Unilever seeks an exceptional individual to play a key operational role to deliver our strategy and to manage and grow the legal shared service function in Bangalore.

• Provide overall operational leadership for the Bangalore Powerhouse close collaboration and consultation with Uni Ops and the Legal Leadership.
• Manage local staff recruitment, development and attrition and balance and optimise skills, training, culture, service quality and costs.
• Manage legal and other escalations, interfacing with other lawyers across Unilever to ensure that their support requirements are appropriately managed.
• In collaboration with legal and business stakeholders, identify opportunities across the legal function for creating new shared service capabilities.
• Ensure that shared legal services generate and enable significant incremental value.
• Adhere to Unilever legal and corporate standards as well as to Unilever Code of Business Principles.
• Ensure that legal and commercial risks inherent in the services are managed in accordance with Unilever legal and risk management policies and procedures.
• Support and collaborate with colleagues and other Powerhouses in defining the future strategic direction of managed legal services within Unilever,
• Deliver against Key Performance Indicators which would include external cost savings, SLA/OLA compliance and turnaround time.

Person specification:

• A senior qualified lawyer with significant experience, preferably with international clients.
• A senior leader with experience of delivering legal services either in an in-house or outsourced environment.
• Familiarity with the process rigour necessary to provide world-class shared legal services in either a client-owned (“captive”) or outsourced environment.
• An understanding and commitment to consistency and process .
• Unswerving and evidenced customer focus.
• Strong communication skills in English language.
• An outcome-based attitude.
• Ability to recruit, grow, develop and motivate a team.
• A high level of emotional intelligence, particularly the ability to manage escalations in an effective manner.
• A strong appreciation of the role that technology plays in the delivery of managed services including familiarity with “front door” systems for triage/intake, matter management systems and back-end systems for reporting service levels and performance.
• Sensitivity to working with different cultures.
• An eye for innovation and driving efficiency.

Desirable

• Experience of working for a large multinational and/or in a B2C business and/or FMCG business.

Key Skills

• Ability to work under pressure and across multiple time zones.
• Flexibility to travel internationally if required.
• Excellent spoken and written English.
• Strong leadership skills, flexible in approach, a good and careful listener.
• Excellent presentation and persuasion skills.
• Being able to work and respond positively in a client-led culture.
• Adaptable and open to change; ability to pivot rapidly in response to changing requirements.
• Strong persuasion skills – the ability to motivate colleagues to embrace new ways of working.

Relevant Experience

• Senior level responsibility in a legal or legal services organisation.
• Experience of providing or managing provision of legal services .
• Experience of scaling service operations in an agile manner with a focus on growth and quality.
• Experience of working with complex processes and systems.