What is the opportunity?

The Senior Legal Advisor acts as trusted adviser to internal partners at all levels providing expert legal advice and guidance to business units. The role involves advising ensuring compliance with laws and regulations, supporting the development and implementation of policies and procedures, advising on strategy and contributing to the organisation's success.

The role requires an ability to balance commercial awareness with independence of mind, enabling the organisation to achieve its objectives, whilst identifying and managing risks and maintaining ethical standards.

This is a 6 month, temporary UK senior role requiring a skilled professional with seasoned post qualification experience and qualified in the laws of England and Wales.

Location:

This is a hybrid role with the primary office location as London or Bristol.

In this role, you will:

• Provide accurate, practical and timely legal advice on a broad range of matters, including the supply of Group and outsourced services, other contractual arrangements, legal aspects associated with engagement with UK strategic partners and distribution of BoI products and services, corporate governance, data protection, regulatory compliance and disputes.
• Work collaboratively across all departments to help shape and deliver on strategy and provide legal and regulatory advice from an early stage or when requested, in projects and programmes.
• Attendance at some UK governance meetings.
• Identify, assess and mitigate legal, ethical and reputational risks, constructively challenging where necessary, ensuring that decisions align with organisation's expressed approach to risk.
• Review, draft and negotiate a variety of contracts and agreements.
• Interpret and apply relevant laws and regulations to business activities.
• Assist business teams in understanding the legal implications of their activities, implementing policies and procedures, support the organisation in navigating new legal and regulatory developments.
• Support business units in understanding and handling legal risks, empowering the organisation to manage risks effectively.
• Collaborate with other departments to ensure cohesive legal strategies.
• Advise on regulatory and compliance matters, including those relevant to Consumer Duty, Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency, Payment Services, data protection, anti-bribery and anti-money laundering.
• Manage relationships with external legal counsel, ensuring efficient and high-quality support when specialist advice is required.
• Champion a culture of continuous learning, high performance and wellbeing, leading by example to increase cross functional collaboration, enterprise wide thinking and inclusion.
• Foster a positive risk culture that creates an environment in which risk awareness, behaviours and decisions about risk taking activities are considered together as part of a strong risk governance framework.

What will make you stand out?

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Strong understanding of relevant UK laws and UK financial services regulations, experience in providing legal research and writing and providing legal advice in a business context.
• Ability to manage multiple tasks and priorities effectively.
• Strong organisational skills and attention to detail.
• Strong integrity and independence of mind and decision-taking, with the ability to deliver difficult messages clearly, sensitively and in a timely manner.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to present complex legal concepts clearly to non-legal audiences.
• Strong commercial competence, with a solution-oriented approach to legal advice.
• High emotional intelligence, enabling effective collaboration and influence across all levels of the organisation.
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team.
• Excellent organisational and time-management skills, with the ability to prioritise competing demands.
• Strong ethical judgement, with a commitment to upholding professional standards and the rule of law.
• Familiarity with governance responsibilities and board engagement.

Essential Qualifications

A legal qualification and current practising certificate recognised by the legal services regulator in England and Wales, with extensive post-qualification experience, ideally including in-house roles in UK financial services.

More about the team

Group Legal Services (GLS) provides a wide range of significant transactional and advisory services to the Bank of Ireland Group and assists business in the identification and management of legal risk. The function has a Group-wide remit and reports to the Group Executive Committee.

Why work with us?

The Bank of Ireland company culture prioritises work-life balance with an opportunity for flexible working, along with 26 days annual leave and excellent pension contributions. Family can mean different things to different people; we offer 6 months paid maternity leave, an innovative fertility and surrogacy policy and working parent supports.

Your wellbeing is important to us; we have an employee assistance program, WebDoctor and financial wellbeing coaches available. We also encourage and support staff to pursue educational and professional qualifications to grow and enhance your career!

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