VetPartners – Group Legal Counsel (part-time)

Salary: Excellent salary and benefits

Location: York

Who we are

Established in November 2015, VetPartners is made up of some of the UK’s most respected and trusted small animal, equine, mixed, farm practices and other veterinary businesses such as labs, crematorium, nursing schools.

Led by vets, VetPartners has 180 veterinary practices, with 7,000 employees working in around 550 sites across the UK and from its headquarters in York. Following European expansion in 2019, the group now has practices in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and France and is anticipating further growth in 2022.

VetPartners aims to be a great place to work, focusing on the development and wellbeing of its people.

VetPartners provides centralised support tailored to individual practice requirements in areas from HR to finance, IT and marketing, PR and communications.

Working in collaboration with our practices, we focus on investing in practices to improve quality of care for patients, investing in people and providing centralised business support to enable practices to be clinically led.

We pride ourselves in being:

• Collaborative
• Welcoming
• People focused
• Supportive
• Caring

Due to this significant growth and ambition, VetPartners is now looking to appoint its first Group Legal Counsel, to be based in the head office in York (working flexibly), to oversee the legal function and support the Chief Financial Officer and wider board.

What are the key duties?

As the Group Legal Counsel, you will work closely with the Chief Financial Officer in advising the business on a wide range of contractual and legal matters and strengthening and improving the approach to legal and commercial risk management across the business in the UK and Europe during an exciting period of growth.

Specifically, your role will include:

• Reviewing, advising on and negotiating a broad range of commercial contracts with within the group across a wide supplier base from pharmaceutical companies to IT and digital service providers;
• Overseeing the group’s employment matters and, where possible, resolving such matters, in conjunction with the group’s external legal advisors;
• Engaging with the group’s external legal advisors on corporate matters, including corporate governance and shareholder matters in a international, leveraged, private equity environment; and
• Providing training and support on relevant legal matters to the relevant teams across the business, including compliance with existing and new legislation.

Is this role for me?

This is a unique opportunity to undertake a challenging, senior level in-house role on a part-time basis.  The role is likely to require a 3.5 day per week working pattern with some flexibility required during busier acquisition periods.  The remuneration and package will be reflective of this flexibility.

Given the nature of the role, we feel it would be good fit for a solicitor already working in a broad senior in-house position or an experienced solicitor from a corporate or commercial private practice background.

Given the seniority of this role within the business, you should be driven, confident, have excellent communication skills and possess the genuine gravitas so as to be able to provide a high quality and responsive service to the other parts of the VetPartners business, including providing advice to the Board and the Chief Financial Officer.

There is interest in hearing from those existing Heads of Legal and General Counsel looking for a shorter working week and also those senior lawyers keen to take on a first Head of Legal role but felt such roles were unattainable on a part-time basis.

On offer is an excellent salary and benefits, which will be dependent on experience.

For a confidential discussion about this opportunity at VetPartners, please contact Terry Cape at our exclusively retained consultant, CapeClarke Legal Recruitment, on 07979 494938 or by email to terry.cape@capeclarke.com.  All direct or third party CVs or enquiries will be directed to CapeClarke.