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 2023' 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 2022 we fundraised and donated a total of £80,000 to our four regional office charities, with each charity receiving £20,000 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.