Senior Counsel Pet Nutrition and Food UK

Job Description

Job Description:

We are hiring a Senior Counsel for our Mars Pet Nutrition and our Mars Food businesses in the UK, reporting to the Associate General Counsel Europe.

In this role, you are the legal advisor to the Leadership Teams of our Pet Nutrition and Food businesses in the UK. You are a member of the Mars Pet Nutrition UK Leadership Team, reporting dotted-line to the General Manager of the Pet Nutrition business.

As the general legal business partner of your business units, you’re accountable for a wide variety of legal issues except for trademarks and patents. You focus your day-to-day support on our Marketing, Sales, Corporate Affairs, Supply Chain and Commercial functions.

For 50% of your time, you also support the Associate General Counsel Pet Nutrition on Europe-wide legal issues and projects.

To succeed in this role, you will carry-out appropriate review processes, establish legal guidelines and recommend acceptable levels of risk taking. Faced with creative clients operating in a fast moving, complex and highly competitive environment, you are perceived as a business enabler.

You will develop close working relationships with other members of the Mars legal team across Europe and with our global legal expert teams e.g., the data privacy team, the trademarks team, the patents team etc.

You will need to travel at least 15% of the time.

What are we looking for?

Key Experiences

You are a Solicitor with 7 to 10 years post qualification experience acquired in the U.K. working at a Law firm and/or at a FMCG or Retail business (preferably US or UK group of companies).

Key Functional Skills/Knowledge

Demonstrate legal fundamentals

Legal budget management (Advanced)

External counsel management (Expert)

Oral and written communication (Expert) [English necessary, a second language is a plus]

Training Skills (Advanced)

Delivers Legal Excellence

Marketing and Advertising Law (Advanced)

Food Law (Essentials)

Unfair trading practices (Advanced)

Competition Law (Advanced)

Labor Law (Essentials)

Curiosity in all aspects of the Law is a must for a generalist.

Protects the business

Risk management (Expert)

Litigation management (Advanced)

Crisis management (Expert)

Contract drafting and negotiation (Expert)

Drives an Ethics and Compliance Culture

Ethical Leadership (Expert)

Corporate Governance (Advanced)

What will be your key responsibilities?

You manage all day-to-day legal work with the exception of trademarks and patents:

• Review and approve communications, advertising, promotions, and product claims
• Review and approve sales and procurement contracts
• Advise on consumer complaints
• Ensure compliance with corporate secretarial obligations and corporate governance as well as corporate policies and standards.

You manage our external legal resources:

• Identify and filter the legal issues which need to be reviewed by external legal counsel
• Ensure quality and consistency of work performed by external advisors
• Manages external legal budget of your Units.

You support the roll-out of the Compliance program locally

You Manage all dispute resolution & litigation other than trademarks or patents related

As a savvy professional you remain informed of legal developments and changes in the legal/regulatory environment

You Train associates on various aspects of the law

What can you expect from Mars?

Work with over 130,000 like-minded and talented Associates, all guided by The Five Principles.

Join a purpose driven company, where we’re striving to build the world we want tomorrow, today.

Best-in-class learning and development support from day one, including access to our in-house Mars University.

An industry competitive salary and benefits package, including company bonus. #LI-RM1

Mars is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. If you need assistance or an accommodation during the application process because of a disability, it is available upon request. The company is pleased to provide such assistance, and no applicant will be penalized as a result of such a request.