Legal Counsel Lead

About The Role

Position Summary

The Legal Counsel Lead will be primarily responsible for all supplier and customer contracting across Claranet UK ensuring simplification through contract evolution and process improvement as the organisation moves to a more repeatable and scalable solution model. As the business expands, the Legal Counsel Lead may also be required to support the Head of Procurement, Legal and Compliance with other legal projects including M&A and support for Group and India companies. In addition, the Legal Counsel Lead will be required to support the Head of Procurement, Legal and Compliance to ensure that Claranet UK is compliant with the relevant external regulatory bodies.

Role Mission

Claranet UK’s strategy is to create repeatable and scalable solutions for our customers. The role of the Legal Counsel Lead is to facilitate this through standardisation of legal agreements and contracts, enabling efficiency and consistency of approach to customer growth, success management and managed service offerings.

Objectives and Key Results

• Continuously evolve the contracting process to enable efficiency through a repeatable and scalable model
• Manage the Legal team output carefully to ensure consistent alignment with customer contracting activities
• Support growth of the UK business by participating in acquisition teams from time to time
• Support the Head of Procurement, Legal and Compliance to ensure compliance with relevant regulations e.g., Ofcom and GDPR.

Essential duties and responsibilities

• Prepare, review, negotiate and finalise all contracts and related legal documents in relation to business development, growth and supplier activities in the UK across a standardised portfolio of products and services
• Delivery of commercial contracts legal training for various teams, the drafting of templates and the production of guidance and policies for the business
• Work with functions across the business to ensure agreements are consistent with company policies and processes
• Provide commercially astute legal advice to all functions across the business on any matters that are legal in nature but primarily contract related
• Effectively manage all non-material litigation matters and disputes working closely with Customer Success and Growth team and Finance and Corporate Development teams.

Leadership and Management

• Lead a high-performance Legal team
• Provide guidance to direct reports to ensure their continued growth and development
• Responsible for career development and performance of direct reports to ensure the team’s capabilities are in line with Claranet’s strategic ambition
• Supervise training contracts of Contracts Executives where required
• As required, oversee the planning and recruitment of new employees and teams to support the achievement of business goals
• Collaborate with the HR and People team to attract, develop and retain great talent particularly focused on applicants seeking training contracts.

Teams to collaborate with

• Portfolio, Alliances & Technology Practices – create standardised master service agreements, service descriptions and statements of works aligned to product offerings across our portfolio
• Customer Success & Growth – provide guidance around and visibility of customer contract terms enabling effective customer management and growth conversations and actively participate in pre-sales activity up to and including closing negotiations
• Customer Experience & Managed Service – create standardised agreements aligned to managed service offerings across our portfolio.

About You

Behavioural competencies – organisational and behavioural fit.

• Flexible and creative to take considered risks
• Learn and adapt quickly to changing situations
• Self-motivated and able to work under pressure
• Ability to travel to different sites and locations on a weekly basis essential
• Manages conflict and challenges in an open and constructive manner.

Critical competencies – technical fit

• You will be widely recognised as an authority by others in the organisation and external peers for the knowledge and experience you demonstrate
• Qualified Solicitor in the United Kingdom ideally with experience in the IT industry
• Experience in commercial contract law including negotiating, drafting and interpreting technology agreements
• Familiarity with IT infrastructure, outsourcing, telecommunications or cloud computing services
• Knowledge of other legal concepts relating to dispute resolution, M&A, restructuring and refinancing preferred
• Strong commercial orientation with a desire to learn about new technologies
• Comfortable providing legal support in a fast-paced enterprise sales environment

About Us

About Claranet

Founded at the beginning of the dot.com bubble in 1996, our CEO Charles Nasser had a light bulb moment to develop a truly customer-focused IT business. Since then, Claranet has grown from an Internet Service Provider (ISP) in the UK to being one of the leading business modernisation experts, who deliver solutions across 11+ countries.

At Claranet, we’re experienced in implementing progressive technology solutions which help our customers solve their epic business challenges. We’re committed to understanding their problems, delivering answers quickly, and making a lasting impact to their business.

We are agile, focused and experienced in business modernisation. Our approach helps customers make genuine, significant shifts in their business strategy, to deliver financial savings, boost innovation, and create a resilient business. We continually invest in our people and the latest technologies, so our customers get peace of mind knowing that they have access to the best talent and services.

In the UK we have over 500 staff working in London, Gloucester, Warrington, Bristol, and Leeds, or as homeworkers.

Working for Claranet

Here at Claranet we pride ourselves on going the extra mile for and with our employees (yes, we really mean with). We offer an extensive benefits package that you can tailor to your needs, inclusive of a matching contribution pension scheme, healthcare, insurance, dental, discounted gyms and app supported benefit access.

But what we think makes us different is ‘Team Claranet,’ our dedicated internal part of the business that supports you with matters close to your heart. We proudly support local charities in each of our office locations, support employees with paid charity leave, organise key charity fundraising event per year and have a dedicated committee responsible for supporting employee’s fundraising efforts.

Claranet are one of the 10 founding members of TC4RE (Technology Community for Racial Equality.) Being a part of a group of leading UK technology organisations, we are dedicated to building a more diverse and inclusive workforce. We are also very proud members of Tech Talent Charter, a government supported, industry-led membership group created to address the UK’s tech talent shortage and diversity gap through collective action.

Our Vision

Our vision is to become the most trusted technology solutions partner; renowned for being the best and brightest, having lasting impact with our customers and delivering exceptional returns to our stakeholders.