Legal Operations Paralegal

Role Summary

• The Legal Operations Paralegal supports the Discovery Green Legal function by coordinating post-signature contract management, monitoring contractual and regulatory obligations, maintaining accurate legal records and reporting tools, and preparing routine legal and compliance documentation. The role serves as a central coordination point between Legal, Operations and other stakeholders to ensure that contractual deliverables, conditions, deadlines and supporting evidence are identified, tracked, escalated and completed timeously. The role does not provide independent legal advice and must refer substantive legal interpretation, negotiation positions, disputes and material risk decisions to the Head of Legal or designated legal counsel.

Key Outputs / Job Responsibilities may include but are not limited to:

Contract lifecycle and obligation management

• Maintain complete and current contract, suspensive-condition, reporting and obligation trackers for power purchase agreements, renewable energy supply agreements, electricity supply agreements, direct agreements, lender documents and related arrangements.
• Identify upcoming deadlines, issue reminders within agreed lead times, and promptly escalate overdue, incomplete or at-risk obligations to the Head of Legal.
• Coordinate the collection, validation and filing of evidence of fulfilment, waiver, delivery or compliance.

Transaction implementation and stakeholder coordination

• Act as the coordination point between Legal, Operations and relevant internal and external stakeholders to ensure clean handover of executed transactions into operational management.
• Maintain action lists, follow up agreed deliverables and support timely completion of implementation activities involving Discovery Group functions, Eskom, NERSA, generators, independent power producers, customers, lenders and service providers.

Legal records, reporting and drafting support

• Maintain accurate matter and contract records, including executed agreements, amendments, notices, waivers, approvals, correspondence, supporting evidence, status information, links and timelines, in the approved repository.
• Prepare accurate first drafts of recurring certificates, reports, notices, routine correspondence and other standard legal or compliance documents for legal review.
• Produce periodic status reports and dashboards identifying completed, outstanding, overdue and high-risk items, with clear proposed follow-up actions.
• Support audit, due-diligence and regulatory-readiness exercises by retrieving complete and reliable records and evidence.

Legal operations and continuous improvement

• Maintain approved templates, precedents, playbooks and legal-process documentation, with appropriate document control and version management.
• Identify and implement practical process improvements, workflow automation and legal-technology solutions that improve efficiency, visibility and data quality.
• Use legal technology and approved AI tools responsibly, subject to confidentiality, privilege, information-security and human-review requirements. 

Education

• A recognised paralegal, legal administration or contract-management qualification, or an LLB, BCom Law, BA Law or equivalent relevant qualification from a recognised institution.
• Relevant demonstrable experience may be considered in conjunction with, or in place of, a formal paralegal qualification, subject to Discovery’s recruitment requirements
• Additional certification in contract management, compliance, project management or legal operations (Advantageous).

Skills and experience

Required

• Contract administration and obligation management
• Document management, filing and version control
• Microsoft Excel and tracker management
• Microsoft Word and document formatting
• Legal drafting and proofreading
• Compliance and deadline monitoring
• Stakeholder and project coordination
• Legal research

Preferred

• SharePoint, Teams and electronic document repositories
• Legal technology, workflow tools and process automation
• Energy-sector contracting and regulatory knowledge

Role Specific Attributes

• Highly organised and detail oriented, with an uncompromising approach to accuracy.
• Able to manage multiple priorities and deadlines simultaneously.
• Comfortable engaging with a variety of internal and external stakeholders.
• Strong in project coordination and follow-through.
• Proactive, solutions-driven and able to work independently.
• Skilled in time management and administration.
• Sound judgement in identifying matters requiring escalation to the Head of Legal.
• High ethical standards, discretion and the ability to handle privileged and commercially sensitive information.