Paralegal
About Legal
The Legal function provides legal advice to all of Barclays' businesses and infrastructure functions, including areas such as transactional support, litigation management, commercial contract support and general legal advice, and provides dedicated business-aligned support to all divisions of the Group.
About Barclays UK Legal
Barclays UK (BUK) Legal covers the following areas:
• Personal Banking, Mortgages and Colleague and Customer Experience;
• Wealth & Investments;
• Business Banking; and
• Barclaycard UK.
Our lawyers provide legal expertise to support our businesses/functions and Barclays to deliver its goal in a broad variety of ways including:
• strategic business support;
• new product development;
• transactional legal support;
• major outsourcing and commercial agreements;
• intellectual property; and
• data privacy advice.
The Global General Counsel for BUK Legal is supported in leading the team by her Legal Executive Committee (LExCo). The team's strategic priorities are driven by members of the team at all levels through the priority working groups that bring together the breadth of experience and knowledge across our global talent.
We are an equal opportunity employer and we are opposed to discrimination on any grounds .
It is the policy of Barclays to ensure equal employment opportunity without discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, colour, creed, religion, national origin, alienage or citizenship status, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital or domestic/civil partnership status, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or any other basis protected by law.
Dynamic working gives everyone at Barclays the opportunity to integrate professional and personal lives, if you have a need for flexibility then please discuss this with the hiring manager.
Overall purpose of role
The purpose of the role is to work with existing members of the BUK Legal team to provide legal advice and support on all aspects of Barclay's current and proposed unregulated lending activity across the different BUK businesses. The successful candidate will need the ability to work independently and flexibly in a busy and commercial environment, across a range of products and services offered by the relevant businesses, in order to identify and manage risk, and to plan for change wrought by developing regulation, structural reform and Brexit.
Key Accountabilities
• Primary responsibility for managing the team e-mail inbox that receives unregulated lending queries from the BUK businesses, mostly from the credit operations team but also from colleagues in the business and other functions, and be the primary responder to these queries;
• Under supervision, delivering expert legal advice in relation to the laws and regulations governing, and market practise relating to, secured and unsecured unregulated lending, notably those applicable to the UK consumer and SME markets;
• Working collaboratively with members of the BUK Legal team, the wider Legal function, the BUK businesses and other infrastructure functions to:
o provide input to new and existing policies and procedures to ensure that any changes to processes are within the permitted legal and regulatory framework; and
o ensure consistency of approach on matters;
• Providing support, as required, in relation to other matters being worked on by the BUK Legal team, including regulatory change impacting the BUK businesses, structural reform and the implications of Brexit.
Stakeholder Management and Leadership
Key stakeholders:
• General Counsel, Barclays UK Legal;
• Head of Regulated and Unregulated Lending, Barclays UK Legal;
• Head of Unregulated Lending, Barclays UK Legal;
• Vice President in the BUK Unregulated Lending Legal Team (line manager); and
• Business Leads, including Head of Wealth & Investments, Head of Business Banking.
Decision-making and Problem Solving
• Makes effective technical decisions within area of expertise;
• Exercises sound risk judgement based on previous experience;
• Provides tailored, commercial advice and recommendations;
• Pre-empts problems and identifies creative solutions; and
• Identifies improvements in processes and the way we work.
Risk and Control Objective
Ensure that all activities and duties are carried out in full compliance with regulatory requirements, Enterprise Wide Risk Management Framework and internal Barclays Policies and Policy Standards.
Person Specification
Essential Skills/Basic Qualifications:
• Legal degree from the UK or equivalent commonwealth jurisdiction, with experience of working in a law firm and/or in-house with a financial services organisation;
• Transactional experience of secured and unsecured lending, ideally with sensitivity to the issues presented by a retail-facing business;
• Ability to work across a broad set of products and a willingness to broaden product knowledge; and
• Ability to work effectively within time, resource and budget constraints.
Desirable skills/Preferred Qualifications:
• Able to communicate effectively and manage relationships with others inside and outside the team;
• Displays initiative and commitment, and builds trust and strong relationships, especially with other colleagues in the Legal function;
• Has a good understanding of key legal and non-legal risks and partners with others to manage them, and understands the internal and external business context, and Barclays' products and services; and
• Understands external spend drivers and identifies cost-saving opportunities.
Purpose and Values
Barclays has a single cross-business Purpose for Barclays and five core Values which underpin it.
Our Purpose is helping people achieve their ambitions in the right way. Put simply this is the answer to the question 'What is Barclays for?' and it should guide our every action as employees.
Respect
We respect and value those we work with, and the contribution that they make.
Integrity
We act fairly, ethically and openly in all we do.
Service
We put our clients and customers at the centre of what we do.
Excellence
We use our energy, skills and resources to deliver the best, sustainable results.
Stewardship
We are passionate about leaving things better than we found them.