Legal Counsel

Description

Purpose: To provide high-quality, commercially focused and pragmatic legal advice across the Group’s general commercial and property-related activities, with particular focus on SIPP and SSAS property matters, panel solicitor management, corporate property support, property disputes, compliance programme support and business-as-usual commercial advisory work.

The role is intended for a self-sufficient property lawyer who can manage their own workload, advise business stakeholders directly and identify when matters require escalation or specialist external support.

It also offers scope to develop broader commercial legal experience within a supportive in-house Legal team and regulated financial services environment.

Key Accountabilities and

Responsibilities: Property

• Act as a key Legal contact for property-related matters across the Group, building trusted stakeholder relationships and providing clear, practical and risk-based advice
• Manage relationships with the Group’s property panel solicitor firms, including service delivery, review meetings, fee discussions and alignment with internal requirements.
• Support the effective management of legal risk arising from SIPP and SSAS property portfolios, corporate property matters, facilities arrangements, office occupation matters, property disputes and operational property issues.
• Monitor relevant legal, regulatory and market developments and provide timely updates to stakeholders.
• Support property-related compliance and risk initiatives, advising on legal risks, process changes and control enhancements.
• Maintain property-related precedents, guidance notes and documentation, including instructing and managing external solicitors where matters are outsourced.
• Provide legal support to the Property Oversight team and other stakeholders on transactional property queries, platform migration activities, strategic initiatives and business-as-usual issues.
• Assist with property-related disputes, complaints risk and material fee debt recovery where there is potential corporate liability, customer impact, reputational risk or wider legal significance.
• Work collaboratively across Legal, Compliance, Operations, Facilities, Property Oversight and with external law firms to ensure property matters are handled efficiently, consistently and in line with the Group’s risk appetite.
• General Commercial
• Support drafting, reviewing, negotiating and providing commercially focused and pragmatic legal advice to stakeholders across the Group on supplier arrangements (including technology and software, intra-group and data arrangements) as well as other standard commercial arrangements with asset managers, discretionary fund managers and investment managers.
• Support proposition development and business change initiatives across the Group, advising on legal, regulatory and contractual considerations to enable the delivery of new products, services and strategic initiatives.
• Negotiate and assist in maintaining and updating template agreements used across the Group’s retail and Enterprise businesses, ensuring they remain aligned to legal, regulatory and commercial requirements.
• Support the development and maintenance of commercial precedents, guidance notes and contracting playbooks to drive consistency and efficiency across the business.
• Key

Competencies

• Strong technical property law skills, with the ability to advise confidently on a wide range of commercial property matters.
• Sound legal judgement and risk assessment, including the ability to distinguish between issues that can be managed pragmatically and those requiring escalation.
• Ability to manage a varied workload independently, prioritise competing demands and maintain quality and pace in a busy in-house environment.
• Excellent stakeholder management skills, including confidence in advising operational teams and senior stakeholders, and dealing with third-party service providers.
• Excellent teamworking and collaboration skills.
• Clear and practical communication style, with the ability to explain complex legal issues in a way that is accessible to non-lawyers.
• Commercial awareness and ability to support business objectives while managing legal and regulatory risk.
• Strong external counsel management skills, including instructing, challenging and overseeing external solicitors effectively.
• Continuous improvement mindset, with the ability to identify opportunities to improve precedents, processes, guidance and ways of working.
• Interest in developing broader commercial legal capability in-house.
• Knowledge and

Experience

• Qualified solicitor in England & Wales, with strong experience in commercial property law, ideally around 4–6 years’ PQE or equivalent experience.
• Experience gained in-house, in financial services, pensions, SIPP / SSAS property, investment platforms or another regulated environment would be advantageous but is not essential.
• Experience advising on commercial property transactions, leases, licences, subleases, property management issues and related documentation.
• Experience managing transactional property queries and working with external property solicitors.
• Experience in property litigation would be beneficial but is not essential.
• Experience drafting commercial contracts, negotiating supplier agreements and negotiating inter-company agreements would be beneficial but is not essential.

The role would be well suited to an experienced property lawyer who is keen to broaden their experience across commercial contracting, supplier arrangements and wider in-house legal support within a regulated financial services environment.

• Experience reviewing and maintaining precedents, guidance notes or standard form documentation would be beneficial.
• Good working knowledge of Microsoft Office and relevant business tools used to manage workload, documentation, reporting and stakeholder communications.
• Values and

Behaviours

• Positively demonstrate the Nucleus values and behaviours, acting with integrity and supporting a culture that is open, inclusive, collaborative and accountable.
• Provide clear, pragmatic and business-focused legal advice that helps stakeholders make informed decisions.
• Build trusted relationships across the business by being approachable, responsive and solutions focused.
• Take ownership of matters, follow through on actions and escalate clearly where required.
• Support continuous improvement by identifying opportunities to simplify processes, improve documentation and strengthen ways of working.
• Work collaboratively across Legal and the wider business, contributing to team resilience, knowledge sharing and shared success.
• A little about us

We’re the Nucleus Financial Platforms group and we help make retirement more rewarding.

People come first - whether it’s our colleagues, or the advisers and customers we support, we know that working in partnership and collaboration leads to the best outcomes.

Together, we’ve shaped the platform to how it is today.

We work hard, and we celebrate hard too.

Our ambition is to create a platform with a difference, putting the customer centre stage meant tearing up the rule book and starting from scratch.

We’ve come a long way since then, but our mission remains just as focused.

That’s why our culture, values, and social responsibility are things we keep at the top of our agenda – because we know they matter and have a big impact.

Our culture is one of the many things that sets us apart from the pack.

We want to have an environment where our people feel that they can make a real difference, know they’ll be rewarded for their efforts and more importantly, enjoy themselves at work.

Are we a perfect match? Check out this video and find out!

Inclusion and diversity at Nucleus

As with most things in life, who cares, wins. We really care about inclusion.

For us it’s not a tick box exercise; inclusion and diversity are embedded in our culture and everything we do.

It’s a commercial imperative.

It isn’t about being PC.

It’s about being future-relevant and durable.

We owe it to ourselves and the industry to ensure we are playing our part in creating a fair, balanced and transparent financial services sector.

More diversity means broader experience, a wider set of perspectives and a better collective ability to problem-solve.

And it means being more representative of customer groups, which supports areas such as product development.

At Nucleus, we offer a generous blend of benefits for the things that really matter to our people, including a non-contributory pension, bonus, enhanced parental leave, paid time off for emergencies, health and wellbeing initiatives and flexible working options.

If you’d like to find out more about us or the role, get in touch with Hannah in our People team.