As our new Senior Legal Advisor for Corporate and Group Affairs, you will provide a high quality and professional legal service to the global OUP Group as part of the global Group Legal and Compliance function, in order to advance and protect the business interest whilst maintaining compliance with relevant laws and regulations, with particular focus on corporate and group affairs matters.
Duties will include the following:
Provide company law support to the OUP group globally, including advice on corporate reorganisations and the maintenance of legal entities and representative offices.
Supervise OUP’s Company Secretariat activity, providing proactive company secretarial support to OUP group entities worldwide to enable such entities to comply with their local legal obligations (local filings, holding board meetings, shareholder resolutions, maintenance of constitutional documents), working closely with the Financial Controller, International Offices. Maintain appropriate systems for company secretarial information for the OUP Group to ensure timely compliance with relevant filings. Line manage Company Secretarial Assistant.
Deliver proactive first line legal support to certain group functions, including Group Finance (including Tax, Assurance, and Risk) and Group HR (including Pensions, but not including employment legal advice), to ensure minimisation of legal risk, compliance with the law, and advancement of the business interest.
Supervise Group Legal and Compliance’s functional operations and administrative capability, including line managing the PA to the Group Legal Director/Head of Group Legal Administration. Maintain functional processes (e.g. induction, invoicing, engagement of external counsel) and liaise with Group Technology in relation to the function’s use of technology systems (e.g. matter management system).
Support the Group Legal Director in providing corporate governance support to OUP, its Finance Committee (main board), Audit Committee, and key officers (including the Chair, CEO, Group Finance Director, and Group Legal Director). Although not subject to the UK Corporate Governance Code, OUP chooses to provide in its annual report and accounts certain corporate governance information consistent with the Code.
Line manage lawyers supporting other central group functions (e.g. Technology, Operations), as required by the Group Legal Director.
Enforce OUP Group Legal Policy and Procedures throughout the Group and within group functions supported by the job holder to ensure they are seeking legal advice from Group Legal where required.
Provide corporate transactional support to the Group to support transformation activity where required (liaising with Divisional General Counsels on corporate transactions in their Divisions) to ensure that the business interests are appropriately protected.
Provide professional legal support to the Group Legal Director in all cross-divisional and group matters undertaken by the Group Legal Director, including special projects, to enable the Group Legal function to provide specialist and timely legal support to the entire Group on matters impacting more than one operating division.
All of the above will be undertaken at the direction and under the supervision of the Group Legal Director.
We operate a hybrid working policy that requires a minimum of 2 days per week in the Oxford office.
About You
UK qualified solicitor, with significant post-qualification experience.
Extensive legal experience and know how in key areas (company law, corporate governance and company secretarial matters, commercial law, intellectual property, compliance) ideally gained in private practice and in-house.
Ability to communicate well at all levels in the organisation.
Excellent drafting and commercial awareness.
Excellent organisational skills.
Previous line management experience an advantage but not required.
Benefits
We care about work/life balance here at OUP. With this in mind we offer 25 days’ holiday that rises with service, plus bank holidays and Christmas closure (3-days) and a 35-hour working week. We are open to discussing flexibility in respect to working patterns, dependent on role. We also have a great variety of active employee networks and societies.
We help make your money go further by contributing to your pension up to 12%, offering loans and savings schemes through our partnership with Salary Finance, in addition to travel to work schemes and access to a wide range of local discounts.
This role comes with the added benefit of private medical insurance and a management bonus.
Please see our Rewards and Recognition page for more information.
We are committed to supporting diversity in our workforce, and ensuring an inclusive environment where all individuals can thrive. We seek to employ a workforce representative of the markets that we serve and encourage applications from all.
