Job Description

Creating a better online experience with cookies. We care about your experience online, that's why we use cookies to make sure our website runs smoothly while personalising your visit for your ease of use and convenience. To choose what cookies you want to accept, select "Manage cookies". To accept all cookies for the best possible experience, select "Accept all". If you'd like to learn more about how we use cookies and to manage your selection, visit our Manage Cookies
Reject All Accept All
Search Jobs
Job Details
Senior Legal Counsel, WRB AME

Requisition Number: 47460
Job Location: Dubai, ARE
Work Type: Office Working
Employment Type: Permanent
Posting Start Date: 20/01/2026
Posting End Date: 03/02/2026
:
Job Summary
As a Senior Legal Counsel for Wealth, Retail Banking & Private Bank (WRB), you will play a pivotal role in providing expert legal guidance and strategic counsel across diverse financial services within the United Arab Emirates, specifically operating out of Dubai. Your expertise will ensure compliance with complex regulatory frameworks, provide risk assessments, and support business growth through effective legal risk management and transactional advice.
Key aspects of this role include driving best practices across legal and regulatory adherence, crafting fit-for-purpose documentation to standardise processes regionally, and fostering a culture of integrity and compliance aligned with our Group Code of Conduct and 'Here for Good' values. You will interface directly with business units to design and implement legal solutions that support innovative banking products and service delivery, ensuring operational excellence and legal robustness.
This role requires providing timely, pragmatic advice on new laws and regulatory changes affecting the WRB space, overseeing external legal expenditures, and coordinating across regional teams to embed legal and compliance excellence. You will also spearhead legal training initiatives to enhance awareness and promote consistent standards within the bank.
Through your work, you will contribute meaningfully to the bank's vision, ensuring that our legal frameworks support sustainable business practices and uphold the highest ethical standards.
Key Responsibilities

• Conduct comprehensive reviews of legal documentation including Terms and Conditions, credit arrangements, facility letters, product and ancillary contractual materials, ensuring absolute adherence to applicable laws and internal policies.
• Maintain up-to-date knowledge of all relevant legal areas impacting Private Bank, Wealth Management and Retail Banking such as contract law, securities regulation, taxation, financial product regulation, derivative instruments, and cross-border legal considerations.
• Provide swift, accurate, and commercially sensitive responses and advices to legal queries from business stakeholders, cultivating a reputation as a trusted legal advisor and collaborator.
• Critically analyse external legal opinions to ensure they align with commercial realities and legal correctness, offering alternative, pragmatic legal solutions where applicable.
• Provide swift, accurate, and commercially sensitive responses to legal queries from business stakeholders, cultivating a reputation as a trusted legal advisor and collaborator.
• Implement and uphold policies that minimise legal exposure whilst enabling business agility within the UAE (including DIFC jurisdiction).
• Develop and refine processes to promote effective legal risk management across Private Bank, Wealth and Retail Banking, supplying training and practical tools to enhance compliance and operational effectiveness.
• Prepare detailed reports on legal risks for submission to Group and Business risk committees, ensuring transparency and proactive management of legal matters.
• Represent the Legal function in governance forums, providing thorough review and articulation of legal risk issues, mitigation strategies, and approvals for management consideration.
• Support dispute resolution and litigation matters, working closely with the Group Dispute Resolution team to coordinate strategy and documentation.
• Manage relationships with external counsel to ensure quality, cost efficiency, and alignment with the bank's objectives, including defining scope of work and overseeing deliverables.

Competencies
Successful candidates will demonstrate a robust combination of technical legal expertise and soft skills essential for navigating complex banking environments. Key competencies include:

• Action Oriented: Proactively drives initiatives, resolves issues decisively while maintaining quality.
• Collaboration: Works effectively across diverse teams and geographies to achieve shared outcomes.
• Customer Focus: Understands and anticipates client needs, delivering tailored legal solutions.
• Clarity & Guidance: Communicates complex legal concepts clearly to ensure understanding.
• Manages Ambiguity: Navigates complex and evolving regulatory landscapes with agility and sound judgment.
• Develops Talent: Supports the growth and learning of others, fostering a culture of continuous improvement.
• Decision Quality: Makes informed, timely, and effective decisions balancing risk and commercial factors.
• Courage & Integrity: Upholds ethical standards, addresses challenges with confidence and resilience.
• Technical Competencies: Demonstrates expert-level knowledge of banking law, regulatory compliance, contract negotiation, and risk management within the financial services sector.
• Strategic Mindset: Aligns legal activities with broader business strategies to facilitate sustainable growth.

