Senior Legal Counsel

at  Vicinity Centres

We’re reimagining the way Australians live, work, and play. We own and manage some of the most recognisable and loved retail destinations across Australia.
We’re evolving our portfolio into destinations that offer a broad selection of retail, residential, and office spaces. Through our diverse portfolio, data-led decision-making, and nationwide development pipeline, we do things differently.
We are Vicinity.
Role purpose
This Senior Legal Counsel role plays a pivotal part in the delivery of Vicinity’s pipeline of asset acquisitions and disposals, and the negotiation and management of its joint venture relationships with co-owners. This role supports Vicinity’s strategic pillars of Enhancing the Property Portfolio and Enabling Good Business and forms part of a high performing and engaging team.
Key Accountabilities

Capital Transactions

• Having legal carriage of strategic capital transactions, including the acquisition and divestment of interests in retail property, and the negotiation of key management agreements, including Property Management Agreements, Development Services Agreements, and ancillary contracts.
• Instructing and managing external legal counsel, negotiating and monitoring external fee estimates and driving efficiencies in the use of internal and external legal resources.

Joint Ventures

• Advising on Vicinity’s rights and obligations as property manager, development manager and co-owner at its various co-owned centres.
• Maintenance of key JV precedents, checklists and processes to ensure current positions and consistent practices.

Property Law

• Providing specialist property law advice regarding Vicinity’s portfolio of shopping centres (excluding tenant / leasing work, which is managed by a separate team).

Legal Operations

• Contribute to the high performance of the Legal Team, including mentoring and training junior lawyers and paralegals, participating legal automation initiatives and broader process improvement activities.

Key Role Relationships

• GM Strategic Partnerships and Capital Transactions and the Capital Transactions team
• Regional and Centre Management teams
• Leasing Legal team
• Paralegal Manager and team

Experience & Capabilities

• You have relevant private practice or in house experience running significant retail property acquisitions and disposals and specialist legal expertise from a property or real estate team.
• You understand the retail property sector, and an understanding of the legal and commercial issues arising out of owning, operating and transacting shopping centres.
• You have a track record of successfully delivering results to deadlines and have the ability work autonomously and collaboratively as required.
• You thrive in a dynamic environment and are able to embrace change as we enhance our property portfolio and optimise our business to deliver property excellence today and sustainable growth into the future.
• You can build professional relationships internally and externally and are a great person to work with.

You consistently demonstrate and role model the behaviours that bring the Vicinity values to life:

Respect

• We listen to and acknowledge each other’s views
• We have difficult conversations with care

Integrity

• We back our words with the right actions
• We do the right thing, no matter the situation

Customer Focus

• We nurture a genuine connection with our customers
• We consider customer needs when making decisions

Collaboration

• We invite the right people to the table
• We balance consensus with decisive actions

Excellence

• We always strive to improve
• We share our challenges and celebrate the wins

Why Vicinity?

Our benefits program focuses on creating an awesome place to work in which our people are rewarded and recognised. This includes:

• Flexible working options
• Birthday leave & purchased additional leave
• $1,000 worth of VCX securities rewarded for eligible team members
• Internal mentoring program
• Generous Parental Leave

We live and work by our values of Respect, Integrity, Customer Focus, Collaboration and Excellence. They are the foundation to everything we do and provide us a north star with which we can shape meaningful places where communities connect.
At Vicinity we embrace and celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive work environment where we attract, retain and develop our people regardless of gender identity, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability and age. Applications are encouraged from all sectors of the community and we strongly encourage applications from the Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander community.
Our people and our Employee Advocacy Groups (Gender Balance, Cultural Diversity, Disability & Access and Pride & Allies) actively build community and provide allyship within Vicinity. If you’d like to speak to someone to understand what it’s like firsthand to work here, please reach out to our Talent Acquisition team.
We are aware of current limitations with our website accessibility and are working towards improving this. Should you experience any issues accessing information in this job advertisement or the application form, and require this in an alternate format, please contact our Talent Acquisition Team. Similarly, if you would like to discuss workplace accessibility, any reasonable adjustments we can make to better support you during the recruitment process, or your potential future role please reach out to our Talent Acquisition team:
Email:
talent.acquisition@vicinity.com.au
Phone: +61 3 7001 4000 (request to speak to our Talent Acquisition team)
Note: To be eligible to apply for this position, you must have existing, relevant Australian work rights. At the later stages of the recruitment process the shortlisted candidate/candidates will be required to undergo a Criminal History Background/Police Check as a mandatory part of the process. Additional qualification checks may also be required dependant on role and level

• GM Strategic Partnerships and Capital Transactions and the Capital Transactions team
• Regional and Centre Management teams
• Leasing Legal team
• Paralegal Manager and tea