Head Of Legal

This job is brought to you by Jobs/Redefined, the UK's leading over-50s age inclusive jobs board. We’re on a mission to protect society from fraud and money laundering. We’ve already protected over 3 million people through life’s big transactions, with a core aim to protect 3.5 million people by the end of 2025. Fraud and regulation are rising, costing the UK economy over £100bn every year; this makes it more difficult for businesses to protect themselves and their clients from fraud and money laundering.

Our co-founders Olly and Jack were led to this area when a friend was defrauded of £25K when buying their first property. At the time, anti-fraud technology didn’t exist, which meant that completing the anti-fraud checks required in these processes was largely manual. These big life moments should be exciting, but instead are often confusing and scary due to the painful process of completing these paper-based checks and the risk of fraud. Thirdfort helps businesses to facilitate these anti-fraud checks so that individuals know they can transact safely and seamlessly with professionals during these big transactions.

Our anti-fraud platform provides a secure way for professionals in regulated sectors like Lawyers, Estate Agents and Accountants to transfer funds and verify sensitive information through app-based document checks, facial recognition and open banking. Over 1000 businesses now trust Thirdfort to verify their clients. We are FCA regulated and have raised over $25m in capital from leading Fintech investors Breega and Element Ventures, as well as the founders of Zoopla, Funding Circle, Comply Advantage, Tessian, Fenergo and Fidel.

The Role: We’re seeking a dynamic, solutions-oriented commercial lawyer to lead our Legal team. The Legal team has been integral to Thirdfort’s growth story, working closely with the founders, C-suite, and all teams across the business to help achieve our goals. This role is varied, fast-paced, and demanding; you’ll balance needs from across the organisation, stay at the forefront of regulatory and industry trends, and help the business manage legal risk. You’ll manage an Associate Legal Counsel and set the legal strategy, whilst also being comfortable zooming in, getting hands-on yourself and being a strong partner to teams across the business.

We’re looking for somebody who is able to effectively scale the Legal function at Thirdfort, leveraging AI, technologies and designing effective ways of working that ensures our lean, but highly capable, legal function can perform and scale at its best.

Responsibilities:

• Provide strategic legal advice to the Co-Founders, C-Suite and broader leadership team as required.
• Set and manage objectives and key results for the team and contribute to the broader planning and management requirements of the business.
• Line management responsibility for an Associate Legal Counsel.
• Support Commercial teams to manage and close a wide variety of commercial deals with clients and partners.
• Improve legal and contracting processes, playbooks and templates.
• Enable teams by helping answer questions and solve problems on privacy, commercial law, AI and more.
• Give strategic and regulatory advice across the organisation, whilst being able to pay particular regard to the commercial context, to ensure the Legal function is an enabler of company growth.
• Manage the legal aspects of Supplier contracts, draft and negotiate outbound SaaS agreements, complex technology contracts, and key vendor agreements.
• Constantly iterate on the process for managing suppliers alongside other key procurement colleagues.
• Responsibility for managing and constantly iterating on the company’s data privacy compliance program.
• Work with the founders, Associate Legal Counsel and external counsel on potential corporate transactions i.e. fund raising or M&A.
• Constantly refine and iterate ways of working so the legal team can work more efficiently and support the needs of the business as they develop, considering process, people or tool improvement.
• Coordinate and implement any commercial litigation needs of the business.

You may be right for this role if you:

• Are a qualified solicitor (England and Wales) with at least 6 years PQE in an in-house legal department and/or a well-respected law firm.
• Have experience at a startup or high-growth company is a significant plus.
• Are an excellent communicator, negotiator, and have top tier writing skills.
• Have high motivation and the ability to operate independently and act decisively on BAU as well as novel legal issues, within a fast-paced, rapidly changing environment.
• Are hungry to learn about the world of fraud and money laundering and use your legal and professional background to add value to the business.
• Are pragmatic, output focused and enjoy working with and learning from colleagues from different teams and backgrounds.
• Are passionate about Legal Ops, AI and leveraging technology and smart ways of working to efficiently scale a legal function.
• Will not be driven by building a big team, but will instead focus on how you can drive the most value and impact whilst staying lean.

Life at Thirdfort: Driven by our values, our culture promotes a collaborative and open environment where Thirdforters can take ownership, have impact, and feel empowered when it comes to their growth and development. We understand the importance of our team's wellbeing and recognise a one-size fits all approach rarely works, that’s why we aim to provide the flexibility individuals need to work in the way that suits them, and their families, best.

Our Benefits: We include compensation ranges on our job ads in the spirit of Operating Openly and in an effort to make our interview process more inclusive. We list a range that aligns with our internal banding which is based on varying factors including external benchmarking for our stage and size as a business. In terms of how we decide where an individual fits within the band, we’d take you through the interview process and assess you against our internal performance framework which gives us further clarity. We’ll also have open conversations with you throughout the interview process (starting in the first stage call) so we can be as open as possible about compensation as we understand how important it is to ensure we’re aligned.

We’ve created our benefits package to reflect Thirdfort’s mission and values. We place a strong focus on Security first given what we do, extending this to our team’s physical, mental and financial security to support them through their big life moments. Our benefits exist to empower our team, ensuring they feel supported and able to work in the way that enables them to do their best work.

When you join Thirdfort, you’ll get immediate access to our flexible employee benefits package that aims to support you across these areas:

• Compensation - £110,000 - 140,000 p.a. base salary
• Flexible Working Hours
• Enhanced parental leave
• Customisable wellness budget and £250 WFH Budget
• Up to 30 days Working from Abroad
• Uncapped holiday
• Enhanced sick leave
• Private healthcare with our provider, AXA
• Regular company and team socials
• Uncapped budget for personal development
• Share options for all employees
• Enhanced employer matching pension scheme with salary sacrifice options
• Access to our Cycle to Work scheme

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.