Legal Counsel Global Retail, H&M Group

Company Description

Welcome to H&M! A workplace where you can be yourself and so much more!

We take pride in our history of making fashion accessible to everyone and our ambition for tomorrow is to make fashion even more sustainable, inclusive, and welcoming.

Why work at H&M?

H&M is a workplace where you’ll join a global fashion family that combines teamwork with individual expression and gives you the challenges and opportunities that can help you learn, grow and succeed.

We believe that it’s when you mix and match different talents, experiences, and styles that the real magic happens. That’s why our teams are built with different personalities, talents and people from all kinds of backgrounds. If you are willing to learn, grow and help our customers and your colleagues, H&M will always be a place for you to both express your individuality and feel like you belong.

We also believe that you can’t change the world without great people on your side. So, we offer all our employees generous benefits, lots of learning opportunities and the possibility to build a long-term career. Bring your whole personality to work, and grow more than you ever thought was possible. Be yourself & more at H&M.

Job Description

Sales is a global function within the H&M brand with the mission of growing and engaging our customer base, as well as growing and developing our sales channels.  We by hold the responsibility for our regions and by bringing together expertise from both business, digital and tech perspectives, Sales plays a key role in delivering on our brand plan.

The In-house Legal Team within Global Retail is responsible for enabling, guiding and protecting the H&M Group in relation to leases and other store related commercial contracts that the Group enters into over 5000 of them in over 70 different markets! This involves drafting negotiating and providing feedback to markets and presenting projects to the Board. A Legal Counsel is responsible for understanding our commercial requirements and global legal standards and safeguarding these in our contracts.  Each Legal Counsel does this, by working closely with specific Regions of the globe, supporting them with review, advice, training and litigation when required!   

Key Responsibilities:

Contract Review and Quality Control:

• Reviewing new lease contracts, rebuild agreements, amendments, and consolidations to ensure alignment with global standards and accurate representation of deals to the board or decision makers.
• Ensuring proper execution and return of legal documents to the markets.
• Governance support maintaining records of board approvals and the status of signed documents.
• Reviewing and providing legal advice to other teams within Retail, such as construction, facility management or the team purchasing non-commercial goods.

Supporting the Markets:

• Providing support, best practices, training, and acting as a sounding board for assigned markets.
• Assisting in store related contract issues, goal setting, and sharing best practices in recruitment, team building, and resourcing.
• Offering guidance on global standards, trends, and setups in different markets.
• Assisting in the utilization of LIMA (contract management tool) the implementation of our new AI generated contract review tool.

Supporting Colleagues at Global:

• Collaborating closely with leasing managers in markets and regions and other functions within Global Expansion.
• Ensuring deals are presented in the best possible format to the Board/decision makers.
• Providing legal support and advice to other functions related to expansion, such as global construction and facility management and being their sounding board on everything from compliance with new regulations to procurement processes.

Training:

• Ensuring local legal counsels, lease managers, and other functions possess the necessary legal knowledge to achieve company targets and goals and adequately protect the H&M Group.
• Providing training and education in relevant legal matters pertaining to leasing and expansion, and coaching in identifying legal risks for new projects.

Qualifications

Professional Competencies:

• Legal degree.
• 5-10 of years of legal experience, either in private practice or in house.   

General Competencies:

• Exceptional communication skills, required for interactions with markets, global landlords and senior stakeholders.
• Understanding of risk assessment and ability to articulate associated consequences to decision makers.
• Proficiency in conflict resolution