The Regional Senior Legal Counsel / Regional Legal Counsel (“LC”) will be based inSingapore and reporting to the Regional Head of Legal, APAC & Middle East. The regional legalteam consists of 10-15 legal professionals based in Singapore, India, Hong Kongand China, working together in a high-pressure but open, inclusive and mutuallysupportive environment.
The scope of work is very broad as the candidate is expected to support theAPACME region in a wide range of legal work in the areas including contractualsupport (especially in ANZ) and other geographies, corporate work, claims &dispute management, and other support for the APAC &Middle East region.
The ideal candidate should be a mid-level counsel with a LLB / LLM in law gainedfrom an Australian University.
Admission to Australian bar, experience working for an Australia business, background in litigation / arbitration / insurance /international trade (freight forwarding / shipping / aviation law) / Projects and M&A will be valued. Counsels in private practice with no prior in house experience will be considered.
Candidates who require visa sponsorship will be considered.
Roles and responsibility:
Contractual review & other legal support
You are required to draft and support the legal review of various commercial documents including but not limited to customer agreements, supplier agreements for the region (18 countries for both freight forwarding and contract logistics lines of business), especially for Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and other common law territories :
• Proactively partner and work with other colleagues in the region to negotiate contractual terms which are in line with our contractual policies and other group policies.
• Apply effective risk management techniques and offer proactive advice on possible legal issues in the region.
• Drive risk awareness through effective communication of legal risks to business units and managing directors of each country
• Provide legal support to other departments including data protection office, compliance and internal controls department
• Supporting internal governance policies and regularly monitor compliance to these policies
• Provide support to other legal teams (SCO Legal and Project Logistics Legal) as and when required.
• Prepare internal approval documents: BIC / RIC / GIC in consultation for approval and review by Regional Head of Legal
Corporate and Company Secretarial matters
• Provide corporate legal advice on development/growth projects, from confidentiality agreements and pre-contractual negotiations to structuring and negotiating acquisitions / joint ventures / divestments / restructuring and new entity creations across the APAC & ME region,
• Assist with any corporate matter including liaising with local teams, external lawyers, external corporate secretarial services in the implementation, coordination, and management of regional-wide or local corporate projects
• Legal research on applicable corporate laws and regulations for ad-hoc requests in the fields of corporate law
• Work with global tax counsels, finance team and external corporate secretaries to draft and/or support the legal review of corporate documents including but not limited to intercompany agreements, board resolutions
Trainings and Legal Management
• Provide contracts training to the APACME region, minimally twice a year on different topics (including contract review process, newcomer training, contract risk and pitfalls etc). Organize workshops in countries.
• Proactively partner and work with other colleagues in the region and globally to drive local alignment with regional and global initiatives, best practice, and knowledge sharing.
• Developing legal support processes to address cross-regional issues and recurring questions
Claims and Contentious Disputes
• Provide support on claims and disputes to various business units and product departments in APACME region
• Work with our insurance brokers to manage claims in line with our insurance claim process and policy
Regularly Updates & Continuous Monitoring
• Regularly input and revise legal analytics data especially pertaining to contracts, claims, legal spend, COMEX data.
• Support the management and implementation of our templates in APAC & ME, by reviewing and updating all services agreement templates and T&Cs in accordance with the Group policies and the local restrictions, manage our GEODIS APAC & ME Legal intranet and support the maintenance of the APAC & ME contract repository
• Provide timely updates of the status of all contracts and claims as well as provide recommendations to Regional Head of Legal to enhance mitigation
Relationship Management
• Cooperate with managers in other parts of the Group and always create value by acting in the best interests of Geodis when making decisions
Other Adhoc Support
• Keep abreast of changes in law and regulation, assessing impact on GEODIS and proposing risk mitigation measures
• Provide adhoc advice and support to the region on all topics, including labour, operations, licensing, IT, finance and so on.
• Support other Legal Counsel(s) as and when required
Requirements:
• Minimally a bachelor’s degree in law gained ideally from an Australian University.
• Admission to the bar, preferably to an Australian state bar exam.
• 6-8 years PQE
• Admission to Australian bar, experience working for an Australia business, background in litigation / arbitration / insurance / international trade (freight forwarding / shipping / aviation law) / Projects and M&A will be valued.
