Careers

Make a Real Impact

Bevan Brittan is a leading commercial law firm. Alongside our recognised expertise in housing, local government, and health and social care, we are specialists in the construction, energy and resource management, higher education and financial services sectors.

Supported by our valued business services professionals, our award-winning and growing legal teams provide almost 2,000 organisations with commercial, corporate, property, finance, regulatory, employment and litigation (commercial and clinical negligence) legal and advisory services.

As a responsible business, we embrace four values: Relationships, Reputation, Responsible and Results. These give us a sense of purpose. They influence the decisions we make and how we work with each other. Importantly, they motivate us to deliver meaningful outcomes for our clients and the communities that we're part of.

Consistently recognised as one of The Times Best Law Firms and highly ranked across the legal directories, we are proud of our hard-earned reputation. Our 2023/24 financial results confirmed both revenue and profit growth for an eleventh consecutive year, ensuring our ability to continue investing in our people.

Looking to the future, we're targeting ambitious growth and success. And we're looking for the best people to be part of it.

Join a team of experts and progressive thinkers

The team

With four of our eight partners ranked Band 1 in Chambers and Partners including two as specialist employment healthcare lawyers, our Employment, Pensions and Immigration team continues to be a market leader for legal services to health and social care as well as to local government.

Alongside our established reputation in these markets, the team continues to grow its profile and client base in some of our emerging markets including the insurance and finance, commercial, higher education and housing sectors.

The team operates as a national team alongside our complementary multi-disciplinary teams such as information law, commercial and regulatory teams. The team primarily acts for employers, including national and multi-national organisations, supporting them to improve their employment practices, to navigate all levels of transactions, and to manage workforce issues, as well as defending employment litigation.

As a firm, Bevan Brittan also has a very strong recognition in the independent legal directories - Chambers & Partners and Legal 500. In both guides we are consistently ranked in the top tier for our practices across the UK, with multiple individuals recognised as leading lawyers.

The role

We are looking for a Senior Associate or Legal Director to join us, based in our Bristol, Birmingham or Leeds office (with flexible hybrid working), ideally with good transactional expertise and health and social care employment experience.

As a member of the national employment healthcare practice the primary focus of your role will be supporting the healthcare partner leads, across our substantial health and social care practice, including the NHS, as well as independent healthcare organisations and operators within social care and the voluntary sector. As part of this, you would also work with other members of the team, as well as part of multidisciplinary teams across the firm, providing employment support on a variety of transactions and deals.

Building relationships, both externally with our clients and across our internal teams, is key. In this role, you will have the opportunity to work with regulatory and commercial healthcare colleagues to ensure a joined up, multi-disciplinary approach. You will ideally have some experience of the NHS workforce and contractual frameworks and, some strong TUPE and transactional experience in supporting clients with, for example, mergers, acquisitions or in/outsourcing and on workforce aspects of other commercial deals.

You will also have the opportunity to support clients in the other sectors in which we work and across a variety of work-types from transactional, to advisory support, to contentious work. The depth and breadth of the markets in which we operate will provide the opportunity and flexibility to work on novel and complex employment law issues.

With your skill and expertise, it is envisaged that you would:

• Manage your own matters with relatively limited supervisory support and delegate to juniors
• Work with and support a number of our partner leads and colleagues across all 4 of our offices
• Provide management and supervisory support to junior colleagues
• Support on training and client relationship management

You would be supervising and advising on a range of employment work-types, but also delivering training, supporting and managing client relationships and supporting business development.

What we are looking for from you

The successful candidate will be involved in providing sound, commercial employment advice and would ideally have some or all of the following skill set/experience:

• A broad range of employment experience, ideally gained across one or more of our key markets, including health and social care (NHS or independent), financial services, general commercial, higher education, and/or housing
• Strong TUPE experience including drafting/negotiating related warranties and indemnities and advising on workforce aspects of commercial transactions, including information and consultation processes
• Undertaking transactional due diligence, often as part of a wider corporate or commercial transaction with multidisciplinary teams
• Advising on restructures/redundancy processes
• Advising on employee relations issues including settlement negotiations
• Reviewing/drafting policies
• Contractual advice; experience in advising on NHS terms and conditions desirable but not essential
• Litigation and/or advocacy experience is welcome but not essential
• Supervision of junior colleagues
• Good client management skills and an interest in business development

We offer a structured career pathway to meet both your and our needs.

Work with approachable people

When we ask colleagues what makes Bevan Brittan a great place to work, the most popular thing they say is "the people". The overwhelming consensus is that we make time for each other. We welcome questions and support each other. Naturally, we look for new colleagues who align with our values.

Supported to be your best

Hybrid working

We operate a hybrid working model based on the needs of our clients, teams and people. Our core business hours are 9am - 5:15pm Monday to Friday, but we're open to our people working more flexibly around those times and welcome a conversation with you if you have any questions about this. We try to offer you the flexibility to work your week in a way that suits you.

Learning, Development & Progression

We're committed to supporting your professional and personal development needs.This means that we offer a range of tailored training courses and you will have lots of opportunity to learn from those around you. We actively encourage progression and this is reflected in our annual review and promotion processes. You will be supported by your line manager to achieve your full potential.

Wellbeing

As a Bevan Brittan employee, you'll have access to a variety of services that support your wellbeing. We've pledged our commitment to The Mindful Business Charter and lots of our people contribute to our Wellbeing Responsible Business strand, which organises an annual calendar of wellbeing events and initiatives.

Benefits

• A minimum of 25 days holiday (plus the option to buy up to an additional 5 days)
• Discretionary bonus scheme
• Generous pension scheme
• Private medical insurance through Vitality
• Biennial private health assessment through Nuffield Health
• Life assurance
• Access to Employee Assistance Programme
• Cycle to work scheme

Embracing our differences and valuing inclusion

Our shared aim is that everyone is welcome and can feel comfortable being themselves at Bevan Brittan. To support this, we actively value and promote equality, diversity and inclusion in everything that we do. You'll be empowered and supported through our employee led networks, diverse colleagues, and a broad range of firmwide initiatives.

Recognising the unique contributions that a diverse workforce can bring to our business, we encourage applications from people of all backgrounds. We take great pride in being a Disability Confident Employer. If you need any adjustments throughout the recruitment process or have any questions, please get in touch with our recruitment team by emailing recruitment@bevanbrittan.com

Acting responsibly, now and for the future

To us, being a responsible business is second nature; a core part of Bevan Brittan's identity. Our colleagues are heavily involved in shaping and delivering activity across the four pillars of our Responsible Business strategy: Community Engagement; Environmental Sustainability; Equality, Diversity & Inclusion; and Wellbeing.

Our people deliver pro bono legal work for charities and not-for-profit organisations. We play an active role in our local communities and donated £100,000 across our four regional office charities last year. We are also proudly carbon neutral. We've achieved the UN's Climate Neutral Now accreditation and our environmental sustainability plan focuses on achieving our net zero carbon target by 2040.

Collectively, the four pillars ensure we look after our colleagues' wellbeing; offer an environment in which everyone can progress on merit, give something back to the communities in which we work; and protect the environment.