Technology is at the core of our Trips Business Unit, here at Booking.com. And innovation is everywhere. But our company is more than datasets, lines of code or A/B tests. We’re the thrill of the first night in a new place. The excitement of the next morning. The friends you make. The journeys you take. The sights you see. And the food you sample. Through our products, partners, and people, we make it easier for everyone to experience the world.

The Trips Business Unit will bridge the Booking.com of today with the Booking.com of tomorrow, leading the evolution from a single-product company to a multi-product offering company with an unprecedented, personalised travel experience at the heart of its success.

Booking.com’s growing Legal and Public Affairs team is looking forward to welcoming a dynamic and innovative Junior Legal Counsel, Trips, to work across the Trips Business Unit (namely, the following verticals: Rental Cars, Rides, Attractions and Insurance) and play an active role supporting the senior members of the Trips legal team (and wider Legal and Public Affairs team, where required) to help the verticals in delivering on their strategic priorities, and ensuring compliance with laws and policies. The Trips verticals are a significant part of Booking.com's strategy to build the “Connected Trip” and to grow and scale Booking.com’s multi-product offerings to its customers.

This is a generalist role covering both Trips commercial (focus on contracting) and Trips product and regulatory (supporting senior stakeholders across the relevant teams).

From a commercial perspective, this role will require you to draft and negotiate simple commercial agreements, manage and maintain the Trips contract template library and modernise our contracting processes in collaboration with the wider LPA department. The individual will be required to support the more senior members of the legal team in managing and negotiating more complex contracts with third parties and our partners.

The individual will also be required to support from a regulatory perspective, including reviewing compliance and licensing requirements (in respect of business operations globally) and supporting insurance legal specialists within the team.

From time to time, you will also be required to support from a product perspective; including advising on a range of legal questions related to product development and user experience, working with more senior members of the team on more complex projects. An understanding of data protection laws is preferred but not compulsory.

General

• Demonstrate a collaborative approach to getting the job done, drawing on technical specialist support from other members of the Legal & Public Affairs team and with a range of stakeholders both within the Trips business and externally.
• Create and present guidance documents and training materials for teams within the business, under the direction of their supervisor.
• Execute cross Trips legal team knowledge projects and initiatives (i.e. coordination of external counsel used across the team, input into and dissemination of legal horizon scanning).
• Continually review and assess our precedents and guidelines to ensure that we are being innovative and bold, whilst recognising the agreed risk appetite.
• Demonstrate a keenness to learn about new areas of law and compliance, including within the travel sector and more specialist areas, such as insurance (with the goal being to play a more active role in such areas).

Legal support

• Liaise directly with senior members of the Trips legal team (as a reliable and commercially minded point of contact) in supporting commercial projects and contracts.
• Draft and negotiate clear and commercially appropriate legal agreements for the Trips verticals, within agreed parameters and guidelines.
• Explain the basics of contract law and processes for creating and/or varying business contracts, by way of training and/or general advice to the business.
• Research new commercial topics and confidently turn research into pragmatic legal advice and actions.
• Support with the creation and implementation of efficient and scalable ways of working to enable sustainable business growth, including, as applicable, the implementation of legal tech solutions.
• Provide timely and commercially focused advice in relation to our Trips consumer facing website. Reviewing, drafting and amending general consumer terms and conditions and website conditions of use including recommending appropriate structures.
• Research new compliance and regulatory topics, across multiple jurisdictions, and confidently turn research into pragmatic legal advice and actions.
• Support in respect of legal and regulatory enquiries and reviews, providing independent legal advice and consolidating input for Trips legal and business stakeholders (i.e. responding to Trips regulatory enquiries).
• You may also be required to support the customer relations legal team, who responds to customer enquiries and complaints.

