Senior Associate Liverpool, England
Job description
Hill Dickinson LLP is a leading and award-winning international commercial law firm with offices in Liverpool, Manchester, London, Leeds, Piraeus, Singapore, Monaco and Hong Kong. With more than 850 people including 185 partners and legal directors, the firm delivers advice and strategic guidance spanning the full legal spectrum, from non-contentious advisory and transactional work, to all forms of commercial litigation.
Hill Dickinson acts as a trusted adviser to a wide portfolio of clients across a wide range of specialist sectors: from transport and logistics and international trade, through to retail, insurance, marine, health, education, manufacturing, public sector and banking and financial services.
Role: Senior Associate – Commercial Solicitor (non-contentious)
Hours: 37.5 hours per week
As the winner of Working Families’ ‘Best UK employer for Flexible Working Award 2020’, we are happy to consider flexible working opportunities to help you balance your work and home life.
Team: Commercial, TMT & IP Team
Location: Manchester / Liverpool or Leeds
At Hill Dickinson we understand that incentives go far beyond a good salary, so we have created a comprehensive benefits package tailored around our people.
Here are some examples of what we offer:
- 25 days’ annual leave
- Birthday privilege day and Christmas shutdown
- Holiday buy, sell and carryover scheme
- 2 charity volunteering or pro bono days
- Flexible, agile and home working
- BUPA
- Permanent health insurance
- Flexible pension scheme
- Medicash
- Enhanced family leave policies
- Life assurance
- Annual travel season ticket loan
- Dress for your day policy
- Training and development opportunities
- Financial contribution towards home working equipment
Introduction to the role:
We have an extremely busy and fast moving non-contentious commercial practice within the firm and are looking to grow resource at the mid-tier level to service these requirements.
We are looking for a Senior Associate with commensurate experience. They will be a trusted member of the Team reporting to the Team Leader/Partner Mark Fitzgibbon. Mark has been with the firm since 2010 and is primarily based in Manchester but works across all UK offices.
Our client base spans a broad spectrum of sectors –, the private sector (spanning all types of goods and services sectors), the public sector (NHS / health clients, local government clients, higher education clients and utility clients) and the third sector (charities, not for profits, CICs, housing trusts etc) which makes for a very varied and rewarding mix of work.
Introduction to the team:
The team comprises of 3 Partners, 1 Legal Director, 1 Senior Associate, 3 Associates, 1 Trainee; located across Manchester, Liverpool and London, covering a wide breadth of purely non-contentious commercial work. Mark Fitzgibbon runs a successful specialist public procurement practice while also heading the private sector commercial team. James Lonsdale is joining the practice in August 2022. In our London office, Mark Weston leads a very eclectic practice including FinTech and tech start-up clients. The team has IP expertise and Information Governance experts. Individually we all have a broad range of experience across general commercial drafting, negotiation and advisory work. We cover a range of commercial supply-chain situations and advise on tactical structuring and positioning, contract drafting and negotiation; acting as a single cross-office team, with a single combined budget (individual targets being aggregated into our overall team budget annually). We have weekly catch-up meetings via Teams, monthly formal minuted team meetings, annual and ad hoc social events, training and BD related planning activities.
Since the pandemic, we have continued working on a hybrid basis with members of the team either working entirely from the office, or a mixture of home and office working which proves to be very productive.
Key responsibilities:
- To handle an array of commercial supply-chain contracts and trading arrangements, including agency, distribution, franchise and manufacturing agreements, collaboration agreements, supply of services and standard terms and conditions (sale and purchase) as typical examples; which would include strategic planning advice, drafting appropriate documentation/ contracts and negotiating the same on behalf of clients.
- Advising on, drafting and negotiating a broad range of IT / tech contracts, such as IT services agreements, SaaS contracts and software licensing.
- Providing “trusted advisor” commercial advisory services to clients which may or may not develop into specific documentary exercises.
- Participate in providing corporate transactional support through regular due diligence exercises undertaken by our Corporate Teams based in Leeds, Liverpool, London and Manchester.
- Experience of working as part of a larger “project” delivery team spanning multiple disciplines (this could include regen, infrastructure project contracting and structuring, etc).
- Experience of providing advice on the application of the UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018 to a variety of commercial contracting scenarios.
- Experience of providing advice on general intellectual property law from a practical perspective (recognising where it is generated/exits, how it is licensed and exploited, etc).
- To provide regular training (face to face and virtual as appropriate) and update sessions and articles to clients, prospective clients (and for internal colleague consumption) on areas of expertise.
Essential:
- Law degree (or equivalent)
- Demonstrates understanding and recognition of associated issues relating to the following areas of legal practice: consumer law, data protection compliance and intellectual property application in practical situations in commercial context.
- Good level of general commercial awareness and attention to detail.
- Driven to create workable solutions for the commercial issues in the best interest of the clients.
- Good level of experience of drafting and negotiating commercial contracts and documentation in private practice.
- Demonstrates an interest in and understanding of clients’ needs and expectations.
- Good experience of advising clients on general commercial matters.
- Excellence in service delivery and quality of services provided through technical and service excellence.
- Ability and keenness to work as part of a team and independently.
- Mentoring/training experience in bringing along junior members of the team.
- Time management skills showing ability to prioritise tasks.
- Excellent legal and commercial research skills.
- Ability to play a proactive part in business development activity individually and collectively.
Desirable:
- A proven track record of involvement in effective business development activity (including providing legal update and training sessions and producing interesting on-point articles to clients and prospective clients).
- Ability to build and maintain professional working relationships, network and work collaboratively both internally and externally.
- Excellence in persuading and influencing.
- Ability to remain an effective communicator under pressure.
- Good listening skills and willingness to receive and act on feedback.
- Experience and drive to mentor and bring on junior talent.
Hill Dickinson is committed to providing fairness and equal opportunity for all regardless of age, gender, gender identity, ethnic origin, disability, sexual orientation, marital or transgender status, nationality, religion or belief.
We understand that our power as a firm comes from empowering our people and that it is only by encouraging and enabling individuals to be themselves at work that we can truly benefit from their rich and varied strengths.
Hill Dickinson is an equal opportunities employer. All applications received by the firm will be considered based on their merit alone and we welcome applications from all suitably qualified individuals regardless of background.
We are a Disability Confident employer, which means if there is anything that we can do to make your visit easier, so you are able to perform at your best, please let us know. You can contact the HR team at [email protected] should you require any adjustments to the application or interview process.
At Hill Dickinson, we welcome applications from individuals that are looking to return to the law.
All successful candidates will be subject to our standard pre-employment screening, including a basic criminal record check via Disclosure and Barring Service. Any offer of employment made is conditional upon completion of all checks.
Due to the high response levels we receive for some vacancies, we may expire any of them prior to the advertised closing date and advise you to submit your application as soon as possible.
Trust - Innovation - Collaboration - Respect
