Legal Counsel in City of London

MarketAxess is on a journey to digitally transform one of the world’s largest financial markets, enabling the shift from analog, phone-based trading to a fully electronic marketplace. Our platform makes trading fixed‑income more accessible, ultimately improving transparency, efficiency, and competition in the marketplace.

The Role

As part of the Legal team, the Legal Counsel will be involved in a broad range of legal in‑house disciplines and opportunities and will have the opportunity to get involved with business matters from the outset. This role is an excellent opportunity to play a key part in helping to maintain a strong legal culture and in supporting the business to lawfully achieve its growth ambitions. Reporting directly to Assistant General Counsel and working closely with other members of the team in EMEA and APAC Legal and Compliance team (located in London).

The Legal Counsel will work as a team member of the EMEA & APAC Legal team, and shall support the team’s workload generally.

How You’ll Make an Impact

• Being first point of contact in contractual processes and vendor management, asking initial questions and working with internal stakeholders to understand the types of services, and identify any legal and regulatory implications, outsourcing, privacy, intellectual property, liability, insurance, employment etc and to proactively manage to resolution as necessary.
• Advising, negotiating and drafting commercial contracts for a wide range of services, both incoming and outgoing, such as vendor agreements, software license agreements, data contracts, client agreements and amendments for new products and customers, standard terms of business, intra group agreements and NDAs.
• Review and possible renegotiation of existing contracts due to new regulatory obligations imposed pursuant to the forthcoming Digital Operational Resilience Act.
• The candidate will be expected to take on primary responsibility for drafting and negotiating such agreements, and representing the company on commercial negotiations, and proactively managing the negotiations through to execution of the contract, with minimal supervision and escalating as appropriate.
• Managing high volume contractual workflow and demand for legal support, by regular interaction with the business.
• Liaising with the internal HR team as the first point of contact for employment related queries and first drafts of agreement (with supervision); and ensuring proper distribution of executed agreements.
• Assisting with company secretarial work and liaising with EU Finance team on ad hoc matters.

What We’re Looking for

• Mid level UK/ Common law qualified lawyer with some experience of working without close supervision.
• In house experience strongly preferred.
• Experience in drafting and negotiating commercial contracts without close supervision (data or software in particular) governed by English law or other common law jurisdiction required.
• Experience in drafting employment agreements and in‑house employment matters preferred.
• Corporate / technology experience preferred.
• An understanding of privacy law and outsourcing rules in the EU or UK, sufficient to incorporate into contracts and understand client queries, is strongly preferred.
• Strong written and verbal skills, ability to communicate efficiently and succinctly.
• Excellent grammatical and drafting skills.
• An enjoyment of contract drafting and interest in the law, attention to detail.
• Organised, highly efficient, diligent and ability to prioritise pro‑actively.
• Ability and/or willingness to work with software that supports the business such as Salesforce, CRM tools, contract management software.
• 100% Reliable and responsive. Self starter with ability to pro‑actively manage own workload and operate without constant supervision.
• Willing to do all levels of work in a cooperative small team ‘all hands on deck’ environment.
• Ability to challenge robustly and to think independently.
• In addition to English – fluency in any of German or French is useful but not essential.

What You Can Expect from Us

• Central Location: based at our city offices near St Paul’s.
• Free Food: We provide lunch each day of the week when the employee attends the office via our vendor Feedr as well as breakfast cereals, office snacks and drinks from our free vending machines.
• Paid Time Off: 25 days annual leave entitlement plus 2 charity days.
• Reward for your service: We offer a two‑week bonus holiday after completing each 5 years of service.
• Core benefits: Besides competitive standard benefits package we offer private medical (PMI) for family, Cash Plan, health screenings, dental cover, 6X life assurance, critical illness cover, income protection, pension, car leasing (Tusker electronic cars), reimbursement for wellness stipend, interest free season ticket loan and a “Share Incentive” plan.
• Tuition Assistance and Professional Training: Benefit from on‑demand learning, boot camps, and opportunities to attend conferences.

Collaboration and innovation are integral to our success – it’s how we got to where we are and how we’ll maintain and grow our competitive advantage. We believe this best happens in an office environment. Employees work in the office 4 days a week. This approach still allows for flexibility depending on the business function you work within but also helps us maintain a collaborative office environment long‑term.