Associate

Fox Williams offers a unique opportunity to advance your career in a personable, progressive and entrepreneurial environment. Our people and culture are important to us and central to everything we do. We continually strive to create and maintain a friendly and supportive environment for our staff. You will quickly get to know everyone from the Senior Partner to the most junior staff. Whilst we are recognised for our strong culture and investing in our people, we are equally well known for our high profile matters, quality of our work and solving our clients’ most complex legal issues.

Fox Williams is committed to creating a diverse workforce which reflects the demographics of society and the broad range of clients for whom we work. We collaborate with our recruitment agents to seek a broad talent pool for all of our roles. We are passionate about working in an inclusive environment and successful candidates will be required to uphold this.

The departmentThe Travel Team is headed by Rhys Griffiths and includes two other partners (Lucy England and Farina Azam) and two associates.

The opportunity

Our Travel Team is top-ranked in both The Legal 500 and Chambers & Partners for Travel: regulatory and commercial. We represent the biggest and most well-known travel companies in the world, with a particular focus on tech-enabled travel companies such as booking platforms and online travel agents. Our clients include companies such as:

• Booking.com
• On the Beach
• Loveholidays
• easyJet holidays
• lastminute.com

This is primarily a regulatory role. The successful candidate will work principally on advising travel businesses on complex regulatory requirements, compliance projects and dealings with regulators. Although the role will also include some commercial work, we are seeking a lawyer with genuine regulatory experience and an interest in developing as a specialist regulatory adviser, rather than a general commercial contracts lawyer.

The regulatory work we are typically engaged upon includes:

• Advising clients on the interpretation and application of UK and EU travel regulation, including requirements concerning package holidays, insolvency protection and travel licensing.
• Helping clients structure and launch new products, services and business models in compliance with applicable regulatory requirements.
• Advising on compliance with consumer protection law, including online booking journeys, pricing and consumer information, sales and marketing practices, customer terms and mandatory consumer rights.
• Working on multi-jurisdictional compliance projects.
• Dealing with regulators on compliance issues, such as the CMA and CAA.
• Preparing clear and commercially focused regulatory advice, risk assessments, compliance policies and implementation plans.

The role will also involve some commercial work connected with our clients’ regulated business models, including:

• Agency Agreements between a travel supplier and an online travel agent for the sale of travel services.
• B2B Supplier Agreements – where our client is selling travel services to another company, which will then sell to the customer.
• Technology Agreements – including SaaS, API licences, white-labelling, AI driven technologies.
• Customer terms and conditions.

The successful candidate will:

• Have at least 2 years’ PQE and substantive experience of regulatory advisory or compliance work. Experience of travel regulation is not required, but candidates must be able to demonstrate that regulatory work has formed a meaningful part of their practice.
• Have experience of interpreting legislation and regulatory guidance and applying it to complex or novel business models.
• Be able to translate detailed legal requirements into clear, practical and commercially focused advice.
• Enjoy undertaking detailed regulatory analysis and working with clients on the practical implementation of legal requirements.
• Ideally have some experience of commercial contracts, although this is secondary to the requirement for strong regulatory experience.
• Have strong analytical and problem-solving skills and be comfortable advising where the legislation, regulatory guidance or enforcement position is developing or uncertain.