Associate General Counsel

This is a senior in-house legal role, responsible for leading the provision of all cross jurisdictional and cross functional legal advice to support John Crane across APAC (except for China, Hong Kong and Taiwan), with a primary focus on drafting and negotiation of our high value, complex, customer contracts for our sales teams across the region. The Legal Director, APAC will be a visible presence across all APAC countries within which John Crane operates and will act as an ambassador to promote Smiths Group Leadership Behaviors The Legal Director, APAC is a key member of the JC legal team and will be expected to be fully involved in not only the delivery of the John Crane Legal service in APAC but supporting the General Counsel, John Crane with the setting, execution and delivery of financial year objectives for each of John Crane and Smiths Group. The successful candidate for this role MUST have extensive experience of:

(i) drafting high value, complex, sale side agreements

(ii) leading the negotiation of legal and commercial areas of risk, with support from other stakeholders

(iii) distilling / summarizing key areas of risk (on a priority basis) in order to escalate and seek approval for waivers of risk from senior executives across multiple functions.

The ideal candidate for this role will have a Digital / Technology background (particularly experience negotiating and drafting SaaS contracts) and would be comfortably being primarily responsible for supporting the General Counsel, John Crane with the negotiation and drafting of digital supplier and customer contracts and templates to support John Crane’s Digital agenda. Reporting to the General Counsel, John Crane, the Legal Director, APAC will be a primary contact for very senior stakeholders within the whole of the APAC region within John Crane. The ability to rapidly build personal credibility and ensure effective stakeholder management across the group is critical to this role. Change management skills, leadership and experience will also be key to helping the General Counsel, John Crane to role out key initiatives and "ways of working" across the APAC region. The Legal Director, APAC will also act as an ambassador for Smiths Group Leadership Behaviors, working closely with the Group Ethics & Compliance Team and other Smiths Group Legal team colleagues to manage ethics and compliance related issues.

• Responsible for providing strategic corporate and commercial legal advice across John Crane, APAC supporting on all legal matters including M&A (with support from CoE), commercial, technology, data protection, real estate and compliance related matters. Leveraging support of CoE colleagues as required.

• Primary responsibility will be supporting JC colleagues to negotiate and draft high value, complex, sale-side contracts with John Crane customers across the region.

• Additional responsibility to support Procurement colleagues across the region who manage John Crane supply chain.

• Additional responsibility to support John Crane Digital Team (based in UK and US) with drafting of Digital supply and customer contracts (including for SaaS), and all template agreements.

• Responsible for supporting SVP and GC, Ethics & Compliance, General Counsel, India and General Counsel, APAC to manage and oversee all ethics and compliance related issues in the region.

• Prime contact for key John Crane stakeholders, including portfolio managers, GMs and HRBPs for regions in scope in addition to other senior stakeholders

 • Negotiation of key contracts with JC customers, partners and suppliers and management of legal issues arising from those contracts.

• Oversight of agents and distributor contracts with support of JC Contracts Manager.

• Legal Support for root cause analysis reviews in the event of customer quality issues.

• Familiarity with data protection and GDPR compliance related issues to the extent relevant to drafting and negotiation of digital and technology contracts.

• With support of Group E&C, provide legal support to Trade Compliance team to manage operational impact of sanctions on JC.

• Business partnering with key stakeholders on "blue sky thinking" to develop legal models aligned to commercialization of new products.

• With the support of colleagues in Group E&C, manage ESG related responses to customer questionnaires.

• Compliance and other legal training for JC colleagues in sales and other functions. You should note that your title and job description are not exhaustive and the Company may require you from time to time to undertake other reasonable tasks within your capacity.

Required Law School Bachelor's Degree Qualified Law A qualified lawyer from an accredited law school in APAC.
1. Private practice experience in a corporate or commercial practice group within a law firm covering both local and international matters.

2. Corporate / Commercial experience in a senior in‑house role.

3. Extensive commercial contracting experience – specifically negotiation of high value, complex, sale-side contracts.

4. Risk review experience – i.e. escalation of risk issues to senior executive stakeholders Digital / Technology / Software Legal experience – specifically drafting of supplier and/or customer Digital contracts, especially for SaaS. Oil / gas sector experience EU data protection experience Comments English – Fluent (written & spoke) – must be able to draft and negotiate complex contracts in English.
 
 
Technical Knowledge and Skills

· Strong technical drafting skills with demonstrable experience of drafting a variety of corporate and commercial agreements / documents, particularly seller focused agreements (for both products and services).

· Wide negotiation skills / experience. Specifically experience of negotiating high value / high risk commercial contracts with vendors and customers.

· Strong Digital / Technology skills, particularly with negotiation and drafting of SaaS and technology contracts.

· Training and awareness experience. Specifically experience of producing training materials to raise awareness of core legal principles among colleagues and stakeholders. · Wide experience in managing the requirement for targeted legal advice on multi-jurisdictional projects, to include project management of global projects to solve legal business challenges and engage stakeholders.

· Experience of "general counsel partnering" – demonstrable experience of managing a variety of legal matters including M&A, corporate, real estate, IT and commercial, data protection; leveraging external counsel to support the provision of timely, pragmatic advice across a variety of practice areas.
 
Other Skills / Experiences · Proven track record of thought leadership to influence business outcomes aligned to mitigation of legal risk to support new business opportunities. · Change Management - proven effectiveness at driving change with strong engagement of others to contribute to successful execution. · Proven Programme Management capability - ability to coordinate and manage a series of complex workstreams within an overarching programme of works using cross-divisional and cross-functional resources. · Strong collaboration and influencing skills to mobilise senior colleagues outside and inside the legal function in support of global people projects. · Continuous Improvement mindset in relation to delivery of legal service. · Proven Programme Management capability - ability to coordinate and manage a series of complex workstreams within an overarching programme of works using cross-divisional and cross-functional resources

With colleagues stretching across the globe, we are proud of our diversity. To foster inclusivity, we run employee resource groups (ERGs) to provide a safe space for employees to connect and support each other. Our cross-business ERGs include Veterans, Pride Network, Black Employee Network, Women@Work Network, and Neurodiversity. 

Across our company, we recognize excellence, culminating in the Smiths Excellence Awards, our annual celebration of the most extraordinary activities, people, and projects that best showcase our strengths and help drive our business forward. We announce these on our annual Smiths Day, a global celebration of Smiths around our network. 

Join us for a great career with competitive compensation and benefits, while helping engineer a better future. 

We believe that different perspectives and backgrounds are what make a company flourish. All qualified applicants will receive equal consideration for employment regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, economic status, disability, age, or any other legally protected characteristics. We are proud to be an inclusive company with values grounded in equality and ethics, where we celebrate, support, and embrace diversity.

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