Assistant General Counsel and Director

About us

At National Grid, we light up the world by harnessing the unique strengths of our people. Join us as an Assistant General Counsel, and be part of a team that's driving forward the energy transition, creating a brighter, more sustainable future for all. Unleash your superpower and bring energy to life.

National Grid is hiring an Assistant General Counsel for our in house legal department. This position will be located in Brooklyn, NY or Syracuse, NY with hybrid working.

Job Purpose

Responsible for representing the business and providing top level professional legal advice and guidance on regulatory legal matters to support the New York business in achieving its objectives, mitigating risks, and ensuring compliance. Effective leadership of a high performing team. Build sustainable capability for change, employee engagement, and leadership development.

Key Accountabilities

•    Provide legal advice and counsel to senior leadership on matters before New York regulators 
•    Ability to effectively advocate the company’s position in complex proceedings with regulators and other external stakeholders.
•    Understand and apply complex legal, market, political, and regulatory aspects of our business. Proactively build, maintain, and utilize internal and external networks to understand, absorb, and influence legal, market, and regulatory best practice within own area of responsibility. 
•    Deliver subject matter expertise and guidance on regulatory matters of concern to the NE business or to complex business operational areas for the business to find effective resolutions.
•    Exercise independent judgment on complex and strategic legal matters to VP level or higher-level clients. 
•    Constructively challenge and provide legal guidance on business initiatives where significant risks exist or have not been identified to mitigate risk for the business. 
•    Proactively engage in business and departmental initiatives with company-wide significance, making informed, authoritative legal and business recommendations to improve business performance in the medium and longer term. 
•    Identify significant corporate risks in business matters; provide legal guidance to business and constructively challenge risk issues; work with regulatory compliance and the business to develop appropriate mitigation measures.
•    Recruit, motivate and develop the legal team; inspire commitment and engagement; demonstrate National Grid's leadership qualities; manage team to high performance and success; ensure adherence to Company's core values.  
•    Provide commercially oriented legal advice and support to meet and support business objectives. 
•    Provide solutions that have a significant impact on business performance in the short and longer term. 
•    Ensure all projects are appropriately assessed, designed, planned, resourced, and scheduled in a timely and cost-effective manner to ensure best value for National Grid.
•    Evaluate policy legislation standards to determine probable impact on National Grid. 
•    Review and challenge existing policies and processes to ensure they are fit for purpose and drive best value for the business. 
•    Lead a team of attorneys, with responsibility for work allocation and delivery, training and development, and managerial tasks.
•    Manage outside counsel to provide excellent service and significant value; challenge outside counsel to staff matters appropriately; assume role of relationship manager for law firms, as appropriate.
•    Coach and challenge team: create meaningful development plans designed to advance substantive and leadership capabilities of employees; reward performance; effectively manage underperformance and develop a high performing team.
•    Ability to bring creative and innovative legal approaches for the benefit of the business client.
•    Ability to establish high level confidence with senior executives, business clients, and external stakeholders.
•    Ability to manage numerous, complex matters efficiently and effectively.

Qualifications

•    Juris Doctor Degree

•    At least 10 years of progressive leadership experience as a General Counsel or in a similar senior legal position.
•    Admission to, and in good standing with, the appropriate state bar. 
•    Significant experience with regulatory matters and demonstrates the ability to assemble complex ideas, issues, and observations into clear and simple explanations.
•    Demonstrates proven ability to create the future by communicating strategic context for business priorities.
•    Experience of managing and integrating the work of a functional discipline and demonstrates the ability to provide direction, the appropriate structure, and effective resourcing to enable the team to perform at their best.  
•    In-depth and broad ranging knowledge of legislative/regulatory issues affecting the industry. 
•    Demonstrates the ability to peel back multiple layers of a problem and balance the value of different solutions.
•    Demonstrates knowledge of working practice, relevant to own discipline/specialism, within other organizations and initiates external meetings/forums etc.
•    Demonstrates the ability to pull together disparate pieces of information and make judgments about what is learned and how it could impact your organization.  
•    Excellent oral and written communication skills.
•    Exhibits high personal standards of commitment and integrity.
•    Ability to bring creative and innovative legal approaches for the benefit of the business client.
•    Strong record of providing strategic leadership and planning.
•    Demonstrate ability to work collaboratively with the business and be viewed as a leader in facilitating achievement of business objectives.
•    Ability to establish high level confidence with senior executives, business clients, and external stakeholders.
•    Strong sense of teamwork; ability to work effectively on multidisciplinary teams.
•    Demonstrates a strong commitment to the Company’s corporate values including the advancement of diversity, equity, and inclusion principles.
•    Demonstrate highly proficient legal research and analytic skills; flexible and strategic decision making; and the ability to manage and oversee work of the team. 

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