Employment Senior Associate / Legal Director (Health)
Location
Birmingham, Bristol or Leeds
Description
Bevan Brittan is a UK-Top 100
commercial law firm providing a comprehensive range of legal
services from offices in Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds and London.
The firm advises businesses across
construction, energy & resource management, higher education and
financial services, complementing the firm's market leadership
within housing, local government and health & social care.
We currently employ over 600
people, including over 90 Partners, and our award-winning teams
provide construction, commercial, corporate, property, regulatory,
employment and litigation (commercial and clinical negligence) legal advice.
Bevan Brittan is named among 'The
Times Best Law Firms 2024' and has recently either won or been
shortlisted for a number of prestigious awards.
We are driven by our 4 values:
Relationships, Results, Reputation and Responsible. These give us a
sense of purpose and ensure we always work collaboratively with
clients and colleagues, continually improve, make the right choices
and act with integrity.
Bevan Brittan is an equal
opportunities employer and welcomes applicants from all backgrounds.
Employment Senior Associate /
Legal Director (9+ PQE)
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-life balance
Where possible, we want to offer
all Bevan Brittan people flexibility to work their week in a way
that suits them - we operate a hybrid working model based on the
needs of our clients, teams and that of the individual. Our core
business hours are 9am - 5:15pm Monday to Friday, however we are
open to individuals working more flexibly around those times and
would welcome a conversation with you if you have any questions.
We offer a substantial benefits
package to all employees including:
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
Responsible business
To us, being a responsible
business is second nature; a core part of Bevan Brittan's identity,
running through our culture and embodied by the clients we serve. We
want to demonstrate our commitment to these causes through actions
rather than words; colleagues from across the firm are already
heavily involved, living and breathing the four pillars of our
Responsible Business strategy:
Community Engagement -Each lawyer has the opportunity
to undertake pro bono legal work for local charities and
not-for-profit organisations. We also play an active role through
our local office communities, in 2023 we fundraised and donated a
total of £100,000 to our four regional office charities, with each
charity receiving £25,000 to help fund their vital services.
Environmental Sustainability- Bevan Brittan is proudly a
carbon neutral firm. We have achieved the UN's Climate Neutral Now
accreditation and our environmental sustainability plan is focused
on achieving our net zero carbon target.
Equality, Diversity & Inclusion- We have a strong and vibrant
diversity programme that gives colleagues across the firm an
opportunity to take part, led by our Equality, Diversity &
Inclusion Committee and supported by our Ambassadors, who drive
engagement in our strategy and raise awareness across the firm.
Wellbeing -We are proud of our open
culture, where colleagues feel empowered to speak openly about
physical and mental health issues and to seek out support when
needed. We have trained 21 colleagues across the firm as Mental
Health First Aiders and established a programme of initiatives
including our informal 'coffee with' scheme.
Collectively, these four pillars
ensure we look after our colleagues' wellbeing; offer an environment
in which all can progress on merit, regardless of personal
circumstances or background; give something back to the communities
in which we work; and protect the environment.