Interim Counsel – Technology & Procurement

Taylor Root Dusseldorf; London; On-site; GBP 100,000 - 125,000; Full time

Job description

About our client:

We are working with a global publishing and media business. Every day, around the globe, their imprints, books, journals, and technology solutions reach millions of people. For over 175 years their brands and imprints have been a trusted source of knowledge to education and healthcare communities and today, more than ever, they see it as their responsibility to ensure that fundamental knowledge can be found, verified, understood and used by their communities – enabling them to improve outcomes, make progress, and benefit the generations that follow.

Our client helps authors to share their discoveries; enable researchers to find, access and understand the work of others and support companies and institutions with innovations in technology and data.

About the Role

An exciting opportunity for an individual seeking a 12 Month fixed term Contract. This is a great mid-level position within their well-established and global Legal Department. Their team in London looks after UK centric work but often partners with US and German legal teams on international commercial and wider legal matters.

For this role, you will largely be dealing with Technology, SaaS, AI & supporting the Global Procurement team with a range of procurement and supplier matters.

Role Responsibilities:

• Lead legal business partner supporting the Global Procurement function with a range of Indirect/IT, Pre-press, Printing and Warehousing, and Transportation.
• Strictly private and confidential procurement matters, including full life cycle tender processes, one-off contract negotiations and day-to-day supplier management.
• Providing legal support for their Global Technology function, as the lead legal business partner supporting the Global Technology department.
• Providing ad hoc legal support across the Education division and Healthcare divisions, working closely with counterparts in Spain, Asia, South America, southern Africa, Germany and the US.
• A particular focus is advising on technology contracts, and in particular third party SaaS contracts, software licensing, cloud-based data hosting agreements and professional services consultancy contracts.
• Reviewing, drafting, negotiating and advising on a wide range of commercial contracts and IP-related agreements.
• Pro-actively considering and implementing continuous strategic improvements to legal business partnering processes, efficiencies and Legal Ops, including through the use and development of standard contracts, minimum terms and legal review thresholds.
• Working largely autonomously, with a range of colleagues, providing objective analysis of risks relating to commercial and consumer law, copyright and other intellectual property matters, and providing solutions to satisfy legal and business requirements.
• Leading projects with notable risk and complexity, and developing strategies for project execution.
• Communicating with and managing diverse stakeholder groups inside and outside of the group.
• Acting as mentor to more junior colleagues across the General Counsel’s Office.

Key relationships:

• In-house clients in the business and international departments (including Procurement, Technology, Data Protection, Editorial Rights, Tax and Finance);
• Colleagues in the General Counsel’s Office and Group Compliance;
• External advisers.

Experience we are looking for:

• Minimum 4 years’ PQE with a general commercial background, with IT and procurement being ideal.
• In-house experience (may include secondments) or private practice with the relevant technical experience in commercial, IT, procurement or working with publishing houses.

Please note: whilst this is a 12 month FTC, there may be opportunities for a longer-term position after 12 month FTC. This is not guaranteed but worth noting.

Salary Range: The salary banding advertised is a guide and will be dependent on experience and PQE level. Please note, the client cannot go above the top banding.

Please note our advertisements use PQE/salary levels purely as a guide. However, we are happy to consider applications from all candidates who are able to demonstrate the skills necessary to fulfil the role.

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