Associate/Senior Associate - Employment

Job Introduction

We are looking to strengthen our growing Employment team with talented lawyers nationwide.

The Employment and Pensions Group at DAC Beachcroft is over 90 strong with 17 Partners and a presence in London, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle and Bristol. We have a thriving and large commercial client base and a strong public sector client base, including a significant number of household names and listed businesses, including McDonald's, DHL, Arcadia, Bentley Motors, BT, Royal British Legion, The Priory, Care UK. Each team is highly ranked in both the Legal 500 and Chambers and Partners Guides.

The team advises clients on issues from daily personnel matters, including disciplinary and grievance issues, to strategic management issues such as redundancy programmes, industrial action, and transfers of employees. We also work closely with our commercial and corporate colleagues to provide support on transactional matters.

We operate a flexible working policy across the team, with many of our lawyers working from home on a regular basis.

Role Responsibility

• Undertake a varied workload of employment matters advising employers in a variety of sectors, including retail, health, logistics and insurance work.
• Progress and manage a wide variety of client matters both contentious and non-contentious, and of varying complexity and scale.
• Depending on level; manage own matters, time and relationships with minimum supervision.
• Maintain an awareness of the appropriate limits of own competence/authority.
• Actively identify and exploit business development opportunities and marketing activity for team clients and own contacts.
• Participate in and initiate marketing / network activities in order to maintain and develop work from existing clients and potential clients.
• This includes presenting and assisting in client and other external seminars, taking part in pitches and contributing positively to business development.
• Maintain and develop technical knowledge through leading and attending training sessions, reading appropriate publications and exceeding Law Society CPD requirements.
• For more senior candidates, support the effective running of the team e.g. contributing to team meetings, reviewing reports and documents of more junior fee earners and providing guidance and feedback, assisting with the allocation of work.
• Provide support for colleagues where appropriate e.g. progressing matters in colleagues’ absence, supporting CRM activities.
• Continually monitoring and taking responsibility for own financial performance and demonstrating proactive financial management; attention to billing regimes, credit control, debt collection, accounting procedures and client service level agreements.
• Handle confidential data in line with the firm's data security protocols. Key skills
• We would expect the post holder to be a solicitor from an established respondent focussed practice.

The Ideal Candidate

• Depending on level, experience of handling tribunal claims from start to finish, and ideally supervising others to do the same would be desirable for more experienced candidates. Civil and/or appellate court experience (EAT, High Court, Court of Appeal etc) is desirable.
• Experience of contentious and non-contentious matters, and preferably experience of advising on major projects involving restructures, M&A, TUPE, collective consultation as well general advisory work with clients on senior level issues, such as executive terminations or restrictive covenant disputes. Work on multi-national issues or immigration experience is also welcomed.
• Good academic record, together with experience in a well-recognised firm.
• Independent thinker with a focus on generating commercial solutions to problems on behalf of clients. Up to date knowledge of key trends in order to maintain credibility in conversations with clients.
• Confident communicator with an ability to develop relationships, undertake client marketing and influence at all levels, in particular HR Director/General Counsel level.
• Enthusiastic team player with a flexible approach, and demonstrates role model behaviours at all times.
• Track record of business development is desirable.

About the Company

We are a leading international legal business with over 2,400 colleagues and a diverse range of capabilities. We have 11 offices in the UK as well as offices in Dublin, Madrid, Paris, Singapore, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Miami. We also have associations/alliances with firms in Northern Ireland, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Brazil, Peru, Central America, Argentina, the USA, Australia and Germany.

We are known for our market-leading presence in sectors such as Insurance, Health and Real Estate. This is complemented by a fast-growing Business Advisory capability. We represent a wide range of clients, ranging from household names to government departments and NHS bodies. We act for the majority of the top 30 insurance and financial services companies operating in the UK. We are the asset management lawyers for the UK’s largest shopping centres and act for 9 of the UK’s top 10 housebuilders.

We have an impressive legal pedigree, with 155 Chambers UK 2019 practice area and individual lawyer rankings, including 30 rankings at 'Band 1' level. In Legal 500 UK, 2018, the firm received top tier ranking for 32 of its practice areas and 59 practice areas in the top two tiers. In March 2018, we were named as one of Legal Week's Best Legal Advisors for the third year running, achieving category-leading satisfaction scores for our commercial approach, service delivery, quality of legal advice, communication & responsiveness and overall relationships.

Our vision is to be leading business advisers, recognised for our insight and our outstanding commitment to clients, and for being the place where talented people want to work. For further details on our work and our culture, please visit www.dacbeachcroft.com.

DAC Beachcroft is an equal opportunities employer and we welcome applications from every sector of the community. We also welcome direct applications. If this opportunity sounds of interest to you, please make an application and submit your CV. Your application will be dealt with in the strictest of confidence.

DAC Beachcroft