Legal Specialist (Commercial)

The Legal Specialist, Commercial, provides timely, efficient, and solution-driven legal services to protect UNOPS against legal, financial, and reputational risks. The role involves advising on commercial matters, negotiating agreements, supporting project offices, and contributing to policy development and capacity building within the Legal Group.

Responsibilities

• Advise Project Offices on commercial matters under LG’s purview, including review and negotiation of legal agreements, interpretation, alignment and development of the UNOPS legal framework.
• Provide legal advice and support to Project Offices in relation to partnership and framework or funding agreements, negotiation of model agreements with partners, procurement contract templates and grant agreements.
• Provide legal advice and support to Project Offices in relation to hosted initiatives, joint programmes and multi-donor trust funds.
• Provide timely advice and support, actively finding solutions to everyday implementation challenges, based on policy and best practices.
• Represent UNOPS in negotiations with external parties on legal topics, such as negotiations on contracts and agreements.
• Coordinate interactions between business units and local legal retainers, external legal counsel and legal advisors from OLA or other UN agencies.
• Recommend changes to policies, processes and operating standards based on the feedback and experience of the country offices.
• Ensure transparent and efficient project implementation, in line with policy and business needs.
• Work closely with other units within UNOPS to address mission-critical issues and find fit-for-purpose solutions, and contribute with technical and practical knowledge to the development of strategies to improve efficiency and strengthen internal controls.
• Contribute to cross-functional initiatives to ensure that internal policies, procedures, systems and tools are consistent with the overall legal framework, practical, relevant and add value to organizational operations.
• Support the systematic documentation and updating of legal precedents and templates.
• Contribute to research and coordination within the team and across the organization.
• Provide structured knowledge and subject matter expertise which is used across practice areas to provide coherent and tailored advice to the requesting offices.
• Stay informed about internal and external developments and best practices.
• Deliver and facilitate training on commercial matters to internal colleagues.
• Represent the LG Commercial Practice as Focal Point for a region (as and when assigned by the Legal Advisor).
• Liaise with the Regional Office and all regional actors (internal and external) for all legal matters related to the regional portfolio.
• Manage the regional workload, completing the above-listed functions with a focus on a specific region.
• Foster and develop the relationship and collaboration with one specific region, allowing for dedicated and tailored legal support, capacity building and solutions to the region.
• Coordinate and oversee the legal advice and support provided by other LG members to a specific region to ensure consistency.
• Liaise and communicate with the other regional focal points on novel, high-risk and/or problematic issues to ensure consistency in strategy and advice across the LG Commercial Practice.
• Support the organization, facilitation and delivery of training and learning sessions on Commercial Law topics.
• Participate in knowledge-sharing initiatives and Communities of Practice (CoPs), contributing insights and lessons learned from Commercial Law activities.
• Conduct research on Commercial Law-related topics and contribute to the drafting of reports, summaries and briefing notes.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent) in Law or other disciplines with 7 years of relevant experience OR Master’s degree (or equivalent) in any of the above disciplines with 5 years of relevant experience is required.
• Relevant experience is work within a law firm or national or international organization as a commercial, international, or commercial dispute lawyer in legal analysis, advice, research, drafting of texts, or related fields.
• Experience in communicating complex legal concepts across a range of audiences is required.
• Experience of working in multicultural environments or UN system organizations in a developing country is desired.
• Experience in development or humanitarian contexts is desired.

Skills

• Commercial Law
• International Law
• Legal Analysis
• Legal Advice
• Legal Research
• Legal Drafting
• Contract Negotiation
• Legal Risk Management
• Policy Development
• Capacity Building
• Multicultural Environment Experience
• Humanitarian Experience
• Legal Communication
• Dispute Settlement

Languages

English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Mandarin, Russian