Legal Counsel

The John Lewis Partnership’s Legal Team, led by the General Counsel, consists of four Heads of Legal, a team of lawyers and paralegals and a small administrative support team. The Employment legal team is a team of 9 - the Head of Employment, five senior legal counsel, one legal counsel and 2 paralegals.

Reporting into the Senior Legal Counsel, Employment, you will support the senior legal counsel employment team to provide high quality and commercially focused legal support to the Partnership, with a particular focus on Employment Law.

This is an exciting opportunity for an Employment Lawyer to join a busy in-house legal team. You will engage with a broad range of stakeholders providing all areas of the Partnership with commercially focused legal advice across all aspects of employment law ranging from large scale restructurings and TUPE transfers to settlement agreements and employee relations escalations.

Expected salary - Salary up to £95,000 depending on experience.

Contract type - This position is a Permanent contract.

Working pattern/flexible working - The role is based in London but Partnership has adopted a hybrid working approach, meaning you'll be able to work a mixture between the office and home based upon your personal needs whilst balancing the needs of the business. The Legal team spend a minimum of 1 day a week in the London office to connect plus as needed to attend key meetings.

Key responsibilities 

• To support senior legal counsel on high value, complex or strategic change projects, cases and transactions, to business partner with relevant members of the People and line of business team on employment law queries including contentious and non contentious matters, changes in legislation and policy and process improvements.  To support the paralegal team when matters that you have advised on head into litigation

• Accountable with the business for sound commercial and legal decision making.

• To develop and implement team processes and procedures to ensure the efficient and consistent delivery of legal advice.

• Foster and maintain a culture of continuous improvement to propositions, processes, controls and/or policies both proactively and based on feedback and insight from- stakeholders, colleagues and the business.

Essential skills/experience you’ll need

• A UK qualified lawyer with a good level of post qualification experience specialised in employment advice, preferably with some in-house experience.

• Confidence and credibility in working with a wide range of people, internal and external to the business.

• Demonstrated excellent influencing skills

• Organisation change, redundancy, TUPE experience

• Evidence of continuous improvement and change mindset

• Sound understanding of commercial environment, and an ability to provide commercial solutions.

• Good relationship management skills both internally and externally.

• A demonstrable, proactive, commercial and solutions-led approach to compliance.

Desirable skills/experience you’ll need

• Experience and knowledge of employment law issues particular to financial services

• Basic understanding of pensions, immigration and industrial relations legal issues

We are also recruiting for a senior legal counsel - employment role so if you have read this advert with interest but think that you might be ready for a more autonomous and stretching role, please take a look at our senior legal counsel vacancy.

We’re the largest employee owned business in the UK and home of our cherished brands, John Lewis and Waitrose. We’re not just employees, we’re Partners, driven by our purpose to build a happier world. As we look to our future, there’s never been a more exciting time to join us.  

We’re ruthlessly focused on being brilliant at retail. We continue to innovate, adapt and diversify. Never Knowingly Undersold on price, quality and service in John Lewis and passionately serving food-lovers in Waitrose.   

As Partners we all share the responsibility of ownership and in its rewards. We use our voices to contribute to our success, working together through the good and challenging times, holding true to our behaviours and treating everyone with kindness and respect. 

We all own making the Partnership somewhere we belong. Embracing our differences and creating an environment where we’re free to be ourselves and can THRIVE. Growing ourselves individually, and as a collective. 

As Partners, we make all the difference. And, we all own it.  

Important points to note:  

It’s important to note that some of our roles are subject to pre-employment vetting (which may include DBS checks for successful candidates). If required, you’ll be informed and provided with information about vetting during the recruitment process and we encourage you to complete any vetting documents quickly to avoid delays. Any DBS checks required will be carried out by a third-party registered body and financial probity checks may also be required for some of our roles.  

We occasionally close vacancies early in the event we receive a high volume of applications, and therefore, we recommend you apply early. If you require a reasonable adjustment due to a disability which means you may need longer to complete your application please contact us as soon as possible.

We want all of our Partners to have a good work-life balance and we support flexible working. This might mean flexible or compressed hours, job sharing or shorter hour contracts, where possible. Please discuss this further with the hiring manager during your interview. 

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