Legal Contracts & Compliance Officer

Legal Contracts & Compliance Officer

Job Description

Role Summary:

The Carbon Literacy Project has grown rapidly in recent years, as we work to progress climate education and action through Carbon Literacy. As a consequence, our systems and processes have grown with us, becoming more complex. Our legal and compliance work has also grown in complexity and importance. We are negotiating and implementing increasingly sophisticated legal licences and contracts, and are placing increasing focus on effective data management as being core to our GDPR, and more importantly, helping us to drive change and ensure operational efficiency. We rely heavily on the accurate collection, analysis, and processing of data to continue with our mission; and we need to ensure we are continuing to meet our responsibilities as an organisation handling personal data. At the same time, we are managing and extending a suite of trademarks, and managing our Intellectual Property (IP) globally. We are therefore seeking a talented individual to help us deliver, manage and develop our legal, contracts, data and compliance work, as it is crucial to our continued success.

About The Carbon Literacy Project:

The Carbon Literacy Project is a celebrated, multi-award winning, globally unique climate change project founded in Manchester and a registered charity (The Carbon Literacy Trust, Reg Charity No 1156722) based at Manchester Metropolitan University’s Innospace. Carbon Literacy offers a unique and flexible framework for a day’s worth of highly relevant climate change learning, and with large-scale take-up across the UK and Europe. Over 110,000 learners have now been certified as Carbon Literate.

Carbon Literacy learning and certification covers the essentials of climate change, carbon footprints, how an individual can ‘do their bit’, and why it is relevant from an individual to organisational level. Carbon Literacy is aimed at three distinct audiences – those that live, those that work, and those that study. As the certification body, this enables The Carbon Literacy Project to capture all audiences with its aim to offer every citizen Carbon Literacy training. As the certification body, we directly advocate for the delivery and uptake of Carbon Literacy training, support organisations, trainers and individuals to do so, and actively work to create low-carbon culture change.

Role Description:

This role is directed towards five key areas of legal and compliance work. These include tasks relating to contracts (internal and external), data protection and data compliance requests, and application for and management of compliance with our Trademarks and IP.

The role involves the detailed review, challenge, adaptation and approval of supplier and partner contracts, and the monitoring of both our own and external signatory compliance to ensure that these agreements are upheld and delivered as intended. This work involves a collaborative approach with external partners, and the agreement of mutually beneficial memoranda of understanding and formal contracts and agreements.

Furthermore, we are often engaged in relatively complex corporate customer on-boarding processes as suppliers, and with customer and external data compliance requests. These tend to be from large corporate customers and partners, whose own systems demand complex and custom data management, cybersecurity, and organisational disclosure statements as a condition of onboarding as a supplier. Assessment of the proportionality of these, the costs involved in meeting them, and appropriate completion and submission of those we choose to proceed with will be a key responsibility.

We already have a comprehensive Data Protection Policy and Privacy Statement in place. However, work is required to ensure that we have sufficient data protection training in place at appropriate levels throughout the organisation, and that we are meeting our own internal standards for data handling, as we continue to evolve our policies and practices to meet changing circumstances. Effective data management is at the core of driving informed decision-making, ensuring operational efficiency and for achieving our goals.

IP protection will also be an important focus for this role including investigation, challenge and resolution of any trademark or other IP misuse or infringement, nationally or internationally. Responsibilities will involve the maintenance, compliance with and protection of existing trademarks nationally and internationally, and application for new trademarks. This work will also relate to our Carbon Literacy Toolkits, where the dissemination of shared IP is a key aspect of rapidly increasing the uptake of training.

The role of Legal Contracts and Compliance Officer will be pivotal in delivering, shaping and optimising our systems, ensuring they align seamlessly with our mission, accommodate our unique structure, and support our team with their work. We are excited to welcome an individual with a diverse skill set to join our team and contribute to the innovative and impactful work of The Carbon Literacy Project.

Responsibilities and Duties:

• Maintenance of our comprehensive Data Protection Policy and Privacy Statement.
• Ensuring that we have sufficient data protection training in place at appropriate levels throughout the organisation to meet our needs.
• Ensuring we are meeting our own internal standards for data handling and that we continue to evolve our policies and practices to meet changing circumstances.
• Application for, maintenance of and protection of new and existing trademarks, nationally and internationally.
• Investigation, challenge and resolution of trademark or other IP misuse or infringement, nationally and internationally.
• Review and approval of supplier and partner contracts and memoranda of understanding (MOUs) for service and/or partnership.
• Monitoring of our own and external signatory compliance.
• Management of complex customer on-boarding and data compliance requests.
• Assessment of the proportionality of these, cost involved in meeting them, and appropriate completion and submission of those we choose to proceed with.

Skills and Experience

Essential

• Strong communication skills, and the ability to work across teams.
• Understanding of and experience in an information or data-focused role with a practical, logical and thorough approach.
• Understanding of and experience with commercial agreements and contracts.
• Understanding of and experience of Trademarks and IP management.
• Experience using a secure database, and familiarity with the challenges associated.
• Knowledge and experience of working with sensitive or confidential information and data.
• Strong organisational skills and the ability to prioritise and manage personal workload.
• Strong familiarity with Microsoft Suite.
• Ability to lead, manage and deliver individual projects, after initial consultation and guidance.

Desirable

• Qualifications relating to commercial law, contracts, licences, trademarks, IP management, data and data-protection.
• Experience negotiating, writing and/or managing commercial contracts.
• Experience managing commercial on-boarding processes.
• Experience applying for and/or managing trademarks and other IP protection.
• Experience negotiating and managing licence agreements.
• Experience in systems and data management.
• Experience in data protection and compliance.
• Experience training others, with coaching techniques and in effective communication.
• Certified as Carbon Literate.
• Interest & general knowledge of climate change education and action.
• Experience volunteering or working with a charity, particularly in the field of sustainability and the environment.
• Familiarity with Salesforce, SharePoint, Mailchimp and/or similar systems.

Person Specification

• Comfortable working in a dynamic environment where work is very varied and fast-paced, but hugely rewarding.
• Ability to work very autonomously, but also as part of a team and as a collaborator.
• Used to juggling multiple tasks and effective at prioritising.
• Proactive and passionate about the role that all organisations can play in creating a low carbon future.
• Passionate about mitigating the climate crisis.

The Carbon Literacy Project is committed to promoting a diverse and inclusive community - a place where we can all be ourselves and succeed on merit. We offer a range of flexible working arrangements to support people from different backgrounds. We particularly encourage applications from individuals who are Black, Asian, or belong to an ethnic minority in the UK, as well as those from working class backgrounds, and those living with disability, all of whom are currently under-represented within The Carbon Literacy Project and the wider environmental sector.