Residential Development Partner in Southampton

Our Residential team is one of the largest of its kind. We support our clients on a range of projects across the Living Sector. We act for PLC; regional; and SME house builders; registered providers of affordable housing; land promoters; and PRS investors & developers in respect of residential and residential-led mixed-use developments.

Our expertise in the Living Sector, coupled with our approach to client service, means that we are rated as the premier team by both clients and the legal directories.

If your expertise lies in house-building; build to rent; strategic land or affordable housing we'd be very interested in hearing from you. We also have various locations you could be based from, on a hybrid basis, including Bristol, Leeds, Edinburgh, Newcastle or Southampton.

We're looking for a partner with a credible track record in this sector, capable of delivering growth and increasing our national profile. You'll also be expected to support and drive the wider strategic vision of growth for Womble Bond Dickinson. But as well as driving our business forward, you'll have an equally important role to play in the development of our people, coaching and mentoring and taking responsibility for their career development.

What will you be doing?

Within this sector we are seeing significant growth. We have an impressive list of major clients and panel appointments. You'll be joining a national high-profile team with the best exposure to high value development work available. This includes conditional and unconditional contracts/transfers, option agreements, promotion agreements, development funding agreements, forward commitment/turnkey contracts, and collaboration agreements with a focus on high value residential development and investment projects.

To be successful in this role you'll need as a minimum:

• A legal qualification with 8+ year's post admission experience.
• A high level of knowledge of the UK living sector and experience of building and sustaining a practice in this sector.
• The ability to demonstrate a thorough understanding of revenue prioritisation.
• An effective coach and sounding board for team members giving a clear sense of direction and purpose.
• The ability to actively seek out opportunities for innovation and create process improvements.
• A role model with a commercial mind‑set who ensures efficiency.
• An external profile as a leader in this field.
• You understand how the provision of legal services should be delivered at a top 20 law firm.

What's in it for you

We have a strong, collaborative culture where success is rewarded and our people are supported and encouraged to achieve their potential, whatever their role in the business. That means you'll benefit from a hugely talented group of business professionals all of whom are enthusiastic and committed to the success of our business and ready to support your practice development whether that's through sector or business development advice and support, learning and development opportunities or technology and innovation.

We have some pretty innovative solutions for our clients and the Real Estate team are fully embracing those technologies and practices, all designed to make your life, and those of your clients, that much easier. You can read more about WBD Advance, and what it can do to support you, here.

We recognise that just because you're a senior lawyer, your need for career development doesn't end there. Our Learning and Development team have worked with best-in-class providers, to design a number of masterclasses for partners intended to enhance your leadership and business skills.

What makes it great to work here?

We continually work hard to create an open culture that sets us apart from other firms. Our culture gives us much more of a human feel, emphasising that we're more than just suits!

As signatories to the Mindful Business Charter, it's important to us that our people are able to maintain healthy and happy lives, both in and out of work. We have a number of resources and initiatives designed to support health and wellbeing and we're very happy to talk flexible working, full-time or part-time working patterns.

Through our DEI initiatives we create an environment in which difference is valued. We have an Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Group, led by our Board Sponsor, which works with our colleague networks (we currently have firm supported networks for race, ethnicity, and cultural heritage, LGBTQ+, disabilities, families, and women's career development and we're in constant dialogue with our people about how we expand our networks to better support everybody). Find out more about ED&I at WBD here. We encourage applicants from all social backgrounds, ethnicities, disabilities, gender identities and sexual orientations.

We are committed to ensuring our recruitment process is inclusive and accessible to all. If you have a disability or long term condition and need us to make any adjustments to give you the best possible recruitment process, please let us know by contacting the recruiter on the right hand side of this page. Please also let us know if you need this job advert or the application form in a different format.

We will offer an interview to candidates with a disability or long-term condition who meet the minimum criteria for this role. You can opt into this scheme within the application form. Your response to this question is only used for this purpose, is only visible to the recruitment team and is not used for data monitoring.

We are an in-house recruitment team and will always aim to fill our roles directly in the first instance. If you're an agency, please click here for ways that you can work with us.