Head of Legal

Summary

Join MOO's Legal team as Head of Legal for a 9-12 month contract, providing maternity cover. Reporting to the CFO, you will lead all legal matters, advising teams and senior leaders. Responsibilities include managing day-to-day legal operations, negotiating commercial deals, and ensuring compliance. You will also develop the legal plan, aligning with MOO's strategy, and coach the Legal Counsel. The ideal candidate is a UK-qualified solicitor with 10+ years of experience, including in-house experience in a tech or e-commerce company. The role requires strong leadership, communication, and risk management skills. MOO offers various benefits, including paid time off, a matched pension scheme, share options, private healthcare, life insurance, and flexible work schedules.

Requirements

• You’re a UK-qualified solicitor (or equivalent), with 10+ years of legal experience, including a material amount of time spent in-house (at least 2+ years), ideally some of which is in a venture capital backed tech, e-commerce or high-growth company
• You’re comfortable leading legal strategy and advising execs - but you’re also happy rolling up your sleeves and getting into the weeds. You’re likely a generalist, happy to work on your own or in a small team, and know your way around corporate matters, corporate governance, commercial contracts, data protection, IP and employment. You can dive into the day to day operational aspects of the job but you also know how to handle the subtleties of board and exec management, from board minutes to advice
• You can explain complex legal things in plain English. And you know when to say “yes, and here’s how,” showing your ability to get things done and implement solutions
• You’ve got a good feel for risk, context and commercial priorities. You know what matters most and how to get to a decision, understanding the difference between low and high-risk choices
• You’re collaborative, curious and calm under pressure. You’re not precious, and you take pride in building trusted relationships and getting buy-in
• You’re a safe pair of hands, with great judgment, attention to detail and a strong ethical compass
• You will be comfortable with ambiguity and taking the initiative based on risk assessment and prioritising the things that matter the most

Responsibilities

• Leading the Legal Function: You'll be our most senior legal voice during the maternity cover, confidently leading the sub-function and acting as a trusted advisor to the CFO, leadership team, and Board. You'll contribute your expertise to strategy and budget planning, looking after the mid-term needs of the legal sub-function
• Driving Operational Excellence: Manage day-to-day legal matters across the business, from negotiating complex commercial deals to advising on risk, compliance and regulation. You'll champion using established processes, seeking improvements within the legal sub-function
• Pragmatic Decision-Making: Confidently make effective decisions, quickly handling low-risk matters and thoughtfully approaching high-risk ones. You'll evaluate past decisions, learn from mistakes, and apply logic, judgment, and experience, even with missing information, to ensure the right levels of clarity for your team to perform
• Cross-Functional Partnership: Work across the business to make legal simple, translating complexity into clarity for teams like sales, product, people, finance, and marketing
• Executive Partnership: You’ll advise senior leaders, including the CFO and other C-suite, as well as the board and chair, in a pragmatic and commercial manner, translating legal risks into tangible headlines. You’ll take on company secretarial matters, handling board agendas, documents and minutes
• Coaching & Empowering the Team: You'll coach, support, and manage our brilliant Legal Counsel, actively developing learning opportunities and career paths, give feedback and hold the team accountable for outcomes
• Proactive Risk Management: Keep a keen eye on emerging risks and regulations that affect MOO - from product regulations, consumer law, IP, and ESG to AI
• Optimising Legal Operations: Build on and improve the systems, processes, and legal ops that will help MOO scale confidently, continuing to maintain levels of trust within the business by creating the right levels of empowerment and accountability
• Managing External Relationships: Look after our external legal relationships, budget, and resourcing, identifying the help and support needed for the sub-function
• Shaping our culture: You’ll consider and live the MAKEIT values when doing all of the above!

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience advising on US law
• Company secretarial experience in a VC or PE backed company
• E-commerce experience
• Familiarity with ESG, consumer-facing tech and/or product compliance

Benefits

• 25 days holiday rising by one day for each year here (for 5 years)
• A matched pension scheme
• MOO’s share option scheme
• Paid parental leave
• Private healthcare
• Life insurance
• A season ticket loan
• A cycle to work scheme
• Flexible work schedules with hybrid and remote working for certain roles as well as a Work From Anywhere program