Associate

Lewis Silkin works with leading businesses to protect and enhance their most important assets - their ideas, their people, their brand and their future. We call it: Ideas. People. Possibilities.

With offices in London, Oxford, Manchester, Cardiff, Belfast, Dublin and Hong Kong, we are recognised by clients and industry alike as being distinct for our unique culture, market-leading practice areas, sector focused approach and for providing solutions to complex, multijurisdictional business challenges, with a pragmatic and human touch. We have two things at our core: people — both ours and our clients’— and a focus on creative, tech and innovative businesses.

Our culture is encapsulated by an ethos of bravery and kindness, guided by our values of Integrity, Clarity, Unity and Excellence (our ‘I-CUE’). We aim to provide a supportive environment for our people, clients and wider community and embrace diversity & inclusion, ensuring people are able to bring their full selves to work.

The Corporate team consists of 10 partners, 13 associates, 1 trainee, 2 paralegals, 1 professional development lawyer and a high quality secretarial and word processing support team. The team operates as one combined team based in the London and Cardiff offices.  It is Tier 1 ranked by Legal 500 and Band 2 ranked by Chambers & Partners in the London market and is expanding in both Cardiff and London.

The range of work we carry out includes mergers and acquisitions, all aspects of corporate finance work through the various investment cycles, acting for founders, companies and the funds that invest in them.  This includes debt financing.  In terms of banking, traditionally our work has been on the borrower side but we have more recently seen an uptick in work acting for lenders and other credit providers.  Within our Corporate team sits our tax and employee incentives group and we have recently also added financial services regulatory expertise.

Our clients are interesting and diverse and range from founders and owner-managed entrepreneurial businesses, to investors and funders, through to large businesses including companies listed in the UK and overseas.

We act for many of the world’s leading marketing communications networks, as well as large independent agencies. We act for many cutting edge tech businesses, and high-profile tech investors both inside and outside the UK. We also act for clients in other sectors including financial services, media and entertainment, publishing, professional services, sport, music, fashion, retail, hospitality and leisure.

Each associate is allocated a Career Development Partner from amongst the team’s partners, who will have general responsibility for development of the associate.

All members of our team are given the opportunity to help grow our business and participate fully in our business development initiatives which may range from a variety of sector-based events, to writing in industry journals and presenting at seminars.  We are keen that our associates play an active role in this aspect of our business and they are encouraged to contribute with their own ideas and initiatives. All associates have a business development plan: we see this as a commitment of the firm to support these activities (even if comparatively minor), rather than a specific performance measurement rubric.

We are seeking a 4 to 7-year PQE lawyer having a solid grounding in private practice banking work.  This need not be at a firm with a standalone banking practice and may be as part of a fused corporate and banking offering.

This is the first time that the firm has specifically recruited this resource as the existing work has to date been undertaken by Corporate partners.  We are choosing to do this now as we have experienced a steady increase in the level of banking work being undertaken at the firm over the last two financial years and we anticipate at least at the outset that at least 50% of the candidate’s time will be taken up with banking work, with the balance being in terms of assistance on other Corporate projects.  Of course this 50% is for guidance only, but notably does not include pitching for new business and the fact that the firm may be able to tap into new work from its existing clients on the basis of having for the first time specific banking resource.

The Corporate team (and the firm more generally) has a strong track record of integrating new practice areas into its broader offering. This recruitment falls squarely in the firm’s initiative for sponsoring people and skills at all levels.  Additionally, as shown with the firm’s growth in its tax and benefits and its investment in its financial services regulatory offering, the Corporate team has a demonstrable commitment to offer a broader array of legal services to its clients.

This is a green field opportunity in the sense that once the candidate has his or her feet under the table, there will be considerable licence for that candidate to establish the direction of the practice.  Business development initiatives are encouraged and supported across all levels within the firm (including its associates) and we aim to give all lawyers autonomy where possible to develop their practices within the broader firm strategy.  In this context, we would certainly be open and guided by the candidate in terms of taking steps to establish and then grow our banking offering.

The candidate would have some prior private practice experience in respect of acting for both lenders and borrowers, acting in different forms of debt finance transactions, including secured lending and loan note instruments, and debt financing for restructuring transactions.  We would expect a level of counselling and drafting expertise commensurate with that experience.

IT SKILLS:

• Proficient IT skills - Office 365, Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Skype for Business, DocsCorp PDF Docs, Word Compare (DocsCorp CompareDocs), Document Management System (Netdocs), although full in house training will be provided.
• Time recording (Intapp TIME)

At Lewis Silkin our ethos is simple. We strive to do the best for our clients, our people and the communities in which we operate. We recognise that an inclusive workplace allows for all kinds of ideas and thoughts, a variety of points of view that can trigger discussions or deliver innovative results, and a wide range of versatile skills and expertise. We are proud of the diversity within Lewis Silkin and of our culture that allows people to be themselves at work, ensuring we provide the best possible service to our clients. We are committed to finding the right person for this role and are open to discussing flexible working patterns and office location.