Legal Counsel - 12 month FTC

The role

This role is a fixed-term contract for 12 months, as maternity cover.

• As Legal Counsel (2-3 years of PQE), you will focus on a number of legal areas and advise teams across the business.
• You will take a consultative approach and work closely with the business - never working alone, or able to concentrate on purely legal issues. As a member of a busy legal team you will also be expected to contribute to team-wide initiatives. 
• The key responsibilities of this role include:
  • Review and negotiate customer, partnership and supplier contracts by providing pragmatic and commercial support
  • Work on projects for example when we roll out new templates
  • Build out and maintain self-help tools, playbooks and guides for the legal team and for the wider business 
  • Focus on constant process improvement related to high volume work - for example by iterating our contracting automation and management workflows
  • Be prepared to deal with any legal issue, at any time.

We’re approaching ‘Legal Risk’ in Financial Services in a new way.

• We are ready to serve everyone, if we wanted to - we ensure Legal Risk does not constrain the business but empowers it to achieve its goals;
• We create the best possible customer experience - we want our customers (both internal and external) to look forward to going through our processes; and
• We aim to automate wherever possible - we don’t like inefficiencies nor do we believe that real risk mitigation is achieved by throwing people at the problem.

The Legal Function is at the forefront of GoCardless’ expansion. We must ensure that GoCardless adopts, implements and maintains forward-thinking and appropriate processes and controls, often coming across new challenges or issues that require innovative solutions. 

Desired skills

We’re looking for a lawyer with private practice training and/or in-house experience in a fast-paced environment. You will be driven, able to work independently and able to apply your existing knowledge and approach across a very wide range of legal (and quasi-legal) areas. As a technology business, it helps if you have had experience in a similar area, or perhaps you have a keen interest in tech outside of your day to day work.

We’d love to hear from you if:

• You grasp new legal concepts quickly, and are not afraid to use your common sense.
• You are able to appropriately challenge ways of working and not be afraid to ask why.
• You are a self-starter who is proactive and you are willing to roll up your sleeves to get the job done. 
• You have some experience using Legal AI tools
• Your communication skills are first class, and you are able to distil complex and cumbersome legalese into understandable English.
• You love tech and tools, and love exploring how they can contribute to efficiency and customer experience.  
• You enjoy project management and thrive on operational efficiency.
• You are easy to work with, do not take yourself seriously and want to work in a fun, fast-growing and challenging environment.

Bonus points if:

• You speak Spanish
• You have knowledge of FCA requirements or payment services.
• You have experience with selling and supporting SaaS solutions.

Base salary range: £71,200 - £106,800

Base salary ranges are based on role, job level, location, and market data.  Please note that whilst we strive to offer competitive compensation, our approach is to pay between the minimum and the mid-point of the pay range until performance can be assessed in role. Offers will take into account level of experience, interview assessment, budgets and parity between you and fellow employees at GoCardless doing similar work.