In-House Legal Counsel

Job description / Role

The Head Office of our long-standing professional services client is based in Dubai, with additional locations in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom, forming a total headcount of 100 employees. Having remained highly resilient during the pandemic, our client has taken on several new projects across the GCC and in Saudia Arabia in particular, and now requires a new Legal Counsel to assist the Senior Management Team with all corporate and commercial legal activities across the Middle East, Europe and Asia.

Supporting the organisation to ensure the mitigation of risk, the Counsel will actively participate in contractual negotiations and finalisation with clients and 3rd parties and will also be instrumental in the management of new client legal compliance and ongoing due diligence. Preparation of all PI insurance requirements and its impact on specific projects, all overall company legal compliance and offering strategic legal advice are the core focus of this demanding and fully involved role. Coordinating also with an additional external Legal Counsel regularly, the successful individual with be confident in their legal capabilities and have exceptional research, compliance, commercial and corporate knowledge.

You will actively review all current and pending agreements to identify risk and offer recommendations to the Senior Management Team and work very closely with the Senior Commercial Manager, Quantity Surveyor, Senior Project Coordinator and Project Directors to ensure complete due diligence, compliance and protection from any potential legal issues. Therefore, it is essential that you maintain your legal and industry knowledge to anticipate any changes in the law according to the relevant jurisdiction of any particular project.

You will be very much seen as the legal expert within the company and therefore, also provide legal support and work collaboratively with other internal departments including Marketing, Finance and HR. In addition, the Counsel will take the lead with regards to any legal disputes and support the Senior Management Team, including the Managing Partner with any additional matters such as, private wealth structure, property portfolio management, M&A, company liquidations and new company formation.

Requirements

This is an excellent opportunity to join an organisation in an exceptionally well established and award-winning environment. The office in Dubai showcases the company’s project capabilities and is a very modern, open space where the team work collaboratively to ensure a professional and highly proactive approach.

It is essential that you hold a legal degree and 3-5 years’ experience in a similar environment where you have been responsible for all corporate and commercial legal activities.

It is also essential that you have a stable and committed career to date and have excellent communication skills with native (or near native) English language capabilities and a robust, confident personality to advise a highly experienced and committed Senior Management Team up to Managing Partner level.

About the Company

Irwin & Dow was established by two highly experienced recruitment professionals, Tracey Irwin and Jocelyn Dow. We provide a refreshing approach by working in close partnership with clients and candidates within the Business Support, Secretarial, HR & Finance sectors.

Good staff are key to every business. We recognise and appreciate this, having over thirty years combined recruitment and executive search experience within the region.

Our main aim is to provide a specialist service to clients preferring to work with a bespoke consultancy.

Our values of discretion and diplomacy are paramount and our ultimate goal is to become a partner of choice for all our clients and candidates.