In-House Legal Counsel

Main tasks and responsibilities:

Commercial

• Working closely with the UK team in drafting, reviewing, and managing legal documents including, but not limited to, resolutions, legal reports, contracts, supplier agreements, NDA’s & commercial licensing agreements.
• Providing time-sensitive legal, commercial, operational, and regulatory advice to internal stakeholders on all aspects of commercial deals with both suppliers & customers.
• Resolve issues that arise in existing commercial relationships with suppliers & customers.
• Assist Procurement team in developing and implementing efficient and streamlined contract negotiation and vendor management processes, for all sites.
• Provide legal support on projects and field queries across a range of business functions (e.g. HR, Finance, People, Marketing, Sales, Supply Chain, Procurement, Milk purchasing from farmers, IT and Industrial).

Corporate Legal work

• Assist the CFO in handling general corporate legal matters and management of documentation for all UK Group legal companies.
• Organize and maintain legal records for UK entities, ensuring they are updated and easily accessible, and that they are compliant with corporate governance requirements.
• Prepare legal reports and updates for senior executives, stakeholders, and board members.
• Work with Group Legal Team to develop and implement efficient legal procedures.
• Provide support in restructuring projects

Training & Compliance

• Lead training for UK employees with regard Legal issues, Compliance and Governance covering Anti Bribery, Competition Law, GDPR, Whistleblowing & other areas.
• Responsible for policies and the roll-out of relevant compliance & governance training to all relevant personnel across different sites / companies.
• Keep up to date with changes to legal requirements & regulations across multiple areas including, for example, Packaging, CSR, Artificial Intelligence, Product labelling

Patents / trademarks / Intellectual Property/

• Collaborate and report to Group Legal in protecting patents, trademarks, and Intellectual property.
• Support Marketing on related regulations
• Registering Trade Mark and address and infringement cases

Profile

• A law degree or equivalent with a minimum of 5 years’ experience as an in-house counsel.
• Teamwork, high level of emotional Intelligence.
• Excellent organisational skills, attention to detail and a can-do attitude
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to navigate sensitively through complex matters.
• Ability to work to deadlines, prioritise own workload effectively under pressure, and manage conflicting priorities.
• Familiarity with legal software applications, including document management systems.

Desirable Skills/Experience/Knowledge:

• Company secretarial insight, matrix reporting, FMCG experience, & experience working in an international environment.