E-Discovery Lawyer / Litigation Support Lawyer

WBD Advance is our alternative legal services delivery group, bringing together a multidisciplinary team, process design and innovative legal technology. The team has over 100 lawyers, paralegals, management information specialists and legal project managers who provide a wide range of services and solutions to clients, and supports the wider business on high volume workstreams, end-to-end managed services and bespoke projects.

We are looking to strengthen one of the sub-teams with a Commercial Disputes / Litigation Support lawyer with a focus on eDiscovery. The team are located in Southampton, Bristol and Plymouth, so the ability to attend one of these offices at least two days per week would be preferred, with the other days working from home.

What will you be doing?

We are looking for an additional lawyer to work within our volume projects sub-team, which provides a range of services to clients including eDiscovery, commercial contract review, bundle and bible production, compilation of data subject access request responses, document redaction, document retention reviews as well as provision of bespoke managed services and solutions. You will work under the direction of the senior lawyer in the team and be responsible for the day-to-day management of projects and workstreams allocated to you. The workstreams will predominantly relate to disclosure and you would be responsible for advising our litigation teams on best practices and legal requirements on the disclosure process from start to finish (including data mapping and extraction, strategic approach to disclosure, to document review and production). You would also be collaborating with our litigation teams to develop and implement eDiscovery strategies. This role may also include advising on the review of documents in a non-contentious setting.

The sub-team currently consists of four qualified lawyers, 15 paralegals and two team managers, and regularly works with the technologists and project managers to respond to client challenges which require either flexible resourcing, process optimisation, purpose-built technology, or all three. Your role will include technical supervision and development of the paralegals who support the workstreams, scoping and pricing, designing and piloting processes, developing and embedding technology solutions, managing client interactions throughout the duration of the project or workstream, acting as the first escalation point for team or client queries, monitoring progress, and supervising the work output. You will also work closely with the WBD Advance Director and Partners, and the wider firm’s Dispute Resolution teams to continue to progress existing services and to identify opportunities for new workstreams.

Your role in WBD Advance’s Legal Solutions Centre, which also has separate claims teams with whom you will work closely when projects and services overlap, will also involve being an advocate for innovation and service delivery within the firm to support on the optimisation of legal work, and to assist with winning of new clients. This is a unique opportunity for someone to consolidate all the knowledge that you’ve developed so far, build on your technical expertise, as well as gain experience in project management, people management and emerging legal technologies. The Legal Solutions Centre is a collaborative working environment with a varied workload and a track record of sustained growth, and, as a result, there is scope for career progression via a number of different routes for the right candidate.

So, what are we looking for?

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

• To be a UK qualified lawyer (applications from Cilex qualified candidates welcome)
• At least one year experience as a qualified commercial disputes lawyer, with experience in eDiscovery.
• An understanding of the eDiscovery processes and exposure to working with eDiscovery platforms.
• Previous experience of supervising at least 1 person, within a legal team.

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. Through our DEI initiatives we create an environment in which difference is valued. We have a 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, neurodiversity, 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).

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.