Legal Counsel, Market Shaping

Freelance / Fractional Legal Counsel, Market Shaping

Location: UK or European, remote
Start date: June 2026

Project Context

Ostara is a social enterprise with a mission to catalyse an economy in service of life. One core way we pursue this mission is through the design and execution of market-shaping mechanisms that accelerate the adoption of climate and nature-positive technologies. With an initial focus on innovations in agriculture and aquaculture, we aim to help sustainable innovations move from niche to scale.

Specifically, we are exploring whether market-shaping mechanisms, such as buyer commitments, advance market commitments, pooled procurement, offtake agreements, price-support mechanisms, shared R&D models or intermediary-led financing structures, could help unlock scale.

The work involves engagement with offtake companies throughout value chains, producers, NGOs, finance actors and potential funders.

The Role

We are looking for a freelance or fractional legal counsel with experience advising NGOs, foundations, or multi-stakeholder initiatives, with a strong knowledge of competition law, commercial contracts, and market-shaping or collective action projects. The role is not full-time, but we need someone who can act as a trusted interim legal adviser as the project develops.

Purpose of the Role

We are seeking a freelance or fractional legal counsel to provide practical, legal advice as the project is built and develops.

The role is intended to help the project team identify, manage and mitigate legal risks while enabling constructive collaboration across the value chain. We are looking for a pragmatic legal adviser who can support innovation and collective action, rather than only provide risk-avoidance advice.

The immediate focus is to ensure that convenings, working groups and mechanism design processes are legally robust.

Scope of Work

The initial engagement is expected to include:

  • Reviewing the project structure, partner roles and proposed engagement process.
    Advising on competition / antitrust risks related to workshops, working groups and multi-company collaboration.
  • Drafting or reviewing participation guardrails for meetings and workshops.
  • Reviewing agendas, slides and participant materials where legal sensitivities may arise.
  • Advising on appropriate boundaries for information sharing, discussion of prices, volumes, suppliers, purchasing commitments and future market behaviour.
  • Identifying legal considerations for possible market-shaping mechanisms, such as advance market commitments, pooled procurement, price-premium sharing models, shared R&D programs.
  • Advising on governance, liability and contracting issues for any mechanism taken forward through partner NGOs.
  • Helping determine when specialist external law-firm advice or a formal legal opinion may be required. Collaborating with these external firms.

Desired expertise

We are looking for someone who can act as a practical and collaborative legal thought partner to the project team. The ideal candidate would have:

  • UK and/or EU legal qualification.
  • Strong experience in competition / antitrust law.
  • Experience advising multi-stakeholder collaborations, industry initiatives, trade associations, voluntary standards, sustainability coalitions or pre-competitive partnerships.
  • Commercial contracts experience, especially around procurement, offtake, guarantees, funding agreements or intermediary structures.
  • Familiarity with NGOs, charities, foundations, social enterprises or mission-led organisations.
  • Comfort working in early-stage, ambiguous and innovative project environments.
  • Ability to provide concise, practical advice suitable for non-lawyers.
  • Experience in food, agriculture, aquaculture, climate, nature, sustainable finance or commodity markets would be beneficial but is not essential.

Initial Deliverables

To get going, we envisage an initial engagement of approximately 2-4 weeks, with the possibility of an ongoing advisory role thereafter. We anticipate the initial work will require around 4–5 days of work. The first phase would produce:

  • A short legal risk map covering competition law, governance, contracting, liability and information-sharing risks.
  • Draft meeting / workshop guardrails for company participants.
  • Review of current project materials, including workshop agendas and mechanism descriptions.
  • Recommendations on which proposed mechanisms are likely to be legally straightforward, which require further design, and which may need formal specialist advice.
  • Suggested legal structure for any next-stage mechanism design process.

We are open to discussing the best structure, including hourly, day-rate or short retainer arrangements for this initial work, and an ongoing relationship.

How to respond

Interested candidates should send a letter that provides a summary of relevant experience including any examples of comparable work, forthcoming availability and a proposed fee structure. Please send responses to: jobs@ostaracollective.org.

Back To Top