Head of Legal - Commercial

🔒 Confidential Employer
Posted 24 April 2026
LOCATION
London
TYPE
Full-time
LEVEL
Mid-Senior level
CATEGORY
Legal
This employer holds a UK Home Office sponsor license — sponsorship for this specific role is at the employer’s discretion

SKILLS

Commercial Law Legal Strategy Negotiation Legal Advisory Team Management Risk Management Business Development Stakeholder Management

FULL DESCRIPTION

Lead [Employer hidden — view at passion-project.co.uk]'s Commercial Legal team, managing lawyers and advising on commercial activities globally, including user acquisition, ad monetization, and partnerships. This role requires a leader who can set direction, build infrastructure, and provide clear guidance to senior stakeholders.

What You'll Be Doing

Leading the Commercial Legal function

  • Own and develop [Employer hidden]'s commercial legal capability: setting standards, building scalable infrastructure and ensuring the team operates with speed and rigour
  • Manage and mentor Legal Counsel, creating space for them to grow while maintaining high output from the team
  • Partner with the GC to shape the wider legal strategy, including resourcing, legal ops maturity, and how the function supports business growth
  • Drive legal operations improvements so the team spends time on what matters

Commercial deals and advisory

  • Lead and close complex, high-value commercial negotiations across the mobile gaming value chain: user acquisition, ad tech, publishing and co-development,
  • Act as the primary legal adviser to business unit leaders and senior stakeholders translating legal complexity into clear, actionable guidance

What We're Looking For

  • 7+ years PQE, with meaningful in-house experience at a tech, digital, or consumer business. You've operated in a fast-moving environment before
  • A track record of leading complex, high-value commercial negotiations from the front- senior stakeholders, cross-border complexity, deals that mattered
  • Experience managing or coaching more junior lawyers - you know how to develop people without becoming their bottleneck
  • Comfortable leading across disciplines without being a specialist in all of them - you know when to go deep and when to bring in support

How you will operate

We're not looking for a list of competencies. We're looking for a specific kind of lawyer.

Here's what that looks like in practice:

  • Commercial first. You start from what the business needs to achieve, not what the legal risk is. Risk is an input, not a conclusion.
  • Leadership presence. You can walk into a room with the CEO, a platform partner, or a regulator and hold your ground. Your credibility isn't positional, it's earned.
  • Builder's mindset. You're energised by building things that didn't exist before: processes, playbooks, team capability. You improve the system, not just run it.
  • Decisive. You make calls with 80% of the information and move forward. You know that perfect advice delivered late isn't advice.
  • Clear communicator. You're direct, clear, and critically you don't need jargon to sound authoritative. Non-lawyers trust you because they understand you.
  • Low ego, high standards. You care about what gets done, not who gets credit. But you have a clear point of view and you're not afraid to voice it.
  • Genuinely curious. The landscape shifts constantly. You stay close to it and help the business get ahead, not behind.
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