Vice President: Senior Legal Counsel (Commercial Legal)

About the job

Together, we can empower Africa’s future—one narrative at a time.

With a rich history spanning over a century and a solid position as a local bank with experience across the region and beyond, working with our family presents the chance to participate in this exciting growth adventure, reshaping our future and determining our fate as a proudly African business.

Job Summary

accountable for determining and controlling legal risk for the business in South Africa and throughout Africa. Principal point of contact for the business team daily; accountable for proactive legal counsel, assistance, and risk management.

Job Description

Key Accountabilities

Accountability: Legal Risk

Accountability: Negotiate, draft and review Agreements

• Make sure contracts are written as fast and effectively as possible, taking precautions to safeguard the Bank and reduce hazards.
• Answer questions as soon as you can.
• Agreements are successfully concluded, taking into consideration how certain terms may affect the Bank’s approach.
• Examine, discuss, negotiate, and offer guidance on business contracts and timelines.
• Help with the preparation, negotiation, and structuring of commercial agreements and schedules for linked transactions, technology agreements, and standard agreements.
• Make sure that all potential hazards are adequately addressed in the agreements that are drafted.
• Make sure a purchase has legal due diligence done.

Accountability: Advisory and opinions

• providing stakeholders with superior and efficient legal counsel and services while integrating strategic thought into the recommendations provided.
• Verify the technical accuracy of agreements by checking to see if they meet the most recent legal criteria.
• keeping up with all pertinent legislation, case law, and regulatory guidelines and directives; this is achieved by regularly researching legal developments and participating in training sessions.
• Make sure that all risks are adequately covered in the agreements that the Bank enters into by comprehending the needs of the business, legal concerns, and potential business risks, then including provisions in the agreements to handle those risks and requirements.
• Make sure that you have acquired enough legal knowledge and have kept up with the most recent developments in the law at all times so that the agreements you design accurately reflect those developments.

Accountability: Management of Legal Risks

• proactive template updates and clause detection for ongoing enhancement.
• Make sure internal clients are informed about the legal policies in an acceptable and successful manner both in writing and verbally.
• proactive observation of the legal risk control framework’s compliance.
• Respect the Absa frameworks, policies, and procedures that are relevant to the position, exercising good judgment and appropriate risk management.
• When necessary, call attention to infractions and promptly request waivers and dispensations.
• As soon as a risk occurrence, incident, or issue is discovered, report it. If it’s important, report it using the business area’s established procedure.
• Recognize the causes of risk occurrences, incidents, and problems and devise a plan to avoid them in the future by addressing the underlying causes and accepting responsibility for the actions that have been identified.

Accountability: Stakeholder Management

• Create a trusted advisory network by establishing connections with important senior stakeholders in the Bank’s legal and business areas.
• Collaboration and timely, appropriate, and collegial involvement with legal colleagues from other teams, especially when dealing with business-related or other domain-related concerns (e.g. employment law).
• Issues that are technical, involve stakeholders, or have been unresolved for longer than three months should be promptly and proactively escalated to the manager. Contract review time should be scheduled with the manager far enough in advance to prevent last-minute rushes and delays.
• prompt and accurate reporting of concerns, with sufficient detail and written in a way that makes it simple to copy and paste into a General Counsel report Educate internal clients about legal terms, contractual clauses, and hazards.
• Present useful or educational material to internal clients through presentations, such as instruction on recently enacted laws or important legal precedents.
• Manage outside legal counsel if necessary.
  familiarity with the internal governance of the Bank.

Accountability: General

• proactive management of stakeholders and increasing the team’s visibility.
• Determine the situations in which contract automation can be used to guarantee effectiveness.
• The capacity and expertise to steer big, complicated negotiations is known as deal leadership.
• Create and preserve a network with high-level stakeholders by promoting casual conversations and get-togethers in order to increase the team’s exposure and profile.
• Fulfill your responsibilities in accordance with the Absa values, and respect them when interacting with clients, partners, and coworkers.
• To guarantee effectiveness and quality, provide stakeholders more than is necessary.
• Engage in projects and workstreams related to the legal function to show that you are a responsible and proactive team member.
• prompt completion of all required training.
• Mentor and coach younger members of the team.

Role/Person Specification

Professional/technical experience:

• 5-8 years of PQE minimum in the area of business law.
• Capacity to build credibility with key stakeholders and provide advice at a senior business level.
• It is desirable if you have prior experience developing and negotiating
• outsourcing agreements and/or technology agreements.

Academic And Professional Qualifications

• A suitable degree in law.
• admitted as a lawyer in RSA.
• a degree from a reputable university with strong academic standing.

Personal attributes

• the capacity to function both alone and together.
• Very strong interpersonal skills.
• abilities in communication.
• incredibly efficient and well-organized.
• outstanding ability to influence and negotiate.
• honesty and dependability.
• Excellent attention to detail.
• Business savvy.
• Risk prioritization, business understanding, and a strong commercial
• focus.
• Ability to prioritize tasks effectively, work under pressure, and complete tasks quickly while handling a big (and frequently changing) workload.

Education

Bachelor of Science with Honors in Military Science, Law, and Security (Required)

Absa Bank Limited is an affirmative action, equal opportunity employer. Preference shall be granted to qualified applicants from specified groups whose appointments would help achieve equitable demographic representation of our personnel profile and increase the diversity of the Bank in accordance with the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998.

Absa Bank Ltd maintains the right to cancel the scheduled appointment for the position.

How to apply
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