Careers

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.

The Team

Our Employment, Pensions and Immigration team continues to be a market leader, going from strength to strength across a range of sectors. Our year on year growth means that we work with a fantastic portfolio of clients, many of which are household names.

The team operates on a truly national basis, providing our lawyers with the opportunity to work with a variety of colleagues and clients. Acting mainly for employers, our roster of clients includes national and multi-national organisations, and we support them to improve their employment practices and manage workforce issues, as well as defending employment claims and seeking to mitigate risks for clients.

Bevan Brittan has 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.

This is a team that knows and understands the reality of the sector which means their advice and management of matters is effective, focused and strategic but human in its approach - Legal 500, 2023

The Role

We are looking for a Senior Associate to join us, who will be ideally well placed to be assigned to one of our regional locations including Birmingham, Bristol or Leeds. We operate a very flexible hybrid working model.

As a member of the national employment practice the primary focus of your role will be working in the following sectors: commercial services, higher education, financial services and housing. The wider team also has an outstanding reputation in the health and care sectors, supporting and advising the NHS, voluntary and independent health and care providers as well as local/central government markets. There may be opportunities to work in some of these areas too.

Bevan Brittan is proud of its full service offering and embedded multi-disciplinary team approach to supporting our clients. Building relationships, both externally with our clients and across our internal teams, is key. 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 across both contentious and non-contentious matters.

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

• Manage your own caseload across both contentious and non-contentious work areas
• Work with and support a number of our partner leads and colleagues across all four 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 employee relations matters including internal disciplinary/grievance/capability processes, reviewing policies and procedures and contracts, advising on equalities obligations, conduct of and/or support on Employment Tribunals, advising on TUPE processes including inputting into drafting of commercial agreements as well as delivering training on a broad range of employment issues and supporting business development.

With approximately 100 new litigation instructions every year, our Employment team's litigation experience is second to none. Whether in the Tribunal, the EAT, the Court of Appeal or the High Court you will have the chance to be involved in ground-breaking employment litigation.

What we are looking for from you

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

• Supervision of junior colleagues
• A broad range of contentious and non-contentious employment experience, ideally gained across one or more of our key markets, including financial services, general commercial, higher education, and housing
• Case management of complex ET claims
• Advising on employee relations issues including settlement negotiations
• Reviewing/drafting policies
• Contractual and policy advice
• Senior exits
• Advising on restructures/redundancy processes and TUPE issues
• Undertaking transactional due diligence, often as part of a wider corporate or commercial transaction
• Some advocacy experience desirable but not essential
• 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.