Our Ideal Candidate
The successful candidate will possess a comprehensive legal education with a recognised degree and postgraduate qualifications in Law. Professional admission as a solicitor, attorney, barrister, or advocate is essential, demonstrating the capability to practice law effectively.
Bilingual proficiency in English and Arabic is preferred to facilitate communication within the highly diverse regional market, although English proficiency is mandatory.
Relevant experience in private legal practice or an in-house legal team focusing on banking, particularly within Private Banking and Wealth Management sectors, is highly desirable. Candidates should display sharp commercial acumen, strong interpersonal capabilities, and an appreciation for multi-cultural environments.
Key attributes include adeptness in managing complex, geographically dispersed client and product portfolios, with an ability to collaborate across countries, regions, and business units. A solid understanding of risk management frameworks and regulatory environments specific to the UAE and broader Middle East jurisdictions will ensure success.
Judgmental soundness in balancing business objectives with regulatory compliance, reputational risk, and ethical standards is imperative, along with demonstrated resilience, integrity, and independence.
About Standard Chartered
We're an international bank, nimble enough to act, big enough for impact. For more than 170 years, we've worked to make a positive difference for our clients, communities, and each other. We question the status quo, love a challenge and enjoy finding new opportunities to grow and do better than before. If you're looking for a career with purpose and you want to work for a bank making a difference, we want to hear from you. You can count on us to celebrate your unique talents and we can't wait to see the talents you can bring us.
Our purpose, to drive commerce and prosperity through our unique diversity, together with our brand promise, to be here for good are achieved by how we each live our valued behaviours. When you work with us, you'll see how we value difference and advocate inclusion.
Together we:

• Do the right thing and are assertive, challenge one another, and live with integrity, while putting the client at the heart of what we do
• Never settle, continuously striving to improve and innovate, keeping things simple and learning from doing well, and not so well
• Are better together, we can be ourselves, be inclusive, see more good in others, and work collectively to build for the long term

What we offer
In line with our Fair Pay Charter, we offer a competitive salary and benefits to support your mental, physical, financial and social wellbeing.

• Core bank funding for retirement savings, medical and life insurance, with flexible and voluntary benefits available in some locations.
• Time-off including annual leave, parental/maternity (20 weeks), sabbatical (12 months maximum) and volunteering leave (3 days), along with minimum global standards for annual and public holiday, which is combined to 30 days minimum.
• Flexible working options based around home and office locations, with flexible working patterns.
• Proactive wellbeing support through Unmind, a market-leading digital wellbeing platform, development courses for resilience and other human skills, global Employee Assistance Programme, sick leave, mental health first-aiders and all sorts of self-help toolkits
• A continuous learning culture to support your growth, with opportunities to reskill and upskill and access to physical, virtual and digital learning.
• Being part of an inclusive and values driven organisation, one that embraces and celebrates our unique diversity, across our teams, business functions and geographies - everyone feels respected and can realise their full potential.

Information at a Glance
Standard Chartered 2025. All rights reserved.
x
Cookie preferences
Tell us which cookie categories you consent to by using the sliders below. You can change your preferences any time by clicking on Manage cookies on our homepage.
Stricly necessary cookies (always active)
Your security and privacy are our top priority, that's why these cookies are always on to ensure the safest and smoothest online experience.
Show More Details
Stricly necessary cookies (always active) Provider Description Enabled
SAP as service provider
We use the following session cookies, which are all required to enable the website to function:

• "route" is used for session stickiness
• "careerSiteCompanyId" is used to send the request to the correct data centre
• "JSESSIONID" is placed on the visitor's device during the session so the server can identify the visitor
• "Load balancer cookie" (actual cookie name may vary) prevents a visitor from bouncing from one instance to another

Functional Cookies
For your ease of use and convenience, these cookies remember the choices you made (e.g. language and region) and personalise our website to make it most relevant for you.
Show More Details
Functional Cookies Provider Description Enabled
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing service where users can create their own profile, upload videos, watch, like and comment on videos. Opting out of YouTube cookies will disable your ability to watch or interact with YouTube videos.
Advertising Cookies
To make sure we only send what's most relevant to your needs, these cookies help us and our partners understand what matters most to you. The data collected can be shared with third parties, such as advertisers or platforms, to create an ecosystem that is always relevant to you.
Show More Details
Advertising Cookies Provider Description Enabled
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is an employment-oriented social networking service. We use the Apply with LinkedIn feature to allow you to apply for jobs using your LinkedIn profile. Opting out of LinkedIn cookies will disable your ability to use Apply with LinkedIn.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic.
Google Tag Manager
Google Tag Manager is a tag management system for conversion tracking, site analytics, remarketing and more.

Skills Required