Overview
This role involves serving as Group Legal Counsel for a group of six business units (Vontas, TripSpark, TransTrack, Momentm, Expretio, and Busology). You will act as the lead legal advisor and strategic business partner to group leadership and unit leadership, shaping commercial, contractual, legal, strategy, and risk decisions to support ongoing growth.
The Group Legal Counsel will report to the Group Leader, lead a team of lawyers and contract managers across the group, and be accountable for the quality, consistency, and efficiency of legal support group-wide.
You will also collaborate closely with the organization’s General Counsel (dotted line relationship) to develop the organization’s legal strategy and support M&A growth.
Responsibilities
Business Partnership with Group and BU Leadership
- Participate actively in group- and business unit-level strategic conversations, including strategy reviews, deal reviews, and key initiatives.
- Provide legal, contracts, and general risk assessment to the Group Leader, General Managers, and BU legal teams to inform business and commercial decisions.
- Serve as a trusted advisor on legal matters and broader business questions—not solely as a legal resource.
- Establish and maintain a network of external specialized legal support (e.g., employment law, IP law, and other areas required to support business units in specific cases).
- Act as the Group’s legal leader, serving as the top contact for legal risk review and escalation.
Establish Cross-BU Best Practices
- Manage communications between the portfolio, the group, and business units.
- Drive adoption of tools such as HighQ across all business units, and support improvements to those tools to better support legal processes.
- Ensure mandatory adoption of AI tools within the legal function across all business units.
- Implement streamlined and automated legal processes across all business units, delivering measurable improvements in business results across the full contract workflow—from intake through agreement signature and filing.
- Enforce and update the group’s policies, governance documents, and procedures.
Talent Development and Management
Work with legal resources across the group (lawyers and contract managers) on performance, growth, and long-term bench strength:
- Support and collaborate with General Managers to ensure consistent performance management across the group’s legal function, including regular goal setting, check-ins, and calibrated year-end reviews for both lawyers and contract managers.
- Build clear career progression frameworks and competency paths for legal and contract management roles so team members understand growth expectations at each level.
- Identify high-potential talent within the group’s legal function and create individualized development plans, including stretch assignments, secondments, and cross-BU exposure.
- Support active succession plans for all key legal roles across the group to ensure continuity through leadership transitions or unplanned vacancies.
- Coach and mentor team members and foster a culture of knowledge-sharing, feedback, and continuous learning across business units.
- Partner with General Manager, Group HR, and BU legal leadership on talent reviews, compensation benchmarking, and recruiting for legal and contract management roles across the group.
- Drive engagement and retention of top legal talent through recognition, meaningful career mobility, and visibility into opportunities across the group’s business units.
Ongoing BU Legal Support
- Work with the Group Leader and General Managers to assign the appropriate level and number of legal resources to support each business unit based on business needs and resource workload.
- Manage the group’s compliance and quarterly reporting obligations.
- Provide ongoing regular legal support to business units; act as lead legal resource for key contracts, litigation, and high-risk or multi-business unit matters.
- Support coordination of daily work of contract managers assigned to business units where needed.
- Provide fill-in and overflow legal support across all business units.
M&A Support
- Support group M&A activity as needed, including diligence, purchase agreement negotiation, and integration of acquired assets and businesses.
- Manage legal resourcing for larger M&A deals within the group.
- Work with the organization’s General Counsel on global M&A and related initiatives.
Requirements
- Experience serving as a lead legal advisor and strategic business partner to senior leadership.
- Proven leadership experience managing teams of lawyers and contract managers.
- Demonstrated ability to assess and advise on legal, contractual, and general risk considerations that inform business and commercial decisions.
- Experience developing and enforcing legal policies, governance documents, and procedures across multiple business units or stakeholders.
- Demonstrated M&A support experience, including diligence and purchase agreement negotiation.
- Ability to drive adoption of legal process improvements and tools across business units.
- Ability to support legal compliance and quarterly reporting obligations.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience working across multiple specialized legal areas and building relationships with external specialized counsel (e.g., employment law and IP law).
- Experience developing legal talent, succession plans, and career progression frameworks for lawyers and contract managers.
- Experience implementing streamlined and automated legal processes across the full contract workflow (intake through agreement signature and filing).
Compensation & Benefits
- Not specified in the provided description.
Location
- Not specified in the provided description.