Solicitor / Associate (3-5 PQE) - Employment, Bristol

Job Introduction

The Employment and Pensions Group at DAC Beachcroft is over 90 strong with 17 Partners and a presence in Bristol, London, Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle. It’s a truly exciting time to be joining this thriving part of our business and we have an exciting new opportunity in our Bristol team.

Our Bristol office, led by four partners (three specialising in employment law and one in immigration law) and with 13 additional fee earners, is amongst the best in the country; ranked as tier one in the Legal 500 and Chambers and Partners Guides.

Role Responsibility

• Undertake a varied workload of employment matters advising employers in a variety of sectors, including health, telecoms and insurance work.
• Progress and manage a wide variety of client matters both contentious and non-contentious, and of varying complexity and scale.
• 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.

The Ideal Candidate

• We would expect the post holder to be a solicitor of 3 - 5 years post qualification experience, from an established respondent focused practice, who will be able to manage their own work and caseload with minimal supervision.
• Must have experience of contentious and non-contentious matters, and preferably experience of working on complex employment tribunal litigation, 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.
• 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.

Application Details

At DAC Beachcroft, we don’t just accept your differences we celebrate them.  From bespoke solutions for our clients, to treating you like an individual.  Our strength comes from your diverse ideas and bringing the whole you to work. So if you’re good at what you do, come as you are.  We welcome direct applications and are happy to talk flexible working.

We also want you to be at your very best.  Please feel free to let us know of any changes we can make at any point in the recruitment process that will help support your application.  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.

Note for Recruitment Agencies – the DAC Beachcroft recruitment team is responsible for managing all current vacancies through direct hiring and referrals wherever possible.  We do work with recruitment agencies and where we require external support we will formally release those vacancies to the agencies on our Preferred Supplier List deemed best placed to assist us.  Speculative CVs sent by any agency to any DAC Beachcroft employee without a specific request by the recruitment team will not be accepted and with no introduction fee applicable.  Our recruitment team can be contacted at recruitment@dacbeachcroft.com

DAC Beachcroft