Senior Legal Counsel – 12 month FTC (Publishing)

Taylor Root Dusseldorf; London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job description

The client

Our client are a global FTSE 250 Publishing business and leaders in their market for insights, intelligence and publications that empower and educate. They have a well established team of 7 sitting in London.

The legal team’s successes were externally recognised, winning awards for “In-house TMT Team of the Year”, and further short-listed for The Lawyer’s “In-house TMT Team of the Year” award.

Job Description

We are currently recruiting for a talented Senior Legal Counsel to join the our client’s excellent legal team (maternity cover for up to 12 months). This is an exciting opportunity to become a valued business partner to a global content business, and to be part of a collegiate and supportive legal team.

This role reports directly into the General Counsel for the group and will be responsible for supporting on all legal matters, with particular focus on the Researcher Services (Journals) business. In this business-facing role, you will work closely with senior management and other key stakeholders, including in the Editorial, Production, Marketing, Commercial and Product/Technology functions. The legal team is a highly respected and valued business partner to the group, with lawyers based in the UK, US and Singapore. The team combines technical legal expertise with commercial insight and an appreciation for the business’ objectives to provide constructive, balanced and effective advice.

Responsibilities are expected to include:

General matters

1. Proactively building effective working relationships with senior leadership in the business and representing the legal team at management meetings contributing expertise
2. Identifying and managing projects end to end to mitigate any identified areas of legal risk
3. Identifying and then leading support to the Researcher Services business on upcoming changes to legislation or policies that might impact its operations
4. Representing the group at external events, trade body meetings and industry initiatives where appropriate

IP/copyright/commercial

1. Leading support to the business on complex IP/copyright-related matters, including for example advising on rights in a licensing context or IP policy developments
2. Drafting, negotiating and advising senior leaders on a wide range of commercial contracts, including customer contracts, publishing agreements, author/editor contracts, distribution and agency agreements, supplier agreements and IT/technology contracts

Dispute resolution

1. Advising on content-related issues and disputes, both pre- and post-publication, including issues related to copyright, defamation and privacy
2. Taking a lead on managing and resolving third party disputes
3. Instructing external counsel where necessary and managing external legal costs
4. Collaborating effectively with the other lawyers in the legal team to ensure a consistent and effective approach to managing legal risk across the business globally

The successful candidate will likely have:

1. In-house legal experience within the media, publishing, events space
2. At least 5 years PQE
3. Experience with commercial contracts in the above sectors and good IP and experience with copyright law
4. Experience of technology contracts or AI would be advantageous but not essential
5. An ability to work with stakeholders at all levels and be able to build strong and lasting relationships
6. An ability to adapt to differing workloads and prioritise legal work flows
7. Excellent people skills and emotional intelligence

Start date: ASAP – Please note a quick start is very important!

Salary: DOE – up to £110,000 pa

Working from home: Our client is very flexible but the successful candidate MUST be able to make it to the London office 1 day a week. 2 days a week would be ideal.