Legal Counsel

Thanks for checking out our vacancy, we're delighted you want to learn more about Dechra and our Legal Counsel (UK) vacancy.

Dechra is a growing, global specialist within the world of veterinary pharmaceuticals. Our expertise is in the development, manufacture, marketing and sales of high-quality products exclusively for veterinarians worldwide.

Here at Dechra, our values are embedded within our culture and thrive within our family of almost 2,000 colleagues globally. From manufacturing to marketing, (D)edication, (E)njoyment, (C)ourage, (H)onesty, (R)elationships and (A)mbition are at the heart of our everyday operations and the way we do business.

Approximately, Dechra employs 2,500 people and has a revenue of £760 million. Dechra has grown rapidly and, since 2015, has completed 30 acquisitions worldwide.

The busy global legal team in the UK needs an additional legal counsel to support the growing business. This role will suit a junior, qualified lawyer who wants to be exposed to a wide-variety of interesting work.

Aside from many types of commercial contracts, you will be exposed to corporate work and intellectual property matters. You will deal with colleagues across the globe who work in variety of fields such as research, manufacturing, regulatory, distribution, marketing and sales. Alternatively, you may find yourself working with colleagues from a support function such as Compliance, Company Secretarial, Finance, Tax, IT, Digital, HR or Internal Audit.

You will find Dechra a great place to develop broad legal skills and commercial understanding within a friendly environment. We are a collaborative and people-focused business where cameras are kept on. The applicant needs to be comfortable working with colleagues from many different cultures.

We know much legal work at Dechra will be new and challenging to any applicant but this is common in-house so we focus on our values and your core skills, attributes and behaviours. Please apply if you think you are a match and you have the confidence to try something new. We will want the new joiner to succeed and there will be support from senior lawyers in the UK and abroad.

We are based near Northwich, just south of Manchester, and work on a hybrid basis with two days in the office (Thursday + 1 other, Monday-Wednesday).

So, what will you be doing? As we've explained, in-house constantly brings challenges and we provide support wherever the business needs it. That said, you will encounter the following work-types (with appropriate support and supervision):

• Commercial contracts such as:
  • sales contracts such as distribution, warehousing and rebate agreements; advising on legally compliant rebate schemes
  • consultancy and service agreements, including MSAs
  • promotions and sponsorships
  • licences of intellectual property
  • variations
  • NDAs
• Corporate sales and acquisitions support.
• Early-stage disputes.
• Advice on all manner of topics, one day it might be the legality of Belgian rebate arrangements and on another South Korean competition law.
• Sometimes you will be instructing and managing external advisors, in the UK and overseas. You will be constantly liaising with internal stakeholders.
• We will expect you to contribute to the Legal team's internal training, its knowledge-base and templates. If we learn something new we share it with our legal colleagues.
• You might be asked to help train the business, design content for our AI training tool or add a document to the self-serve system we've developed. Or perhaps you'll investigate and bring to life a new way of supporting colleagues?

During recruitment we will focus on how candidates match our values and upon core attributes such as curiosity, common sense and resilience. We pride ourselves on being an inclusive employer and we embrace candidates from all walks of life. We're particularly keen to hear from you if you have/are:

• Interested to work and advise on commercial contracts.
• Keen to work in a fast-paced environment.
• A leaning towards practical solutions and plain English rather than the detail of the law.
• Comfortable taking some legal risks, in consultation with the business, including an understanding of triage.
• Enjoy working collaboratively with key stakeholders.
• Enjoy working with colleagues with a wide-variety of backgrounds.
• Willing to contribute to the team's activities - training, use of technology, template development and similar.
• Able to travel within UK and internationally.
• In-house experience, commercial contract experience, a scientific qualification, life sciences or veterinary sector experience, proficiency in Spanish or another language, technophilia and having a pet are all desirable but not essential