Senior Legal Advisor

Petrofac is a leading international service provider to the energy industry, with a diverse client portfolio including many of the world’s leading energy companies. We design, build, manage and maintain infrastructure for our clients. We recruit, reward, and develop our people based on merit regardless of race, nationality, religion, gender, age, sexual orientation, marital status or disability. We value our people and treat everyone who works for or with Petrofac fairly and without discrimination. The world is re-thinking its energy supply and energy security needs; planning for a phased transition to alternative energy sources. We are here to help our clients meet these evolving energy needs. This is an exciting time to join us on this journey. We support flexible working requests and have adopted a hybrid approach for most of our office-based roles. We ask employees to be present in the office at least three days per week. Are you ready to bring the right energy to Petrofac and help us deliver a better future for everyone?

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

• You will be part of the Asset Solutions legal team with responsibility for providing proactive support in commercial legal matters and structuring solutions for disputes.
• Advise and provide commercially attractive legal advice, actionable strategies and risk mitigation to all functional areas within Asset Solutions.
• Proactively assess legal risks to the business and work with management to devise and implement systems and commercial solutions to manage risks and achieve commercial objectives.
• Provide strategic guidance and support on global legal work and ad hoc projects as required.
• Review, advise and feedback on contract terms, drafting and negotiations.
• Advise on implementation of corporate DoAs, contracting protocols (best practice) or similar.
• Attend internal and external meetings to support business opportunities as required.
• Support commercial functions with interpretation, analysis and drafting of qualifications (client-facing, subcontractors and suppliers).
• Provide assistance and drafting support for commercial disputes, claims and settlements.
• Make intelligent use of the external resources available and instruct and liaise with external counsel on non-routine legal issues.
• Negotiate and advise on creation, operation and closure of legacy and local country projects and corporate presences and assist in legal due diligence, draft, negotiate and advise upon corporate bonds, guarantees and securities.
• Coordinate and assist with legal administrative functions including keeping up to date records on bid activity, protocol escalation and external legal spend.
• Support consistency of corporate behaviours relevant to group standards published from time to time (e.g. anti-bribery and corruption, diligence, and governance).
• Support governance and ensure that Petrofac complies with its legal and regulatory obligations.
• Assist in development, improvement, implementation and delivery of policies and procedures, education, training and guidance including review, maintenance and updating of precedents.
• Optimise external legal spend by negotiating best rates, capped fee regimes and monitoring and recording external legal performance and spend.
• Progress internal billing approvals with relevant stakeholders.
• Helping with financial and audit requests on law firm appointments and billing information.
• Distinguishes between nice to have vs. essential and critical legal solutions.
• Exercises sound legal and commercial judgement for any of the accountabilities and tasks above.
• Identifies material legal risks and ensures that contract qualifications are optimised and that bids are not unnecessarily impacted in terms of client evaluations.

ESSENTIAL QUALIFICATIONS AND SKILLS:

• Few years of post-qualification experience as a qualified lawyer (solicitor/barrister) with a UK or equivalent practising certificate (although demonstrable experience will be considered irrespective of length of qualification).
• A strong and demonstrated knowledge of commercial contracts and experience with industry standard contract forms.
• Experience of work, disputes and projects in a variety of legal jurisdictions.
• Good communicator with a pragmatic, methodical, detail-oriented, flexible and dynamic approach.
• Realistic negotiator.
• Experience of driving intellectually complex issues to a firm, practical conclusion.
• Highly developed interpersonal skills to build and maintain complex, sensitive and influential relationships across a wide group of stakeholders.
• Proactive, prepared to be accountable for their actions and with a maturity of outlook.
• Ability to see the bigger picture and consider advice in the context of wider organisational goals/policies.
• Critical thinking, analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to self-initialise and perform tasks with minimal supervision and prioritise conflicting demands.
• Confident and capable of interfacing with senior management.
• The role requires active engagement with all parts of the business including BD, Commercial, Operations, Project delivery teams, HR, M&A, Treasury, Tax, Finance, Co Sec, Compliance and SCM.
• Maturity, excellent communication and persuasion skills are critical.