Senior Associate - Employment

Overview

Join our top-ranked Birmingham employment team, advising commercial and education clients, handling disputes and projects and delivering impactful client training.

Role

Due to continued growth, we are looking for an employment solicitor to join our top-ranked team. You will undertake a broad mix of contentious and non-contentious employment work, supporting our commercial and higher education clients. As well as advisory work, you will be involved in delivering our annual programme of training, seminars and legal updates to clients and targets. The Birmingham team works for a wide range of sectors predominantly covering commercial, health, higher education, sports and charities. It is part of the cross‑office Employment, Pensions and Immigration National Service Line of 70+ lawyers which is headed by David Mills and supported by three professional support lawyers. There are monthly cross‑office NSL training sessions delivered by our professional support lawyers, together with cross‑office and sector away days. At this level, you will be expected to perform as follows:

Responsibilities

Client service:

• Deliver outstanding client service to both internal and external clients to encourage client retention and referrals
• Have a sound understanding of clients’ legal, commercial and service requirements
• Have effective client relationship and client service skills
• Technical excellence
• Have strong technical competence and legal knowledge in employment law
• Deliver high quality and commercially focussed advice
• Conduct some advocacy (Preliminary Hearings)
• Deliver training to clients and target clients

Business development:

• Engage in business development with existing and new clients and other professionals

Qualifications

You will have 4+ years\’ experience gained in a reputable firm with a substantive employment law practice acting for employers. Given the challenges of this role, your background and experience will include the following:

• In-depth employment law knowledge and experience
• Clear enthusiasm for employment law
• Excellent written English for drafting purposes
• Very good presentational skills
• Self‑starter with common sense and initiative, and ability to work as a team‑player working on complex matters
• Very good time and documentation management skills
• Keen attention to detail
• Ability to build very good relationships with clients, potential clients and multipliers
• Very good research skills, including an ability to use online information sources
• Excellent interpersonal and team skills, including ability to work with others, influence and persuade
• Highly developed client training skills
• IT literacy
• Strong marketing and business development skills
• Previous experience of advising commercial and education clients on a wide range of employment matters
• Previous experience of providing employment law support and input to corporate transactions, including undertaking due diligence and drafting the employment provisions in transactional documents
• Ability/some experience to develop wider team members including trainees and paralegals (desirable)

Benefits

As you’d expect, we offer a competitive salary and a wide range of benefits. Click here to find out more about our core benefit offering.

Pre employment screening

If we offer you a role, we will conduct comprehensive pre‑employment screening. This screening will include, but is not limited to, a basic DBS, verification of your right to work, a three year employment history and a self‑declaration to assess your character and suitability for the role. Full details of our pre‑screening employment process are available upon request.

The firm

Mills & Reeve is centred on achieving more for clients, their businesses and the wider communities we serve. Our clients and their industries benefit from our knowledge and learning, and receive consistent experiences with no surprises. We tell them what they need to know when they need to know it. We build personal relationships, with advice individually tailored to individual need. And if clients need things we don’t offer, we draw on our network to give recommendations. Our 1,450 plus people and over 850 lawyers share one vision – achieving more for clients. By joining Mills & Reeve, you’ll have the chance to build your skills and experience within a firm that is not only ranked in the top 50 UK law firms, but also one that truly values their people. We are also ranked in The Sunday Times Best Places to Work list, and have been awarded Platinum Investors in People. Our mantra is ‘Achieve more. Together.’, which we feel embodies our purpose and is more than just a catchphrase! Our values are the principles that help us fulfil our purpose. Our people shaped them and live them every day.

• We’re ambitious – We aim high, we embrace new ideas and we’re passionate about our work
• We’re open – We communicate openly and honestly to build trust, and we do what’s right
• We care – We’re committed to each other, our clients, our communities and the planet
• We collaborate – We’re easy to work with, we offer help willingly and we get things done – together

And finally

Everyone at Mills & Reeve brings a unique perspective and ideas to the team and we do everything we can to help each person to thrive. We’re committed to providing an inclusive and supportive working environment, are happy to consider flexible working arrangements, and want to achieve the right balance for both our people and the firm. We encourage everyone to ask if they feel they need and will do our best to support with these. To find out more about our diversity and inclusion work, visit our website.