Senior Legal Manager – Sustainable Finance & Litigation

About us:

Established in 2021, Opportunity Green is a fast-growing not-for-profit organisation that helps
to identify and unlock opportunities to tackle climate change. We build ambitious coalitions,
support climate vulnerable countries in international negotiations and find innovative legal
pathways to fight climate change.

Our legal team works on climate legal actions relating to the aviation, shipping, buildings,
steel, and agriculture sectors in the UK, EU, and internationally. We provide strategic legal
analysis to support decarbonisation in these sectors; undertake legal interventions, including
legal challenges and litigation; and undertake legal advocacy, including submissions to
international courts, states, and the United Nations.

We are now looking for a Senior Legal Manager to build our work on strategic legal
interventions to help drive sustainable finance flows and systems across our sectoral focus
areas. Our objective is to use legal levers to ensure that finance flows are directed to
projects and activities that are aligned with a 1.5°C pathway. By using the law, we believe we
can effect change in the operation of financial markets, bringing about systemic change in the
activities and operations of these sectors.

What’s the role?

Reporting to Opportunity Green’s Legal Director, you will be leading our sustainable finance
legal interventions, with an initial focus on the aviation and shipping sectors, and you will
be responsible for developing our sustainable finance workstream.

You will be joining at an exciting time, as the team takes forward various legal actions and
looks to develop new interventions. You will be working at the cutting edge of climate law in
new and emerging areas, and will be required to identify and develop strategic legal action
ideas that could help to drive change across the full legal lifecycle, from delivering
policy-level change, to crystallizing the financial risk of investment in inadequate climate
action, to shifting the investment profile of ineffective transition activities through
bringing corporate accountability and greenwashing actions.

You will be responsible for the day-to-day development and running of cases and other
non-contentious legal actions, including coordination with external counsel where relevant. You
will also work closely with a wide range of NGOs with technical, scientific, and campaigning
expertise.

We are particularly interested in applications from those with a background in financial law
and litigation.

Our legal team is already achieving outsized impact with a great team spirit. We are looking
for someone who is analytical and organised, but who is also a people person with great
communication skills, a collaborative approach and a passion for fighting climate change.
Opportunity Green is a growing organisation so you will also be involved in supporting other
aspects of work, such as contributing to funding proposals, developing campaign strategy,
providing legal input into communications, and taking part in our committees.

About the candidate:

We are looking for a candidate with:

• A passion for using their legal skills to direct finance flows away from ineffective
  solutions and towards sustainable activities, who is brave enough to try new things and
  persuasive enough to convince others to follow their leadership.

Desirable skills and experience:

We do not expect any candidate to have all the skills listed below but rather we look for
transferable skills and potential as well as past experience.

• A high level of self-motivation and commitment to Opportunity Green’s values, ethos and
  purpose.
• Qualification as a solicitor or barrister (practising or non-practising).
• Experience in litigation, ideally in the financial and regulatory sectors.
• Ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously and to manage other team members.
• An ability to see solutions to complex problems through a creative legal lens.
• Experience of writing high-quality legal analysis and/or court submissions.
• Excellent attention to detail and an ability to work with technical and legal material, but
  also an ability to think strategically and not get bogged down in detail when that is
  unhelpful.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills.
• Ability to work both independently and collaboratively and interact with lawyers and
  non-lawyers from around the world with kindness and respect.
• Passion for stopping climate change.
• Excellent time management, and the ability to meet deadlines, logically tackle problems and
  set and communicate priorities.

Diversity and inclusion:

Diversity and inclusion are important principles at Opportunity Green. We believe that
diversity and inclusion make teams stronger and more effective. We are committed to fair and
equitable employment practices, and we are striving to ensure that a variety of voices and
experiences are included in our organisation. Our commitment to diversity and our parental
leave policy are available to view on our website, here.

We will consider all applicants who meet most or all of the competencies regardless of their
identity or background. That said, we know that diverse candidates may be reluctant to apply
for jobs where they don’t meet 100% of the criteria outlined in the job description. We
encourage anyone to apply who can demonstrate the variety of skills and experiences relevant to
meeting the requirements of this role.

We recognise that many diverse experiences and perspectives are not represented in our current
workforce, and are seriously underrepresented across the non-profit sector in general, and as
such, we particularly welcome applications from people with disabilities, people of colour,
people from marginalised backgrounds, and members of the LGBTQIA+ communities. We will use
positive action under the Equality Act 2010 to appoint from these groups if two candidates are
equally qualified. We also value flexible working and are open to those who would want to work
part-time in this role.

What we offer

The successful candidate will be offered an annual salary of £60,000 plus 10%
employer-contributed pension. Please note that Opportunity Green has fixed salary scales, with
the possibility of step increases with strong performance. When hiring we always hire at the
bottom of a band and do not enter negotiations with new employees as negotiations have been
historically shown to disadvantage women and minorities.

We take our team’s well-being and professional development seriously. In addition to a
competitive salary, we offer:

• A commitment to work/life balance, with a 4-day work week at 28 hours
• A generous holiday entitlement of 20 days’ holiday per year, plus bank holidays and office
  closure between Christmas and New Year’s that does not count towards your holiday entitlement
  (and expectation that you fully disconnect when taking time off)
• A market-leading pension of 10%
• A progressive parental leave policy, including 26 weeks’ paid leave for both parents
• Lots of flexibility within a hybrid working arrangement, with regular opportunities to come
  together as a team
• Support for your professional development as part of Opportunity Green, with a budget to
  support your learning & development plus opportunities to lead projects, publish content,
  learn from experts, work directly with policymakers and stakeholders, and take part in
  conferences and events.

However, it is important to note that while this role is permanent, employment is always
reliant on Opportunity Green continuing to receive philanthropic support from our funders,
which we expect every member of the team to play their part in working towards.

How to apply:

To minimise the risk of unconscious bias, we ask that applicants remove certain
identifying elements from their CVs. If you do not remove these details, we
reserve the right to withdraw your application from review.

• Photos
• Name – if needed, please use ‘Applicant’
• Age
• Email and/or phone number

Unfortunately, if you do not already hold the right to work in the UK and/or require
sponsorship to continue working in the UK, Opportunity Green will not be able to consider your
application at this time.

The closing date for applications is 1st July 2024 at 9:00am UK time.

What happens next?

Shortlisted candidates will be invited for an online interview to discuss their experience and
suitability for the role. After this, candidates that are most suitable for the vacancy will be
invited for an in-person interview in our London office, for which there may also be a short
task. Travel will be reimbursed for non-London-based applicants (within the UK).

Online interviews are likely to take place w/c 15th July. In person interviews will likely be
shortly after this the following week.

We reserve the right to ask for references during the recruitment process.

We actively encourage applicants to reach out if there are any reasonable adjustments
we can make to help them demonstrate their full potential in the hiring process. 

Please get in touch at
[email protected] and we can discuss how to best make the recruitment process as accessible and
comfortable for you as possible.

You can read our application guide
here.