Paralegal / Junior Lawyer

Job description

Competitive Salary + Bonus + Pension + Share options + Free onsite Gym, Subsidised Shop and Canteen, Flexible and agile working.


COMPANY OVERVIEW

Unilever is one of the world's leading fast-moving consumer goods companies. Our products are sold in over 190 countries and, on any given day, 2 billion consumers worldwide use them. We own some of the best known and best loved brands, from long-established names like Dove, Sunlight, Knorr and Lipton to new innovations such as Pureit, our unique in-home water purifier.

The role of the Legal Group is to protect Unilever and help it to win by providing objective advice and creative legal solutions.

MAIN JOB PURPOSE


A broad commercial legal role within the Beauty and Personal Care legal team and reporting to the Legal Counsel for Baby Care and Deos, but also working on cross-category initiatives with the wider category team.

The role requires identification of legal risks and advice to cross-functional global business partners with a focus on marketing and advertising law but also covering all areas of commercial law, including intellectual property law, regulatory and compliance matters, drafting and negotiating of contracts, distribution channels, privacy, e-commerce, data protection and competition law. The role represents a development opportunity for an existing paralegal to move into a non-transactional, increasingly autonomous role or a first step for a newly qualified solicitor or non-UK qualified lawyer to develop experience and skills as an in-house general practitioner in the UK.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Under appropriate supervision commensurate with experience and capabilities:

General
· Draft documents, letters of advice and agreements tailored to business partners' individual needs.
· Correspond with business partners, local internal and external lawyers.
· Attend meetings and calls where required, including presenting where appropriate.
· Take instructions from business partners, identify and explain legal risks to them, and propose solutions to help them navigate the risks.
· Conduct research into applicable areas of existing or emerging law.
· Develop and maintain good relationships with relevant Legal and business stakeholders.
· Prepare legal updates for, and share know how within, the Legal team.
· Prepare alerts and/or guidance notes for the business on hot topics.
· Assisting with the preparation and uploading of materials to Inside.Unilever legal sites.
· Be an ambassador for the Category Legal team to the wider Unilever Legal community and company at large.
· Provide support to the legal team and keep him/her appraised of significant legal risks

Marketing law
· Provide legal advice and commercial risk analysis to the global marketing teams on innovation and renovation brand projects (legality and support for product claims, product positioning, input into preparation of support packages etc.)
· Coordinate risk analysis with relevant global and local in-house legal functions, regulatory and R&D colleagues to evaluate the legality of and support for product claims in line with all relevant legal and regulatory laws and guidelines governing the cosmetics industry.
· Assist Brand IP counsels in providing advice on trade mark, copyright and domain name laws.
· Assess risks and advising on all legal aspects of digital communication
· Co-ordinate with relevant local legal colleagues and business partners to pro-actively coordinate and defend in accordance with the business strategy out-going and in-coming competitive challenges in respect of product claims.
· Advise on ecommerce and “direct to consumer” initiatives.
· Advise in relation to sustainability initiatives.
· Provide legal advice for the rolling out of corporate policies and guidelines.
· Identify competition risks, privacy risks and other compliance risks for the category.

Competition, corporate and regulatory law
· Assist with the provision of advice in accordance with EU competition law.
· Work with Regulatory Affairs to provide second opinions on regulatory interpretation and prepare legislative overviews on labelling, ingredients, claims etc.
· Co-ordinate Category relevant advice to M&A through Corporate Legal team during due diligence and corporate governance advice during integration.

Contract
· Draft/critique and negotiate commercial agreements ranging from confidentiality agreements, permission letters and service agreements to marketing agreements (agency agreements, sponsorship and event agreements, license agreements, artist collaborations and talent agreements, etc.), distribution agreements and franchise agreements.
· Advise on best contractual structures to achieve business partner objectives.

QUALIFICATIONS/EXPERIENCE

· Experienced paralegal, newly qualified solicitor or foreign qualified junior lawyer.
· Commercial legal experience and training undertaken to date to include experience of marketing law and contracts.
· Experience of advising clients in a virtual setting useful.

PERSON SPECIFICATION

· Excellent attention to detail.
· Adaptable, proactive, keen to learn and take on increasing degrees of responsibility, ready to acquire autonomy in response to work well done.
· Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
· Strong organisational and prioritisation skills to cope with multiple stakeholders, competing deadlines and priorities, with requests often at very short notice.
· Team player, able to build strong relationships, including coordinating input from a number of global business partners, such as local Legal, R&D and Regulatory Affairs.
· Proficient in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint.

APPLICATION PROCESS

Online Application >> Digital Interview >> Face to Face Interview/s >> Job Offer
Please note: As part of the job application, you will be asked to complete a brief online application form. Completion of the form is required in order to be considered. Please allow yourself enough time to complete the application form as when filled out partially or not at all it may adversely affect the progress of your application. Please be aware that you will have to complete the form at once as you will be unable to return to it later