Legal Counsel - Travel Experiences

Collinson is the global, privately-owned company dedicated to helping the world to travel with ease and confidence. The group offers a unique blend of industry and sector specialists who together provide market-leading airport experiences, loyalty and customer engagement, and insurance solutions for over 400 million consumers. Collinson is the operator of Priority Pass, the world’s original and leading airport experiences programme. Travellers can access a network of 1,500+ lounges and travel experiences, including dining, retail, sleep and spa, in over 650 airports in 148 countries, helping to elevate the journey into something special.

We work with the world’s leading payment networks, over 1,400 banks, 90 airlines and 20 hotel groups worldwide. We have been bringing innovation to the market since inception – from launching the first independent global VIP lounge access Programme, Priority Pass to being the first to sell direct travel insurance in the UK through Columbus Direct and creating the first loyalty agency of its kind in the travel sector with ICLP. Today we still invest heavily in innovation to ensure that we continue to deliver superior customer experiences.

Key clients include Mastercard, American Express, Cathay Pacific, British Airways, LATAM, Flying Blue, Accor, EasyJet, HSBC, Chase, HDFC. Our mission is focused on doing good beyond profit, which for us means we seek out opportunities for our people to share in our success and that we give back to the communities and people within which we work. Never short of ambition, the success of our business is delivered through the diverse and talented team of over 2,200 global colleagues.

Purpose of the job

We have an exciting new role opportunity within the Global Legal Team for a Legal Counsel. The role is responsible for providing legal support across all commercial and operational areas of the Travel Experiences division globally, with a particular focus on Lounge operations and Partnership contracts. This is a strategic position, offering legal advice to the business to help manage and mitigate legal and contractual risks.

Key Responsibilities

• Drafting and negotiating a wide range of Travel Experiences contracts with new or existing partners/clients - Including airport lounge access agreements, airport lounge alternatives contracts (e.g. dining, retail, sleep and spa), other additional travel benefit and value-added product contracts, clients/network agreements.
• Drafting and negotiating commercial contracts – such as master services agreements, statements of work, terms and conditions, services agreements and technology/equipment agreements.
• Advising on commercial legal matters within the Travel Experiences division – including intellectual property, commercial and contract law, litigation, compliance and data protection.
• Identifying and mitigating legal risks and conducting legal research on issues impacting the business.
• Collaborating closely with the business to understand current products, services and strategy in order to anticipate future legal needs and ensure contracts accurately reflect these.
• Promoting a culture of continuous improvement – for example through the use of CLM tools – by streamlining legal processes, standardising legal documentation and encouraging best practices in document management and compliance.

Knowledge, skills and experience required

• Legally Qualified in Commonwealth jurisdiction
• Excellent independent drafting skills with strong experience of commercial contracts
• Strong administration and organisational skill
• Strong attention to detail
• Experience of working within an international business and across multiple jurisdictions
• Excellent problem solving/solution based skills

Person Specification

• A flexible and positive mind-set with the desire to grow and learn
• Ability to work both collaboratively within a small team and independently
• Approachable manner with the ability to interact with a variety of different people and communicate legal issues to non-lawyers in a digestible way
• Enjoys the challenge of a diverse and variable workload
• Ability to adjust work priorities to meet the needs and challenges of a global and entrepreneurial business
• Ability to apply a pragmatic balance to risk assessment and seek guidance where required
• Ability to quickly grasp new areas and carry out independent research to fill any gaps in knowledge
• Confidence, initiative, questioning mind set, sense of humour and resilient attitude

Collinson is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes differences in all their forms including: colour, race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, neurodivergence, family status, age, individuals with disabilities and people from all backgrounds, cultures and experiences as we strongly believe this contributes to our on-going success. We are focused on continually evolving our purpose driven, high performing culture, providing an environment where our people have the opportunity to achieve their full potential and do interesting and meaningful work.

Our company values are: Take Action, Do the right thing, One team and Be insight led. These help guide everything we do internally in terms of how we think, act and interact, right through to how we deliver value to our customers and clients.

In your application, please feel free to note which pronouns you use (For example - she/her/hers, he/him/his, they/them/theirs, etc). If you need any extra support throughout the interview process, then please email us at ukrecruitment@collinsongroup.com.