Commercial Property Lawyer/Senior Lawyer

Working as a Solicitor within the Specialist and Commercial Property team based at our Preston office, you will manage a varied caseload of:

• commercial property transactions including freehold/leasehold sales and purchase, refinance, SIPP transactions;
• commercial lease transactions;
• bridging finance of commercial and residential property;
• commercial and residential developments;
• land transactions, including purchase of development land, overage agreements, option agreements.

You must be a qualified Solicitor and have a minimum of 2 years’ experience of running your own property caseload from initial instruction to completion. It is essential that you have strong experience of dealing with the sale and purchase of commercial properties and commercial leases.

• Handling all aspects of a mixed caseload of commercial property transactions, land transactions and specialist property matters including bridging financial, developments, overage and opinions, as well as assisting our Private Client and Family teams with probate sales.
• Approving legal titles.
• Preparing freehold and leasehold reports for clients and lenders.
• Raising necessary enquiries and dealing with replies to enquiries.
• Preparing Land Registry applications and dealing with requisitions.
• Manage caseload through effective use of case management system.
• Adhere to and promote compliance with the firm’s policies, practices and procedures; legislation applicable to the profession and to any relevant quality standards.
• Through training and other means, to keep fully up to date with relevant legislation and practice.

• Support the development of team assistants. Encourage and facilitate this development by broadening their experience, knowledge and skills. Monitor team support’s delivery of client service with regular feedback.
• Work with your Team Leader to identify opportunities to move people where appropriate, with the aim of increasing the flexibility of the department and its ability to respond to a variety of different pressures.

• Ensure client service levels agreements are met.
• Maintain and build good professional working relationships with clients, external institutions and organisations.
• Develop and improve client service standards, encouraging a total customer care culture throughout your team.

• Qualified solicitor.
• Minimum of 2 years experience of managing own property caseload from instructions to completion and registration.
• Proficient in managing varied and technical property transactions, which must include experience of dealing with commercial property and commercial leases.
• Adept at checking freehold, leasehold titles and commercial leases.
• Ability to raise, check and respond to additional enquiries within your technical experience.
• Signing off AML checks and Customer Due Diligence.
• Working within lender’s instructions.
• Good inter-personal skills, able to deal with all levels within an organisation and relieve potential conflicts.
• Able to work accurately and clearly explain technical matters to non-technical users in both written and verbal forms.
• Good IT skills including experience in using Microsoft office tools – Word, Excel, Outlook etc.
• Strong experience of using property case management software.
• A client focused approach to service delivery.
• Keen attention to detail and ability to manage busy caseload.

• Casual dress
• Company pension
• Employee discount
• Health & wellbeing programme
• Life insurance
• Store discount
• Work from home

• managing own property caseload: 2 years (preferred)
• sale and purchase of commercial properties and leases: 2 years (preferred)