Candidate Specification
SENIOR LEGAL ADVISOR
Salary: £45k-£60k plus benefits Location: Chancery Lane, London
Term: 12 month Fixed term contract to cover maternity leave
Hours: Full-time
The Legal team are a high performing and supportive team, focussed on providing excellent, efficient and pragmatic legal advice for Nesta. The team consists of three qualified solicitors, the General Counsel, Senior Legal Advisor and Legal Advisor, supported by a qualified Legal Executive who acts as our Legal Assistant. We aim to provide creative and constructive solutions for a fast moving, innovative organisation and put great emphasis on our own training and development.
Due to our Senior Legal Advisor going on maternity leave, we are now looking to recruit a mid-level lawyer to support the General Counsel, help supervise the Legal Advisor, and manage their own workload of projects, contracts and advisory work. We are looking for a 3-7 year qualified lawyer with experience of drafting and negotiating a wide variety of commercial agreements, an interest in Nesta’s work.
Nesta is a dynamic, medium sized charity, funded by a £300m endowment held in the Nesta Trust and with a mission to promote innovation for public good. We run grant programmes and carry out research into innovation in the public sector, social enterprise, economic growth, education and the creative industries. Much of our work is done in partnership with Government, the EU and other public bodies, charitable foundations and business, both in the UK and internationally. Our ambitious 3 year strategy includes developing a network of partners and joint ventures, potentially as a new physical hub of organisations, and we recently exchanged contracts to purchase a new head office building from August 2016.
The Legal team drafts and negotiates grant agreements, partnership agreements, research services contracts, events contracts and a wide variety of other commercial contracts. We advise the organisation on charity and company law, EU funding, public procurement, state aid, data protection, real estate and intellectual property. The General Counsel acts as Company Secretary for Nesta and its subsidiaries and is also responsible for governance and compliance. There is therefore a broad range of activities and variety in terms of legal work undertaken by the team. This role is an excellent opportunity for someone looking for intellectually challenging and stimulating work in a dynamic voluntary/public sector environment.
The role
· Draft, negotiate and advise on services contracts, grant agreements, partnership arrangements, sponsorship, events contracts and other commercial contracts, and ensure these reflect Nesta’s aims and priorities.
· Work closely with project teams, providing legal advice and support on a wide variety of areas including charity law, contract law, IP, data protection, public procurement and state aid.
· Support Operations team with real estate law, insurance and contract advice; IT team with supplier contracts; EU bids team with bid making and compliance; and Comms team with events, publications and sponsorship contracts.
· Advise on handling disputes with suppliers, funders and grant recipients and settlement negotiations
· Support the General Counsel in implementing and supervising processes to ensure compliance with Nesta’s legal obligations, in particular in relation to charity law, conflicts of interest and anti-bribery.
· Undertake legal research and stay up to date with legal developments and help maintain Nesta’s suite of template documents and policies. Provide training to the organisation on induction and relevant areas of the law
· Develop excellent relationships with staff across Nesta, including the Executive team, to ensure good understanding of their priorities and to encourage staff to work closely with Legal to minimize risk to the organization
· Support the General Counsel in supervising the Legal Advisor and Legal Assistant, helping to manage their workload, delegate as appropriate and develop their skills
· Deputise for the General Counsel during periods of absence
The Person
· 3-7 years qualified solicitor or barrister (or equivalent outside UK). More experienced applicants looking for experience in the voluntary sector are encouraged to apply
· Strong academic credentials
· At least three years contract/commercial law experience in either a large in-house legal department or good quality private practice (regional or London)
· Sound knowledge of the UK legal system
· Demonstrable good drafting skills with broad experience of drafting a variety of contracts to a high standard
· Experience of providing advice direct to clients or non-legal colleagues at all levels, managing own client workload and working in mixed project teams, preferably with experience in-house
· Excellent legal research and analytical skills
· Good commercial judgment, flexibility and ability to balance legal risk against practical constraints
· Demonstrable ability to work efficiently and mange priorities to meet deadlines with good attention to detail
· Enquiring mind with desire to take on new challenges, learn about new legal areas and develop new skills
· Successful experience in working as part of a team and delegating/supervising work to junior colleagues, with good communication skills and a positive “can do” attitude.
· Desirable: knowledge of charity law, company law and property law
· Desirable: interest and experience in Nesta’s areas of work, such as voluntary or public sector, social enterprise, social investment and/or policy and research work.
About Nesta
Nesta is the UK’s leading independent expert on innovation. We exist to grow the UK’s capacity to innovate, helping to generate great ideas and bring them to life. We are independently funded with an endowment originally provided from the National Lottery and now held in the Nesta Trust. We achieve our mission through a combination of four core capabilities:
· Generating new knowledge and insights about how innovation happens in the economy, society and public services, and making this knowledge available and accessible.
· Supporting skills, methods, tools and capacity to innovate, both in leading edge fields (from digital technology to creative industries) and in fields where innovation is less supported (such as local government).
· Linking diverse networks of people and organisations, and using our convening power to open up new possibilities and to help with implementation and diffusion of innovations.
· Helping fund innovative ventures, projects and programmes, particularly ones focused on solving compelling problems. We do this as an investor, a grant-giver, and through programmes that combine a mix of types of support.
We try to act in line with a set of values that help define who we are, and how we behave to each other and the people we work with – these values are known as, ‘The Nesta Way’!
How to apply
Submit your CV and a short covering letter detailing your suitability for the role to by 9am, Monday 10th August. Please indicate your availability for interview on Thursday 13th/Friday 14th August. Due to annual leave, no interviews will be held in the last two weeks of August.