Legal Counsel / Rechtsanwalt

Location: Hamburg

Languages Required: fluent German and English

About the role

In this role, you will provide commercial legal advice to business partners in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Poland and to Northern Europe's (NE) HR team on labor law matters.

The role requires a high level of professionalism and integrity, with analytical, drafting, and negotiating skills. In particular in the area of commercial law and labor law. Strong experience in commercial matters, general understanding and basic knowledge of EU competition law and compliance matters is required.

We are looking for someone with a commercial pragmatic approach and ability to explain legal concepts in a clear and practical manner. You will work collaboratively with external advisors, in harmony with other market counsels and take initiative. You also need to be able to flex your style to suit context; be flexible in your approach to supporting different priorities and be confident to engage diverse audiences. For this, having excellent influencing and interpersonal skills is a must.

Purpose of the Role and Important Dimensions

The role will support the achievement of the NE growth strategy and Diageo’s Performance Ambition through providing creative, pragmatic and efficient legal support for long-term, sustainable success. This will include:

• Advise NE on European labor law matters by partnering with external counsels and ensuring that the internal perspective is included.
• Monitor and provide updates on changes to the regulatory landscape.
• Counsel on commercial issues (e.g. All types of commercial contracts, RGM, RTM transformation, third party distributor agreements, NRM initiatives and key partner and supplier relationships)
• Assist with development of team know-how and lead the processes for document and knowledge management, and records retention.
• Work closely with specialist global legal function teams.
• Guide on regulatory landscape and regulatory matters.

Top Accountabilities:

• Enable achievement of our Ambition: provide proactive and fit for purpose legal advice and support to the business in a manner that will enable Diageo to achieve outstanding results and attain the Must Dos. Always supported by our key outcome of “Credibility & Trust: trusted by all partners for doing business the right way, from grain to glass”.
• Reputation Management: Support the creation and embedding of great governance, effective compliance and risk management. Providing proactive input to prevent and address key business risks, handling issues to mitigate impact.
• Cost Management: Contribute to Productivity agenda. Ensure effective management of end-to-end legal spend, and handling variances to budget to deliver savings. Ensure all external legal budget and spend data are recorded on Busylamp and, in collaboration with Procurement, use appropriate levers to achieve savings.
• People Growth: have a meaningful dedication to personal growth and capability building, aligned behind and accountable for business performance.

About you

• EU qualified lawyer, with 8+ years of commercial law practice experience, gained in leading law firm or in-house.
• Excellent track record of managing legal agenda, dealing effectively with external legal service providers.
• Excellent knowledge and understanding of legal issues relevant to the commercial businesses and general understanding of labor law.

Our Offer

• An inclusive company culture that puts employees and their development first
• A competitive salary with bonus and many benefits that suit your lifestyle
• An industry leading parental leave policy
• …and of course, THE best colleagues!

Celebrating our inclusive and diverse culture is core to Diageo’s purpose of “celebrating life every day everywhere”. This purpose is, in itself, inclusive in nature, as it values everybody irrespective of background, disability, religion, gender identity, sexuality or ethnicity.

We know that for Diageo to thrive and to realize its ambition, we depend on having diverse talent with a range of backgrounds, skills and capabilities in each of the 180 countries in which we operate and to reflect our broad consumer base.

Flexibility is key to success in our business and many of our staff work flexibly in many different ways, including part-time, compressed hours, flexible location.

We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process and to perform essential job functions.

Don’t let anything stop you from applying!