreements, channel partner agreements and data processing agreements
• Responding to complex RFI/RFP requests
• Supporting, coordinating and finalising sales contract negotiations with a business-centric flexible attitude, collaborative spirit and eye for detail 
• Giving accurate timely advice to senior management and other stakeholders on the legal and commercial impact of specific contractual provisions and general legal matters
• Securing relevant internal approvals of complex non-standard legal, financial, technical and business issues raised in contractual documentation
• Consistently applying legal and business policies and practices to maintain the highest possible standards of corporate governance
• Engaging in cross-functional projects as a legal subject matter expert 

This is a big role actively shaping (not just supporting) hugely complex deals across dozens of jurisdictions. However you are not expected to know every law in every country as everything is under English law so who they need really is just an E&W qualified solicitor (or a US/Canada/Australia/NZ qualified lawyer who has worked under English law for several years).

This team is responsible for a particular global FTSE 50 client who often acts as a ‘guinea pig’ for new product launches - so in this role the lawyer does a lot of learning, modelling and setting the boundaries for the wider business unit.
The admin and more simple work is carried out by interns and more junior team members.

Once joined
The new team member will grow into responsibilities gradually with a lot of support from the manager and more senior highly regarded mentors on the legal team. They will start with shadowing the hiring manager gradually taking on pieces of work with the end goal to take on their previous role completely.

Development and career
This is a perfect company in which to really develop and push yourself. The legal team enjoys excellent regular training, coaching and mentoring from the managers and huge personal development opportunities.
If you are interested in progressing in your career, moving abroad or have an interest in another legal area, it is easy to do so.

What we are looking for

• 3-8 PQE within the Technology or Telecommunications sector in the UK
• SaaS / Cloud / Data Protection experience would be amazing

What can you expect?

A clear career path right from the start

• Unlimited training opportunities and ongoing mentoring from some of the best lawyers in the industry
• Coaching sessions focusing on developing your strengths and matching your responsibilities to those strengths and preferences
• Only high quality high value transactional legal work (admin and routine tasks and contracts such as NDAs are either automated or outsourced to a supporting team)
• Opportunities to move into roles overseas

Benefits

• Apart from the salary and bonus the company provides medical insurance for you, your spouse/partner and dependent children, life assurance, long term disability cover, pension, profit sharing participation, meal vouchers, employee stock purchase plan etc.
• 25 working days annual leave (+8 days public holidays) = 6.5 weeks a year.

Flexibility
The company offers a lot of flexibility around working from home, start/finish hours etc if preferred. What is important to the manager is that the work gets done, and not how long the team spend in the office - and this attitude shared by the legal team globally.

Recruitment process
The recruitment process is fast and efficient with immediate feedback from interviewers.
Once shortlisted, will receive extensive preparation and guidance for every interview.

Next steps

Please apply for the role below. 

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We look forward to hearing from you.