Senior Solicitor - Product & Proposition

Are you ready to chart your own career path? With our refreshed strategy, we’re building on our rich heritage and transforming our business to be more scalable and efficient, unlocking the capabilities needed for future success. This includes significantly investing in technology, streamlining the way we work and creating an environment where colleagues feel engaged, empowered and accountable; where they can show up, speak up and perform - because we believe in the difference our work makes.

At a glance:

Location: Cirencester or London based with hybrid working

Workplace Type: Hybrid

Employment Type: Permanent

Seniority: Mid-Senior Level

The role:

Joining the Legal Dept at an exciting time of organisational change, you’ll help the business to achieve its corporate objectives by effectively managing and mitigating legal risk and by providing legal advice which is accessible, timely and cost effective and which adds real value to the business.

You’ll work closely with the Head of Legal – Product to ensure that the St. James’s Place Group complies with all legal requirements and maintains good relationships with its regulators.

What you'll be doing:

You’ll work with the Head of Legal - Product on new product and proposition developments, and assisting with the review of existing products and proposition to ensure that they remain fit for purpose and in compliance with prevailing legal and regulatory requirements.

You’ll update key contact areas about legal developments that will affect them, and the steps needed to respond to those developments. You’ll provide training, support and guidance to the Investment function on relevant legal principles and internal governance processes as necessary.

You’ll ensure that the Department’s standard forms, precedents and know how are up to date.

Source specialist external legal advice to support the business where necessary.

Assist the Head of Legal - Product with the day-to-day supervision of and mentoring and support to Solicitors and Trainee Solicitors.

Facilitate and manage external teams of legal advisers providing specialist advice to a project including scoping work, setting and managing budgets for legal spend and facilitating the delivery of specialist legal advice to the business.

Essential Criteria:

• Degree qualified with appropriate legal qualification (eg SQE).
• Significant post-qualification legal experience, both in private practice and in-house including:
• Acting as the lead legal adviser, working autonomously and in large multidiscipline client teams.
• Effective upward communication of advice to senior business leaders and boards on key legal risks/liabilities.
• Providing legal advice in a commercial context and in a manner that is easy for the teams to digest, understand and apply to facilitate key/strategic decision making.
• Managing external legal advisers and spend so that the advice is delivered within budget and is of value to the business.
• Ability to prioritise and effectively manage a varied and busy workload to meet deadlines and broader goals of the business.
• Ability to absorb, understand and analyse a wide variety of legal issues encountered by the business and use creative thinking to offer alternative, pragmatic and commercial solutions.
• Being risk sensitive, but not risk averse.
• You’ll develop an understanding of the tolerance to risk within the business and then tailoring guidance to be empathetic with the assessment made.
• Ability to recognise when and where specialist input may be required and to escalate matters to the Head of Legal - Product when appropriate.
• Able to seek external legal input, analyse and distil back to the business, providing recommendations.
• Effective upward communication of legal arguments and solutions with conviction and authority to senior stakeholders.
• Ability to develop strong and trusted relationships with colleagues across the business.

What's in it for you?

We reward you for the work you do, whether that’s through our discretionary annual bonus scheme that reflects both personal and company performance, competitive annual leave allowance (28 days plus bank holidays, with the option to purchase an additional 5 days), or online rewards platform with a variety of discounts.

We also have benefits to support whatever stage of life you are in, including:

• Competitive parental leave (26 weeks full pay)
• Private medical insurance (optional taxable benefit)
• 10% non-contributory pension (increasing with length of service)

Reasonable Adjustments

We're an equal opportunities employer and want to ensure our recruitment process is accessible and inclusive for all, if you require reasonable adjustment(s) at any stage please let us know by emailing us at [email protected]

Research tells us that applicants (especially those from underrepresented groups) can be put off from applying for a role if they do not meet all the criteria or have been on an extended career-break. If you think you would be a good match for this role and can demonstrate some transferable experience please apply, regardless of whether you tick every box.

What's next?

If you're excited about this role and believe you have the skills and experience we're looking for, we'd love to hear from you! Please submit an application by clicking ‘apply’ below and our team will be in touch.

As a business regulated by the FCA we would advise you to familiarise yourself with the conduct regulations and in particular consumer duty obligations prior to an interview with SJP.