Head of Legal – 10 month FTC starting February 2025

Third Bridge
Company Description

Third Bridge is a market-leading investment research firm. We provide integrated solutions for the world’s top investors and business leaders to help them make smarter and faster decisions. No other company in the world provides the same holistic investment offering: our superpower is the combination of human insights and unique investor-led content with a global expert network. We serve over 1,000 investment firms, offering clients 24/7 coverage through our team of 1,300 employees located across ten offices.

Job Description

As the Head of Legal, you will be responsible for overseeing the day-to-day operations of the legal department, and for designing and implementing strategic and tactical initiatives to improve processes and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the department. You will be responsible for the management of the legal team, supporting them in managing their workload and any escalations.

As the Head of Legal, you will also act as the interim Data Protection Officer (DPO) for the Third Bridge Group (outside of China and Singapore) and be responsible for ensuring company secretarial activities of all group companies are managed effectively.

Team management and operations

1. Manage the global legal team based across China, London and New York to ensure a consistent global approach.
2. Ensure the legal team is a high-performing and effective team, recognised across the business who services its internal clients efficiently.
3. Encourage and support the team to constantly develop their skills and expertise, ensuring each has a personal development plan and provide feedback and support wherever necessary.
4. Actively seek out and implement new processes and technology to improve operational efficiencies and effectiveness within the legal team. This is the legal team’s KPI for 2025 so it will be a real focus of the role.
5. Identify tools/technology to effectively monitor workflow, provide transparency to leaders and help identify bottlenecks and opportunities for improvement.
6. Manage the team’s budget including forecasting, tracking and reporting during the financial year.
7. Conduct process audits to identify inefficiencies and areas for improvement.
8. In collaboration with business leaders develop and maintain a series of SOPs with business agreed KPIs for the team.

Policy management and adherence

1. Own, monitor and keep up to date the following legal policies: The Securities Dealing and Insider Trading Policy, The Communications Policy, The Modern Slavery Policy, The Anti-Bribery and Corruption Policy and the Privacy Policy.
2. Ensure the Third Bridge global statutory and regulatory update tracker is updated quarterly.

Corporate and company secretary

1. Ensure the company registers are up to date.
2. Manage and maintain shareholder documents around the Management Incentive Plan and Employee Share Option Plan i.e. share issues to and share purchases from managers and option grants to employees (and overseeing the annual required share scheme filings with HMRC).
3. Manage the company secretarial relationships for the Luxembourg-based TopCo and the Management Incentive Plan Trustee based in Jersey.
4. Ensure intercompany arrangements are up to date (transfer pricing, inter-company loans, data sharing).
5. Respond to due diligence questionnaires and KYC requests from third parties including shareholders and clients.
6. Companies House filings and other local filings.
7. Advise on the legal risks and requirements for new office and legal entity formation.

Intellectual Property

1. Advise in respect of the protection of intellectual property rights.
2. Manage Third Bridge’s trademark portfolio and liaising with TM agents.

Dispute Management

1. Deal with contract disputes with clients and specialist queries.
2. Advise in respect of employee disputes and investigations.
3. Provide advice in relation to restrictive covenant disputes (incoming and outgoing).
4. Respond to legal claims and cease and desist letters from companies claiming infringement of employment/confidentiality rights.

Data Protection

1. Act as the DPO for the Third Bridge Group (except China and Singapore).
2. Design and maintain Third Bridge’s Privacy Policies, procedures, and training.
3. Advise the business on the impact of data privacy and core compliance with global data privacy laws.
4. Liaise with regulators, responding to SARs and other data subject rights requests.
5. Deal with Data Breaches and maintain the data breach register.
6. Review Data Processing Impact Assessments and Data Processing Agreements.

Insurance and Risk Management

1. Work with the business to assess risks and mitigate them.
2. Ensure compliance with local laws and sanctions regimes.
3. Maintain appropriate insurance to cover business risks and liabilities.

Qualifications

1. Excellent communication skills both written and verbal.
2. 7+ years PQE (5 years legal operations experience).
3. Proven experience of dealing with C suite stakeholders.
4. Experience with legal operations and improving legal team efficiencies.
5. Experience working with a team based overseas and managing global contracts and risks.
6. Strong commercial acumen.
7. Strong knowledge and experience of data privacy laws.

Additional Information

1. Vacation: 25 days (which increases to 28 days after 2 years of service) plus UK Bank Holidays.
2. Learning: personal development allowance of £750 per year.
3. Health and wellbeing: private medical insurance and healthcare cash plan, a variety of health and wellbeing events to focus on mental health, Ride to Work scheme (savings on bikes and accessories).
4. Future and family: pension contributions of 4% (increases with tenure) and life insurance of 4x of your base salary.
5. Flexibility: work from anywhere for one month per year, 2 annual volunteer days, 2 personal days when life throws you a curveball and ‘Summer Fridays’.
6. Rewards: get points through our colleague-to-colleague recognition programme to spend on hotels, gift cards, donations to charity and more.
7. Social: weekly optional social gatherings, daily breakfast and snacks, social events.
8. ESG: CSR, Environment and Diversity & Inclusion (including Women at Third Bridge, Pride and Blkbridge).
9. Frontline Innovation: your chance to share your ideas for improvement through Hackathons and other events.

The successful candidate must, by the start of the employment, have permission to work in the country they are applying.

We know that to be truly innovative, we need to have a diverse team around us. That is why Third Bridge is committed to creating an inclusive environment and is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. If you are not 100% sure if you are right for the role, please apply anyway and we will be happy to consider your application.