Legal Operations Manager (12 Month FTC) in Bristol

Our Media is a leading special-interest content business, based in the buzzing, creative city of Bristol. We're home to market-leading brands in craft, cycling, science and nature, homes and music. We help our audiences pursue their passions through highly trusted, original content - in print, video and online. Our much-loved brands include BBC Science Focus, BBC Wildlife Magazine, Your Home, Gathered.how, BikeRadar and Cycling Plus. We also have an award-winning content agency that works with major charities, brands and membership organisations to help them tell their stories and engage audiences better - in print, video, and online.

The Legal Operations Manager role is a key role, acting as the central point of contact for legal and contract-related matters across the business, managing contract workflows, triaging legal queries, coordinating with external legal counsel, and improving legal processes, systems, and guidance.

• Act as the first point of contact for legal and contract-related queries from the business.
• Triage requests and identify what can be handled through templates, playbooks, or existing guidance, and what needs to be escalated to external legal counsel.
• Coordinate with external legal counsel on active matters, including briefing, prioritisation, follow-up, and tracking.
• Help manage legal spend, including matter tracking, invoice review, and monthly budget monitoring.
• Maintain a central record of legal matters, risks, key deadlines, and status updates.
• Help develop and improve legal intake, approval, and escalation processes.
• Support the creation of practical guidance, FAQs, templates, and self-serve materials for routine business matters.
• Help embed legal tech, automation tools, and contract management systems into day-to-day workflows.
• Deliver basic training to internal teams on legal processes.

• Manage the contract lifecycle from request through to review, negotiation, approval, signature, storage, and renewal.
• Coordinate contract negotiations with internal teams and external counterparties.
• Identify non-standard terms or risk issues and elevate them to external legal counsel where needed.
• Maintain contract trackers, renewal calendars, and key obligations registers.
• Ensure contracts are properly approved, signed, stored, and easy to retrieve.
• Develop and maintain standard form agreements, clause banks, and contracting guidance.
• Monitor turnaround times, common negotiation issues, and process bottlenecks.

• Excellent organisational and stakeholder management skills.
• Experience managing multiple matters and priorities across different business teams.
• Comfortable working with external legal advisers and managing spend.
• Commercially minded and practical in approach.
• Experience in legal operations, contracts management, paralegal work, commercial operations, or a similar role.
• Drafting, communication, and negotiation skills for routine contract matters.
• Understanding of contract processes and common commercial terms.
• Experience with contract management tools, document workflows, and legal tech systems.
• Media, content, publishing, advertising, or digital business experience would be beneficial.

We respect and value differences. We believe that when people from different backgrounds and with different perspectives work together, we can create the most value for our people, readers, customers, and society. If you are excited about this role but your experience doesn't align perfectly with everything listed in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway, as you may still be a good fit for this or other roles.

We know we create great things and have fun when we come together in person and collaborate. We also know that working from home brings great benefits in terms of being able to focus on our work, and manage our personal lives around our roles. With this in mind, we have established a hybrid working pattern, with 60% of the working week spent in the office. Our people also benefit from a flexi time policy, and a flexi location policy which gives everyone the opportunity to work from another location for two weeks during the year. We are open to discussion about flexible working requests for any flexibility needs not covered by these policies.

• Pension contribution matched to 5%
• Season ticket loan
• Hybrid working pattern, flexi start/finish time
• 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays, plus Christmas closure, plus your birthday off
• Option to buy/sell up to 5 days holiday a year
• Social committee, regular in-house learning events
• 4x life assurance

We strongly believe that work is not just about what we achieve, but how we achieve it. We want our people to thrive and develop, and we want to effect positive change in the world. To put that spirit at the heart of our business, we co‑created a set of values with input from everyone here. Our values are: Always curious, Be the best we can be.

We also have a sustainability strategy that is built on five key pillars: Research, Reduction, Recycling, Responsibility, and Reporting. We take pride in our strong partnerships across our complex supply chain to drive emission reductions. Additionally, our office building, Eagle House, is a zero‑waste facility powered by solar and renewable energy.

Please note the closing date for this role is Friday 22nd May 2026. We review CVs on an ongoing basis and may close the role early due to high interest.