of counsel London, England
Job description
Advert Close Date: 14th July 2023
Purpose of Role: Support two Senior Legal Counsel (Windsor & Rural/Commercial) in relation to the delivery of all aspects of the provision of high quality legal services to the Windsor & Rural strategic business unit (SBU) and Operations and Digital group partners (GPs). This includes transactional, litigation and other advice in support of their corporate strategies and objectives, in accordance with The Crown Estate’s wider strategic and governance framework.
Main Accountabilities:
Develop a detailed understanding of the Crown Estate Act 1961, in order to advise both
the business and our external advisors, while also ensuring consistent advice with the wider in-house legal team.
Working with the SBU and GPs and the panel law firms, assist on significant transactions
and contentious/sensitive matters.
Working with the external panel law firms for the SBU, establish working processes and
procedures to assist with “business as usual” transaction efficiency, including the development and updating of precedent documents and negotiation standards.
Provide oversight and guidance to the SBU in relation to the service standard provided by the panel law firms, including spend.
Acting as a “trouble-shooter” and counsel for the Windsor & Rural SBU and the GPs.
Assist in delivering legal training for the SBU on both specific topics and
corporate/constitutional aspects of The Crown Estate.
Assist in embedding The Crown Estate’s social and environmental goals into our value
chain and ecosystem, including embedding sustainability requirements into legal precedent documents.
Collaborate with the wider Legal, Compliance, Finance and Procurement teams, and act as an advisor on strategic legal risk and risk management with focus on data protection.
Drafting and negotiating commercial contracts for the SBU’s and the GPs’ external advisers and supply chain.
Collaborate across the wider Legal and Compliance Teams in furtherance of our “Digital first” approach.
Assist in supervising the Legal Assistants within the Legal Team and oversee their work of drafting, reviewing and negotiating certain commercial contracts with external advisers of the SBU and the GPs.
Knowledge, experience and skills:
Qualified lawyer with significant post-qualification experience (ideally 4 to 8 years) in all aspects of commercial real estate.
Experience of agricultural practice, commercial contracting and litigation desirable, but not pre-requisites.
Demonstrate a clear understanding of what is required to fulfil an in-house legal role.
Demonstrate an understanding of The Crown Estate’s business model and strategy. .
Demonstrate an aptitude and enthusiasm for learning about new areas of law and grasping the essentials of those new areas quickly.
Flexibility of approach and an ability to assimilate the key facts from extensive materials quickly are also essential.
Experience of successfully recognising the potential sensitivity of legal decisions and managing their reputational and public relations implications.
Experience of successfully managing relations with internal and external business contacts and the ability to maintain composure and cope with conflicting priority issues while working to tight deadlines.
Able to communicate the law in a commercial and user-friendly way, producing crisp and accurate communications in order to engage effectively with a range of audiences.
A proven solutions focused commercial approach.
Advert Close Date: 14th July 2023
We are a proud disability confident employer and operate the offer of interview scheme Disability Confident employer scheme - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
We are happy to offer alternative application methods or formats and can be flexible on our process to enable you to have the best opportunity.
If you have any questions about our recruitment process or would like to talk about adjustments, please contact us on [email protected] or 0207 851 5000
