In-House Legal Counsel

The role

As our In-House Legal Counsel, you'll be a hands-on problem-solver and strategic advisor, ensuring our legal operations robustly support the Raspberry Pi Foundation's mission to empower young people through computing and digital making.

With between three to five years of post-qualification experience, you'll navigate a diverse range of legal areas, including charity law, contracts, compliance, intellectual property, and data protection. You'll draft and negotiate agreements, safeguard our trademarks, and ensure our compliance with both UK and international regulations. But your role extends beyond legal expertise. You'll collaborate, mentor our paralegal, build relationships with external legal firms, and equip colleagues across the organisation to handle everyday legal matters.

This role has a Junior Legal Counsel reporting to them and works closely with the Chief Financial Officer and the Director of Operations who is also their Line Manager.

This is a unique opportunity to be at the heart of a growing global organisation, shaping the future of computing education. You'll work alongside passionate teams in India, Ireland, the UK, and the USA, making a tangible impact on the lives of young people.

We strive to make the Foundation a place where talented people who care about our mission can do the best work of their careers. We have a flexible and collaborative approach to all aspects of our work. If you’re the right person for the job, we’ll make it work for you, and you can be confident that you’ll be working with an exceptional team.

Responsibilities

• Provide expert legal advice and support on charity law, compliance, and data protection matters.

• Draft, negotiate, and manage a range of commercial contracts, including services, supplier, licence, grant, partnership, and sponsorship agreements.

• Manage aspects of IP and trademark protection and enforcement.

• Act as Company Secretary for group entities, ensuring compliance with all relevant laws, statutory requirements, and regulations.

• Corporate and charitable governance and reporting.

• Proactively identify and mitigate legal risks across all areas of the Foundation's operations.

• Oversee the development and implementation of resources, guidance and training to empower business managers to handle low-risk legal matters.

• Develop and maintain strong relationships with external legal firms, ensuring efficient and cost-effective utilisation of their expertise.

• Coach, develop, and manage the performance of the Paralegal, enabling them to reach their full potential.

• Keep up to date with developments in relevant areas of legislation and compliance.

• Manage the Legal budget.

Experience and personal attributes

We recognise that everyone has the potential for growth, and we welcome applications from candidates who can demonstrate that they have some, but not all, of the experience and personal attributes listed here.

• England and Wales qualified solicitor, 3-5 years PQE 

• Solid working knowledge of the UK legal system

• Experience of contract negotiation and drafting

• Experience managing trademarks and IP (desirable)

• Experience overseeing data protection compliance, including GDPR (desirable)

• Company Secretarial experience (desirable)

• Some international experience i (India, USA, Ireland, Kenya, or South Africa desirable)

• Effective organisational skills, with the ability to work independently and efficiently, and to balance different priorities

• Flexibility and a willingness to learn

About us

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK-based educational charity with the mission to enable young people to realise their full potential through the power of computing and digital technologies.

Established in 2008 and first known for our product — the wildly successful Raspberry Pi computer — the Foundation has developed education programmes, learning experiences, and products that are helping millions of young people learn vital new knowledge and skills

Through Code Club and CoderDojo, we support the world’s largest network of free informal computing clubs for young people. Tens of thousands of educators have taken our online courses, and millions of people use our free online learning resources. To deepen our understanding of how young people learn about computing and how to create with digital technologies, we conduct academic research, and we use that knowledge to increase the impact of our work and advance the field of computing education.

Across all of our work, we work hard to engage young people who come from backgrounds that are traditionally underrepresented in the field of computing or who experience educational disadvantage. We work all over the world, with teams based in the UK, Ireland, North America, and India, and partnerships with mission-aligned organisations in over 40 countries.

We are at the forefront of the global movement to help young people learn about computing and digital making. You can read more about our mission, values, and goals in our Annual Review 2022 and our Strategy 2022–2025.

Benefits

In addition to competitive salaries, we offer a range of benefits for all of our colleagues, including:

• 25 days’ annual leave initially, growing to 30 days after five years service

• Company-wide close down for 3 days at the end of the year

• Generous company pension scheme with 8% employer and 4% employee contributions

• Private healthcare

• Life assurance and long-term illness insurance policy

• Investment in professional development and learning

• Flexible work hours as needed, to fit around childcare or other commitments

• Generous family leave policy

• Cycle-to-work scheme and season ticket loan

Timetable for applications
Closing date: 08 July 2024, 9.00am GMT 
Phone screen: Week commencing 08 July 2024
First-round interview: Week commencing 15 July 2024 
Second-round interview: Week commencing 15 July 2024 

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people, and we expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. If successful in the selection process, you will be required to undergo a background check to confirm that you are a suitable person to work with children. Further background checks will be made at regular intervals thereafter.