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, Leeds, 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 Employment team is one of the leading employment law practices in the UK and consistently top ranked by independent legal directories, we have more recognised experts in employment than any other UK firm.  With over 180 lawyers, Lewis Silkin’s employment and immigration team offers an unrivalled service supporting clients, including many of the world’s leading businesses, on their HR, employment and immigration law needs domestically and internationally.

The work of the team as a whole is a mix of contentious and non-contentious matters, for a wide range of clients.  The lawyers undertake a significant amount of business development and knowledge-sharing including giving seminars, training the team and creating content for various channels and publications.  There is a significant international element to the team’s work, largely on account of its membership of the Ius Laboris international alliance of employment lawyers.

In Belfast, the employment team consists of two Partners, one Consultant Partner, two Managing Associates, one Senior Associate and 3 Associates, a trainee and 3 paralegals as well as a Managing Practice Development Lawyer and support team.

The role is based in our newly established Belfast office and the Associate’s workload will be exclusively employment work.  The Associate will mainly be assisting more senior lawyers with their cases, as well as running their own matters under supervision. These senior lawyers will, primarily, be based in the Belfast office but the Associate will also be involved in working for lawyers across our other offices, as required.

The caseload will consist of a mix of contentious and non-contentious employment work and the Associate will have direct contact with a variety of clients. 

The role will develop in accordance with the Associate’s own skills, aptitude and preferences and according to the needs of clients and the division.

Candidate profile

The successful candidate is likely to have between 0-4 years’ PQE and gained the benefit of training and development in a well-respected employment team.

The candidate must have comprehensive employment law knowledge, a strong analytical ability, and a clear communication style (both spoken and written). They must have a commercial approach to client service, enjoy and be comfortable doing business development and, above all, must be a team player.

The ideal candidate will be dual qualified in Northern Ireland and either England and Wales, Scotland or Ireland or have a keen interest in becoming dual qualified.

IT skills required:

• 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).

Training

The Employment team’s training programme includes seminars and workshops given by external speakers and by our own internal experts. 

We have dedicated Practice Development Lawyers who are responsible for maintaining know-how and precedents across the team, as well as the Lewis Silkin Business School which provides our Associates with the tools and skills necessary to develop. 

The successful candidate will be allocated a Talent Partner who will have an overview of their long-term career aspirations and progression.  We have an excellent track-record of developing our Associates and generating opportunities for Partnership.  Organic growth and a strong team culture is at the heart of our success.  

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.