Legal & Compliance Senior Counsel Spain/Portugal

Report: Head of Legal & Compliance Region: France, Netherlands, Spain & Peru with a dotted line to the Head of Legal and Compliance Portugal.

Unilabs is recruiting a Portugal based Legal & Compliance Senior Counsel. The newly created role will be responsible for:

- Legal and Compliance support to Spanish legal entities of Unilabs Group in Spain and legal support to the commercial/procurement teams in Portugal.

- Management of a Local Data Protection & Compliance Officer in Spain.

1.    Legal:

A.     Spain

Operational responsibilities will cover all legal matters, including:

• Litigation management, advocacy, and dispute resolution.
• Legal risk assessment and risk management, including assessment of future risk.
• Support for various business activities as an active business partner, including: Mergers & acquisitions activity, including post-integration.

- Contract negotiations.

- Dispute resolution and management.

- Managing Spain Legal and Compliance budgets.

- Local sourcing and purchasing (upstream and downstream).

-  Partnerships with external stakeholders.

- Sales and services.

- Marketing and communications.

• Regulatory affairs and quality assurance (RAQA) support.
• Company culture cornerstone.
• Policies, processes, education and training (with support from Human Resources).
• Providing strategic legal advice to the country team
• Leading legal strategy to support strategic growth in Spain
• Drafting, reviewing, and negotiating commercial, development, partnerships, joint-ventures agreements
• Support to public and private tenders
• Implement internal processes, templates of contracts, education, and training of employees
• Monitoring changes of legal and regulatory environment and assessing/ anticipating related impact
• Overseeing governance matters and corporate record keeping
• Managing external parties including lawyers

B.      Portugal

• Support to the Commercial Team: Provide assistance in drafting, reviewing, and negotiating partnership agreements, joint-venture agreements and service agreements. Work closely with the commercial team to ensure that all contracts align with the company's strategic objectives and mitigate potential risks. This includes advising on the legal implications of commercial decisions and ensuring compliance with applicable laws and regulations.
• Support to Procurement: Validate suppliers before they can begin providing services to the company. Responsible for reviewing contracts with suppliers only in instances where the existing contract templates are not applicable. Ensure that all necessary legal protections and compliance measures are maintained.

2.     Compliance (Spain only)

• Elaboration and implementation of the group compliance program
• Promote integrity and ethics continuously through education and training
• Risk assessment & management
• Interactions with local authorities when needed, Health Care Professionals, Health Care Organisations.
• Legal support to data protection issues in interaction with the Group DPO and local law firm
• Internal investigations/Audits (including, for example, whistle-blowers).
• Maintaining a culture of transparency.
• Anti-bribery and anti-corruption.
• Anti-money laundering and fraud management process.
• Regulating third-parties (code of conduct and due diligence).
• Management of conflicts of interest.
• Identification of areas for improvement and their application to the Compliance Agenda – with a link to internal audits and their outputs

• 8/10 Years of experience experience in an international Law firm, as well as in-house
• Substantial experience in healthcare & ethical compliance matters
• International experience
• Fluent in Spanish & English (Portuguese would be also a plus)

Soft Skills

• Business partner mindset
• Positive attitude, adaptable and a collaborative team player
• Good negotiation and communication skills
• Practical problem solver
• Candidate must be a strong team player with the ability to work in a demanding environment and deliver high-quality work on a consistent basis.
• Strong business acumen and influencing skills.
• Cultural dexterity and sensitivity.
• Impeccable ethics.
• This role will also be ideal for lawyers interested in new technology-based initiatives, given the company’s focus on software perspective and integrated laboratory analyses.