The ideal Junior Legal Counsel, Trips, will have:

• Educated to degree standard.
• Practicing Solicitor.
• Up to 3 years relevant PQE experience either gained with a reputable law firm or in-house (other PQE experience and in-house experience will be considered.
• Ability to act as a real team player, easily adapting to change and possessing the ability to resolve complex legal issues with efficiency and pragmatism.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English.
• Ability to work to tight deadlines and prioritize work based on deadlines set by external parties.
• Able to work independently whilst recognising the commercial necessity to share knowledge cross-team.
• Attention to detail and an ability to extract relevant information for the purposes of taking commercial and legally sound decisions.
• Out of the box thinking, an innovative approach to problem solving and creativity will be vital skills for the successful candidate.

Further skills we are looking for:

• Aligning with Booking.com’s Values (Think Customer First, Succeed Together, Own It, Learn Forever, Do the Right Thing)
• Being curious, flexible, and a creative & pragmatic problem solver
• Confident yet collaborative
• Ability to influence stakeholders across all levels within the organisation
• Being proactive, resilient and having the drive to get things done
• Having sound judgement and the ability to see the big picture and simultaneously appreciate the details necessary to operationalise the strategy
• Having the courage to take positions and make tough judgment calls
• Being a team player, self aware and a good listener - a diverse group will always find the best solution!
• Ability to move with agility, prioritise workloads and meet deadlines
• Forward thinking with an interest in emerging issues in legal and policy

Booking.com ensures equal employment opportunity to all employees and applicants. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, colour, family or medical care leave, gender, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex, pregnancy and childbirth, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws and regulations. We aspire to have a workplace that reflects all of the diverse communities we serve and we welcome and encourage candidates from all backgrounds and experiences to apply for roles on our team. We work to cultivate an inclusive culture in which all of our employees can be their authentic selves.

Why join the Legal & Public Affairs Team now?

Booking.com’s Legal & Public Affairs team is on a transformational journey at a transformational time for e-commerce and travel (think: growth, innovation, changes to how we operate); you will have an opportunity to actively shape the Department’s future. The Legal & Public Affairs team is also a critical part of the enablement of Booking.com’s strategy of the Connected Trip (a travel experience that includes not just accommodation, but also transportation, attractions, experiences, payments, flights etc).

This is a journey that requires close business and Legal & Public Affairs partnerships to redefine our business model, navigate complex regulatory environments, build new products, and negotiate increasingly elaborate commercial deals, among other important projects our teams get involved every day. To tackle this mission, it all starts with a strong team passionate about growing Booking.com in an ethical and sustainable way!

Who we are

To match our global footprint and the array of challenges we face, we are proud to highlight the diversity that exists across this group. We are a team of approximately 165 professionals - representing more than 36 nationalities - with lawyers qualified in many different countries, as well as non-lawyers with public policy, economics, compliance and risk backgrounds. Our team’s previous experience spans across a multitude of industries with team members having worked for major global companies (including Uber, American Express, Airbnb, Amazon, Google, Nokia), tech and other startups, government entities (e.g., the Dutch Competition Authority), and reputable international law firms (e.g., Hogan Lovells, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Baker Mckenzie), and Public Affairs firms (e.g., FTI Consulting, FIPRA, Brunswick).

In addition to our day-to-day work, we actively seek opportunities for our team members to engage in the wider global legal and public affairs communities through speaking engagements, training programs, and association memberships. Some of our lawyers are Board members of Consumer Law associations, Competition Law associations, Privacy associations, etc. We also believe in actively engaging with stakeholders to share our insights on policies affecting the travel experience and how travel tech innovations can fuel the digital transformation of the travel industry. For example, we recently launched Booking.com’s Public Affairs blog, where we publish our position on key policy issues (A World Worth Experiencing).

As a team, we believe in:

• Integrating with the Business and Legal having a “seat at the table”: we are decision makers that can have a real impact on Booking.com’s future
• Booking’s mission of making it easier for everyone to experience the world. Travel helps people become more open minded, curious and flexible
• Allowing members of our teams to experience different areas or, if they want to be specialists, give them the tools to become more effective in their jobs
• Providing holistic legal and public affairs advice; our team should not work in silos
• Always looking for better ways of doing things, improving our Legal Operations function, innovating and exchanging best practices
• Accepting that it's OK to make mistakes as long as we learn from them
• Having a sense of humour and having fun working together; we are a team that likes to collaborate and share in joys and challenges together.