MINIMUM 2 YEARS’ PQE (NO MAXIMUM)
RECORD INDUSTRY TRADE BODY, LONDON

 

THE COMPANY

This company  is a trade body promoting and protecting the interests of hundreds of independent UK record companies and the three major international record companies. This company owns and produces the celebrated BRIT Awards, Mercury Prize and Classic BRIT Awards.  We provide training and business insights to our members. We are home to the Parental Advisory brand, and we certify the Platinum, Gold and Silver sales awards. For all that we do, we are a relatively small organisation very much punching above its weight. We have around 35 employees working in 10 inter-related departments: Communications, Content Protection, Digital, Events, Finance, Innovation, Legal, Membership, Public Affairs and Research. The legal team is an integrated part of the organisation and provides legal services in full support of each department’s varying needs.

We are a diverse workforce and welcome a broad range of world views. We believe that diversity is a strength, and we actively seek to represent the wider population. This is a commitment, not lip service. Our goal as your future employer is to be an inclusive professional home where you can provide a consistently outstanding level of legal service. We are passionate to encourage the highest quality lawyers regardless of gender, race, colour, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion or political belief.

THE ROLE

An existing member of the legal team will soon be going on maternity leave, and an opportunity has arisen for an outstanding minimum two years’ PQE commercial legal adviser to join the highly regarded four-person legal team as maternity cover for 12-14 months. This is an exciting and demanding role in the business side of the recorded music industry, reporting to the Head of Business Affairs and/or any other person designated by the company and working closely with the Legal Adviser and Junior Legal Adviser. The role requires you to have the following ten attributes:
1. Excellent academics.
2. A UK legal regulator practising certificate.

3. Experience of working on significant contractual matters with a media and
entertainment industry focus, ideally in the music business, including IP licensing,
sponsorship and TV rights.
4. Understanding of intellectual property as it relates to the commercial elements of the
media and entertainment industry, ideally in the music business.
5. Professional written and oral communication skills, including an ability to crystalize and
explain complicated detail in simple, practical terms.
6. Ability to produce and deliver quality work on time despite setbacks.
7. Calm and diplomatic under pressure.
8. A pro-active, can-do, problem-solving attitude to work.
9. A passion for working in-house.
10. Team spirit.

Overall, you will be an intelligent, articulate and reliable professional adviser who demonstrates sound judgement. You must be comfortable in being able to candidly advise and support your legal colleagues and colleagues from all the departments with solid, practical advice which has both legal and business impacts. You must also be confident in making some business decisions yourself.

You will support colleagues who have a wide range of expertise and working styles, which means that you must be adaptable with your communication and able to deliver reactive advice, often under time pressure, as well as able to anticipate potential issues, raise them with the General Counsel and help pro-actively address them as appropriate.

This full-time role is broad ranging and represents a unique opportunity for a passionate lawyer looking to upgrade her or his career. By way of working examples, the role has recently included (and will likely continue to include) the following areas of responsibility:

1. Commercial Contract Review, Drafting, Negotiation and General Support
1.1 Generally
– Reviewing and understanding various music and media industry-wide agreements and answering ad hoc queries in relation to the same.
– Reviewing of general commercial agreements for all arms of the business as and when required, including providing advice not only to the Head of Business Affairs and
– General Counsel, but also to the company CEO and COO as required, and supporting legal and non-legal colleagues with negotiation and drafting.
– Software development contracts and renewals.
– Understanding of IR35, GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018; and the ability to draft data processing agreements and clauses as required.
– Flagging potential disputes/problems/content protection issues as early as possible to the General Counsel; preparing clear briefing notes and memos to the General Counsel in that regard; and assisting further where appropriate.
– Preparing various board and committee papers and taking minutes at meetings.
– Conducting legal research.

1.2 Events – BRIT Awards, BRITs Week and Mercury Prize

– Venue hire agreements including with the O2 Arena and Eventim Apollo.
– Leading key sponsorship agreements with headline sponsor, digital music partner and numerous secondary partners in relation to the company’s Events and programming (and providing
support to the company’s commercial team with all contractual issues).
– Broadcast and distribution agreements with ITV and the BBC.
– Drafting and negotiating (and supporting colleagues on) a wide range of key  supplier agreements and consultant and freelance agreements including with photographers,
companies, set designers and associated live event delivery agreements.
– Brand partnership agreements with a number of external partners.
– Terms and conditions for online competitions (including social media competitions),auctions, ticketing, online polls and voting.
– Press and PR consultancy agreements with PR agencies in relation to television, radio & print media coverage of the event.
– Drafting, maintaining and liaising with news media in relation to new media releases (film and photography) for each of the the company’s events.
– Obtaining music clearance for master recordings used during the Events.
– Contracting guest/host presenters.
– Understanding and advising on rights issues associated with musical performances.

2. The Official UK Charts Company
– Supporting the Official Charts in its international expansion, assisting with pitches for
the provision of charts and data services to additional territories and negotiating
contracts for successful pitches along with the associated sub-contract with Official
Charts’ data compiler.
– Supporting discussions with key DSPs and retailers for the provision of sales data
required for charts compilation.
– Day to day licensing of charts data.
– Assisting with ad hoc legal issues.
– Bespoke agreements for new ventures, for example recently prepared a revenue share
agreement for a book using chart data.
– Creating template charts and data licenses for the commercial team and assisting with
bespoke drafting and negotiation queries.
– Flagging potential disputes/problems/content protection issues as early as possible to
the General Counsel.

3. Licensing
– Drafting trade mark licences for jointly owned assets and managing trade mark searches and registration of the same.
– Licensing BRITs content for use by news media and film production companies across a wide range of media.
– Overseeing and managing clip licensing requests.

4. Corporate Governance
– Reviewing and updating the company’s Articles of Association when required.
– Attending Board Meetings for the Educational Recording Agency.
– Taking minutes at Board Meetings for Creative Content UK (a joint venture between the company’s and the Motion Picture Association).
– Providing legal services for the company’s and the British Record Industry Trust.

THE BENEFITS

– Competitive market rate salary.
– 25 days’ paid holiday per year.
– Pension.
– Medical insurance.
– Interest free travel loan.
– Discretionary performance-related bonus.