Legal Counsel

Closing Date: 20 October 2024

Ref 6855

We're looking for a mid-senior level lawyer to join our brilliant team as a Legal Counsel, where you'll have the opportunity to lead on fascinating, challenging, and meaningful work as part of an innovative, ambitious and values-driven child rights organisation.

About Us

Save the Children UK believes every child deserves a future. In the UK and around the world, we work every day to give children a healthy start in life, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm.  When crisis strikes, and children are most vulnerable, we are always among the first to respond and the last to leave.  We ensure children's unique needs are met and their voices are heard. We deliver lasting results for millions of children, including those hardest to reach.

About the Team

Our Legal and Compliance Team provides high-quality advice, support and representation on the legal, compliance and information security issues affecting SCUK and its charitable business. The Legal Team ensures compliance with legal and regulatory requirements and advises on good governance and the effective management of legal risk throughout SCUK.

As part of our organisation wide transformation programme, Organisation of the Future, the Legal and Compliance Team is increasingly working in an environment of agile, multi-disciplinary teams. With a focus on building strong, client-centric relationships and collaboration across the organisation, we're looking to leverage agile principles, learning rapidly and responding to change, while keeping the communities we work with and for, our supporters, people, and partners at the heart of everything we do.

About the Role

As a trusted business partner with a strategic outlook, you'll proactively and pragmatically advise and engage with internal stakeholders on a broad range of legal issues, as well as collaborate dynamically and effectively across Save the Children International (the international programming arm of Save the Children) and with other members of the Save the Children global movement.

You will provide first-class legal advice to SCUK and its subsidiaries in respect of their UK and international programmes; policy, advocacy and campaigns work; and fundraising, retail and marketing activities, modelling professionalism, pragmatism, excellence and integrity in doing so.

You will support the effective delivery of cross-organisational risk, compliance and governance programmes, ensuring that key legal and regulatory risks are managed, whilst promoting a culture of shared responsibility for addressing legal and compliance risks throughout the work of SCUK.

Key Accountabilities:

• Provide strategic legal advice to SCUK's UK Impact, Global Programmes, Fundraising, and Policy, Advocacy and Campaigns Teams, in particular; grant and consortium agreements, donation and commercial participator agreements and arrangements with corporate partners, commercial contracts, including fundraising, professional services, media and IP/IT agreements.
• Advise SCUK staff on a wide range of legal issues and risks arising from SCUK's operations, including in relation to; charity fundraising laws and charity governance; fundraising and marketing communications and events; grant agreements and donor due diligence requests; marketing, advertising, media and defamation matters; and data protection, intellectual property and employment issues.
• Provide legal and governance support to SCUK's subsidiaries and affiliated entities.
• Support with litigation and disputes in the UK and internationally, including managing minor disputes and instructing external lawyers where appropriate.
• Provide advice to senior stakeholders within the organisation, including on legal risk and governance-related matters.
• Develop, advise on, promote, implement and maintain policies, practices and procedures to ensure compliance with legal and regulatory requirements, good corporate governance and the effective management of legal risk.

About you

We're looking for a natural collaborator who thrives in fluidity and is able to build credibility quickly and influence at a senior level.

Efficient, self-motivated and able to prioritise effectively under pressure, you'll be highly effective at using legal skills to provide strategic, creative and pragmatic advice to support ambition and innovation within SCUK.

You'll be confident providing strategic legal advice across a broad range of issues, and excited to contribute innovative ideas and fresh thinking to the team.

To be successful, you'll demonstrate:

• Significant post-qualification experience with expertise in one or more of the following areas: general corporate / commercial / contract, employment, finance, charity / not-for-profit, litigation.
• Ability to business partner with a function / team / client, to understand their priorities and to arrive at pragmatic, legally sound solutions.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to present complex issues clearly at all levels and with diverse audiences.
• Well-developed negotiating skills and high ethical standards.
• Ability to remain agile and flexible in the context of changing priorities.
• A mindset enabling and modelling autonomy and responsibility, and sharing power.
• Strong commitment to organisational effectiveness.
• Good understanding of the context in which Save the Children operates.
• Commitment to Save the Children's vision, mission and values.

Other experience you might bring (but not essential):

• Previous in-house experience.
• Experience of charity and fundraising law and practice.
• Experience working in an international development charity.
• Experience working cross-jurisdictionally.
• Fluency in French

If you don't meet all the criteria laid out here but can demonstrate the ambition, energy, and commitment to delivering on SCUK's strategic objectives, putting children at the heart of everything you do, we would still love to hear from you!

What we offer you:

Working for a charity provides one of the best benefits there is – a sense of purpose and reward for helping others. However, we understand the importance of giving back to our employees to ensure a happy and healthy working environment and work/life balance.

• We focus on flexibility, inclusion, collaboration, health and wellbeing both in and outside of work.
• We provide a wide range of benefits which will reward your hard work, motivate you, and inspire you to work to improve the lives of children every day.

Please note: To avoid disappointment, you are advised to submit your application as soon as possible as we reserve the right to close the vacancy early if a high volume of applications are received. This is to ensure that we can manage application levels whilst maintaining a positive candidate experience. Unfortunately once a vacancy has closed, we are unable to consider further applications.

Ways of Working:

The majority of our roles can be performed remotely in the UK, but there are likely to be times when you will be required to come to your contracted office (up to 2-4 days per month or 6-8 days per quarter).  This will be agreed with your Line Manager and team and is intended to be time spent on collaborating with colleagues and relationship building. 

Please note: travel costs to your contracted office will be at your own expense. 

Flexible Working - We are happy to discuss flexible working options at interview.

Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion: 

Save the Children UK believes in a world that is fair, inclusive and equitable where all children have the opportunity to change their world. We apply this to our workforce and we are committed to developing and supporting a diverse, equitable, and inclusive organisation where all employees have a sense of belonging and feel that they can be "Free to Be Me". We are not looking for just one type of person - we want to recruit people who can add fresh perspectives, innovative ideas or challenge that disrupts the risk of group think. 

We are especially interested in people whose childhood experiences - of life on a low income, of migration, of being in a racialised community, of the care system, of being LGBT+ or in an LGBT+ family or living with (or with someone with) a disability - help us to see things we might otherwise miss. Whatever your story is we want to hear it because we know that different voices, ideas, perspectives and knowledge, working together will enable us to better the lives of children around the world. This is the reason why we are all here.