Senior Legal Counsel at Absa South Africa

Job Summary

• Our Absa Corporate and Investment Bank (CIB) Legal team has an exciting role for a Senior Legal Counsel in Transactional Banking. 
• In this role you will contribute to management by identifying and mitigating legal risks across the Transactional Banking business in South Africa and  across the continent. You will be expected to provide accurate, expert and specialized legal advice and be involved in the structuring of transactions in line with the relevant and general banking practices, procedures and regulations. You will also be a key point of contact on a day-to-day basis for the business team, and responsible for providing on the go pro-active legal advice, support and risk management. 
• This role is suited to a candidate with a B-degree in Law, Admitted attorney or Advocate as well as five years or more relevant experience as an in-house legal counsel in a financial institution, other corporate, in a reputable law firm or at the Bar.

Job Description

Accountability:  Legal Risk Management %

• Actively raise the profile of the legal function and improve on Legal Key Risks.
• Manage and create awareness by embedding legal policies and control requirements in all areas of the business.
• Provide appropriate challenge and equally be robust in the face of challenges
• Build strong risk partnerships with colleagues in other functions (especially key control areas).
• Manage, evaluate, and prioritize tasks in accordance with business needs.
• Communicate and distil legal concepts to the business function, ensuring that lessons learned are communicated both within and outside the legal fraternity.
• Ensure effective and appropriate verbal and written communication of the legal policies to internal clients.
• Proactive monitoring of compliance of the legal risk control framework.
• Immediately report any breach of the legal risk control framework to the head of his/her department.
• Immediately record legal risks on the legal risk reporting forms in an accurate manner and provide it to the head of the department.
• Act on legal risks notified in the legal risk reports, by raising it with the business stakeholders and addressing it as far as possible in whatever way and means required to sufficiently mitigate risk.
• Have knowledge of new regulatory requirements and provide comments to draft bills, regulatory documents and regulations issued by any governmental department and/or regulatory body.
• Provide highly specialised legal advice and support to the dedicated area of support.

Accountability:  Commercial

• Demonstrate strong analytical skills and solve complex problems creatively and effectively
• Drives good cost control behaviour, especially around external spend and consistently delivers against a broad range of competing target
• Manage external counsel and represent Absa on relevant industry forums and professional bodies where required
• Add value in commercial as well as technical discussions, and provide training that is beneficial / informative to internal clients 

Accountability: Leadership

• Demonstrates strong relationship management skills with clients
• Plan and manage projects and matters through to completion, including resourcing
• Contribute to the development and implementation of team objectives and strategy and provide high quality support to the business as required by interacting with different legal and business stakeholders.
• Work independently with minimal supervision and demonstrate the ability to supervise where appropriate.

Accountability: Technical Skills

• Assist in structuring, negotiating & drafting legal agreements and documentation relating to standard agreements, transactions, and new products.
• Help to develop working structures and best practice guides for use within business.
• Address all probable risks by seeing to it that they are sufficiently addressed in legal agreements drafted.
• Consider, comment, negotiate and give advice on documents/ agreements for the business.
• Give legal advice on transactions or deals to be done, or transactions that have been concluded.
• Provide advice on legality, the lawfulness and enforceability of agreements and documents.
• Take principal responsibility for drafting and periodically reviewing standard terms or template documentation, to deal with legal risk trends and opportunities to prevent recurrence and to improve business performance and recoveries

Education and Experience Required

• Law degree: B Proc or LLB
• Admitted attorney or advocate in RSA or another similar jurisdiction
• Preferred: Transactional banking and Commercial law experience

Knowledge & Skills: 

• Banking and finance experience would be of benefit.
• Relevant experience (at least 6 years) as an in-house legal counsel in a financial institution, other corporate, in a reputable law firm or at the Bar.
• General knowledge of bank regulations required.

Education

• Bachelor Honours Degree: Law, Military Science and Security (Required)