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Senior Manager- Engagement Terms/OCG, Belfast
Client:
Location: Belfast, United Kingdom
Job Category: Other
EU work permit required: Yes
Job Reference:
31d52d8acbed
Job Views:
77
Posted:
18.02.2025
Expiry Date:
04.04.2025
Job Description:
A&O Shearman is a new global industry-leading law firm, with 47 offices in 29 countries worldwide. Our fluency in English law, US law, and the laws of the world’s most dynamic markets, enables us to provide unmatched insight and seamless delivery to clients. We work on challenging and important deals and disputes that have the potential to shape the future.
We offer exceptional opportunities for our people; opportunities to work for the world’s leading businesses; to transform the status quo, and to deliver your best work, helping you and your career to thrive, while delivering unparalleled outcomes for our clients.
Whether you're helping clients solve complex challenges, transforming the ways we manage our business, or ensuring the smooth-running of our operations, this is an environment where you can belong and excel. We provide first-rate training and development, we are committed to diversity, equity and inclusion and we provide support and ways of working that help you optimise your wellbeing.
What truly defines a career with us? We recruit the best and ask for the best of you. And together, we will redefine success.
Department Purpose
The Engagement Terms Team (ETT) is a global function that provides a first-class service to the firm’s partners and fee earners offering strategic legal support on a wide range of client engagement terms and risk related issues. Engagement Terms are the contracts which we need to have in place with each of our clients. They are one of our most fundamental tools of risk management and cover most our key regulatory and commercial areas of risk as well as the relationships we have with our clients, so the breadth of responsibility and expertise required in this area is very great.
Role Purpose
The firm's varied and broad client base is taking an increasingly more sophisticated approach to their engagement of external counsel. A&O Shearman has recognised these client expectations and has created a specialised dedicated team of contract law experts who are working cross-jurisdictionally. Clients expect the firm to adopt a truly global and consistent approach to the way in we engage with them and they audit us against compliance with their engagement terms. It is essential to agree engagement terms which are compliant with firm policy, applicable laws and professional conduct rules while maintaining client and partner trust. This requires strong, credible and influential risk support in this area. It also necessitates dealing credibly and authoritatively with a range of partners, senior management, clients, and others. The consequences of failing to maintain appropriate internal controls to ensure compliance with engagement terms can be serious, including loss of business, litigation and reputational damage.
This role is essential to support the Head of the ETT to (i) set the strategic direction of the ETT and ensure the firm responds dynamically to evolving client and regulatory demands, (ii) be a trusted and strategic advisor to partners and other senior stakeholders, (iii) assist in developing and maintaining a robust programme of measures to help manage engagement terms and other client related risks. The ETT is a fast growing team and this role will take the lead in supporting the strategic growth of the team and ensuring that manual processes and procedures are fully operationalised.
It is busy and demanding but an excellent opportunity to be involved in shaping an exciting and global risk management function.
Role and Responsibilities
1. Act as a point of escalation for the ETT paralegals and in-house lawyers, with a particular focus on systematising responses and processes to ensure consistency and efficiency in handling complex issues.
2. Engage in identification, assessment, and management of risks associated with engagement terms, leveraging systems to analyse data across all jurisdictions within the firm's global network.
3. Lead on the delivery and maintenance of a fully systemised processes for engagement terms review with the ETT.
4. Lead the integration of advanced delivery products to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of the engagement terms review process.
5. Lead on the delivery of an engagement terms repository working closely with finance and IT.
6. Collaborate with the Head of the ETT to raise risk awareness, designing and delivering training that highlights the importance of systems in managing engagement terms and mitigating risk.
7. Provide advice to the global firm (including in country risk teams) focusing on the creation and refinement of systematised communication protocols with relationship partners and clients.
8. Promote efficient and competent service delivery, championing the use of systems to foster an environment of continuous improvement within the ETT.
9. Collaboration with colleagues across the wider business acceptance team to ensure the engagement terms processes are factored into and addressed with the business acceptance life cycle.
10. Support the Head of ETT in working with the firm's Head of Risk Operations on engagement terms related escalations arising from client audits.
11. Provide support to the client audit and compliance team on ad-hoc queries on all aspects of risk management.
12. Advising and supporting the firm's In House Legal team on client engagement and relationship issues, including advising on liability positions and tolerance for risk.
13. Advise business teams and the firm’s partners on client relationship and engagement terms, including drafting and fronting comms with relationship partners and directly with clients.
14. Support the Head of the ETT in team management issues including taking on line management responsibility.
15. Have flexibility to work outside normal working hours as and when required by the role.
Key Requirements
1. Strong organisational skills with the ability to plan ahead.
2. Excellent track record of systemising processes ideally within a business acceptance environment.
3. Excellent track record of working in a team and with senior management within a complex international organisation.
4. Strong commercial/business acumen with the ability to influence strategic thinking/direction through creative and pragmatic issue resolution with a focus on use of systems and processes.
5. A proven ability to work independently and proactively.
6. Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to interface at all levels and particularly to win the respect of the partner community, building and developing strong relationships.
7. Collaborative team player with the ability to nurture and work in a fast paced, intellectually rigorous environment.
8. High-energy individual who enjoys both the operational and strategic sides of this role and shows great flexibility.
9. Resilient; able to understand that credibility has to be earned in this environment and may take time.
10. A person of sound judgment, able to establish a high level of credibility in the organisation and act as a trusted advisor to the firm’s partners.
11. Ability to deal sensitively with difficult issues.
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