Group Legal Commercial Counsel | 12-month FTC

Taylor Root is working with SSP Group plc (LSE:SSPG), who is a global leading operator of food and beverage outlets in travel locations employing 49,000 colleagues in around 3,000 units across 38 countries. They specialise in designing, creating and operating a diverse range of food and drink outlets in airports, train stations and other travel hubs across six formats: sit-down and quick service restaurants, bars, cafés, lounges, and food-led convenience stores.

SSP Group’s purpose is to be the best part of the journey, and their focus is on making every journey taste better – bringing great food and welcoming hospitality to travellers across the globe. Sustainability is crucial for their long-term success, and they aim to deliver positive impact for their business while uniting stakeholders to promote a sustainable food travel sector.

They are looking to recruit an experienced commercial lawyer to support the group for a period of 12 months on a Fixed Term Contract.

The role will be reporting into the Associate General Counsel, and has a range of responsibilities including, but not limited to:

• Advising, drafting, and negotiating a range of commercial agreements, including: framework and procurement agreements for products and equipment; IT and technology contracts; outsourcing arrangements; international franchise and concession agreements; consultancy and services agreements, NDAs and other day-to-day commercial contracts.
• Supporting the business on trade mark and brand protection matters.
• Advising on day-to-day privacy and data protection matters, including GDPR, data protection clauses in contracts, in collaboration with data privacy subject matter experts.
• Supporting the business in managing and resolving commercial disputes, working with internal stakeholders and external counsel as required.
• Depending on experience, supporting on employment law matters, including employment agreements, settlement agreements, investigations and works council processes.
• Supporting the business on key compliance and governance matters.

With values like TEAM, PASSION, CURIOUSITY, and OWNERSHIP, you’ll be joining a collaborative, forward-thinking, client and customer focussed organisation. You’ll be working with a team who are warm, good-humoured, down to earth, and positive – quite a few of which have been with the organisation for many years and it’s still somewhere that continues to evolve.

Profile required:

• Qualified lawyer with at least 6+ years’ post-qualification experience.
• Strong and broad commercial drafting experience, including drafting without precedent.
• Strong experience drafting and negotiating IT and technology contracts, ideally from a procurement perspective (with no or minimal supervision) – ideally inhouse.
• Working knowledge of trade marks, protecting rights and managing trade mark portfolios.
• A mix of private practice and in-house experience.

This is a broad and varied role created to provide additional capacity within the Group Legal team during a period of organisational change. As commercial legal support transitions to the UK&I business on a dedicated basis, the role will ensure continuity of support across Group activities while the longer-term legal team structure and resourcing requirements are assessed. The position is offered on a fixed-term basis because the future demand for Group-level legal support is expected to evolve as the new operating model becomes embedded. As a result, the scope, responsibilities and ongoing need for the role may change during or at the end of the contract period, depending on business requirements.

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