General Counsel - Part time job share, 3 days per week

Salary: £97,000 FTE, £58,000 Pro rata

(This role is a job share, 3 days per week, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday)

Closing date: Wednesday 22nd January

About the role

The position is an in-house legal role, working as part of a Governance team at Motability Foundation. This is a job share between two part-time professionals working 3 days per week.

We are a Royal Charter company and our group structure includes an Endowment Trust and a trading subsidiary, allowing for a great deal of variety in the role with the opportunity to make improvements.

You will provide legal advice and assistance to us and help manage legal risk. Both Governance and Operational matters are supported so the Charity’s overall interests may be advanced and protected. This includes providing legal advice on a wide range of legal matters such as grants, contracts, disputes and other operational or governance matters. You will also help manage any external legal resource we engage.

What you’ll be doing

• Advisory: act as General Counsel in providing (or procuring) sound, thorough and practical legal advice to the Charity and in particular its management so that the Foundation and its beneficiaries’ interests may be best protected and advanced in legal matters and negotiations.
• Legal process: support best practice throughout the Group’s activities and specifically in legal and related governance matters.
• Support compliance and regulatory matters across the Group’s activities.
• Keep abreast of current legal and regulatory developments in order to identify and consider specific issues/topics of interest to Motability as and when they arise and recommend any response to these.
• Support the Board of Governors (closed session) with minute-taking.
• Relationship building across the organisation – Instruct, or assist in instructing, external counsel where required.
• Representation of charity externally on legal matters e.g. network of charity lawyers or other specialist lawyer networks.

Your experience

• Experienced professional lawyer, must be registered to practice as a solicitor in England & Wales.
• Wide legal knowledge, strong commercial awareness and mature judgement; able to generate effective solutions to identified issues.
• Analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Preferably in-house, generalist experience with a self-sufficient and independent work ethic.
• Strong communicator, written and verbal.
• Ability to influence at all levels.
• Ability to work as part of a team and build and maintain constructive relationships with stakeholders, working effectively with the other part-time post holder to ensure a full legal service.
• Ability to keep up to date on legal matters relevant to the Charity and maintain an external focus and an awareness of the environment in which Motability Foundation operates.
• Integrity, tact, diplomacy and absolute confidentiality.

Reporting lines and relationships

Reports to: Head of Governance

Key relationships:

• Motability CEO and Motability Chair.
• Motability Directors, Chief Investment Officer, Company Secretary, Heads of Functions, Senior Managers and all staff.
• Motability Operations Management and legal function.

Extra Information

• The role is 3 days a week in a blended working office/home framework. Wednesday is usual handover day between the post holders at our head office.
• The post is based in Harlow (Essex), with some travel to London.

About us

At Motability Foundation we fund, support, research and innovate so that all disabled people can make the journeys they choose. We oversee the Motability Foundation Scheme and provide grants to help people use it, providing access to transport to hundreds of thousands of people a year.

We award grants to other charities and organisations who provide different types of transport or work towards making transport accessible. We also carry out ongoing research, in partnership with disabled people and key stakeholders in the industry, to inspire innovations that continue to champion accessible transport for all.

What Motability can offer you

A career with Motability can offer you so much more than earning potential. We pride ourselves in offering some fantastic benefits and a culture to match, some of which includes;

• Holiday – 26 Days + 8 Bank Holidays, increasing to 28 days after 5 years’ service.
• Health and Wellbeing – We offer private health care with BUPA alongside an Employee Assistance Programme, eye tests, flu vaccinations, enhanced sick pay and discounted corporate gym membership. We take your physical AND Mental Health seriously, with our dedicated mental health first aiders you will have support and understanding from your colleagues.
• Family Friendly – We offer enhanced Parental Leave inclusive of Adoption Pay and we understand that families require flexibility, we provide time off for dependants, flexible working hours and the option to work from home. Life Assurance is 4 x your salary.
• Diversity and Inclusion – We value everyone’s unique qualities and celebrate having a diverse and inclusive culture where everyone feels safe to be their authentic selves, no matter their age, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability status, neurodiversity or otherwise. This is embedded in to our values and we celebrate our differences and create awareness throughout the year.
• Celebrating Success – We love to recognise people that go above and beyond with our Spotlight Award as well as having team celebrations and social events throughout the year.
• Our culture – In the Motability office we “dress for our day”, it’s an incredibly welcoming and inclusive environment where we look to support your career, we offer a mini bus service from Harlow Town centre and station for those using public transport to reach us and there are plenty of free hot beverages for when you arrive.
• Pension – Up to 15%, inclusive of a 10% non-contributory addition and Motability matching your contributions up to 5%.

How to find out more?

To find out more regarding the vacancy and for the full job description, please contact our Talent Team at:

Here at Motability Foundation, we embrace and value Diversity, Inclusion and Equity which means bringing your full self to work. We encourage and welcome all applications, regardless of age, gender identity, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or disability.

We are a disability confident employer, so please do make us aware of any reasonable adjustments you might need throughout both the recruitment process and to work with us.

We are committed to offering to interview every disabled applicant who meets the minimum criteria for the job. Once you have applied please send us an email stating that you have a disclosed disability and we will offer you an interview.

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