Senior Solicitor - Disputes (UK Remote)

The Opportunity

UK Remote:

To be eligible for this role you must be based in the UK and live 100 miles outside of London.

About Digital Legal Delivery

Digital adaption is presenting businesses with efficiencies and opportunities at pace – Herbert Smith Freehills is no different. Continuing to support our clients with this rapid change, we have created a team of the best analytical legal minds with investments in cutting-edge technology and technologists in our Digital Legal Delivery (Digital) practice.

Bringing together legal, project management, process design and technology expertise, our Digital group supports businesses who need invention from their legal advisors. Leveraging experience to map the intersections where people and tech deliver results, this team supports businesses undergoing their own digitisation projects and those who seek disentanglement from the manual and inefficient processes in the delivery of legal services. Experienced at delivering large and complex legal services, we are experts in the delivery of data-intensive mandates.

Imagining possibilities, HSF’s Digital Legal Delivery practice is implementing the best technology solutions today, while horizon scanning and experimenting with emerging technologies to understand their practical applications.

Legal

In Legal, we help shape how the firm delivers legal matters to clients. We have longstanding experience in thinking differently about law, and we are at the forefront of making legal services more efficient – particularly at scale.

We have a deep knowledge across a broad range of sectors, and a wealth of experience in delivering large and complex mandates. We are specialists in contract management, document review, volume claims and remediation, and due diligence.

Working collaboratively with colleagues from across the firm, we use our expertise in law, process design and technology to deliver solutions for our clients. Underpinned by our legal project management capability, we organise our collective effort as efficiently and seamlessly as possible. This ensures consistent delivery throughout and enables our clients to achieve efficiencies across their operations.

Legal Technology

In Legal Technology, we deploy the firm’s established technology efficiently and reliably across a range of client matters and projects.

We combine our expertise in document automation, custom development, eDiscovery and data analytics and client reporting – to work collaboratively across the firm on disputes, transactions and projects.

Digital Change

In Digital Change, we innovate, invest and push our firm’s boundaries when it comes to new uses of legal technology.

We experiment with technology and pilot tools to understand them deeply: their potential challenges and benefits, and how they can be used in our day-to-day work to provide better solutions for clients.

And we ensure we have the right internal governance when it comes to making decisions, so we can minimise risk, maximise our opportunities and provide consistency for our stakeholders.

Advisory

In Advisory, we bring deep expertise in legal operations and emerging technologies, working across any sector, alongside our teams or directly with clients.

We are trusted advisers to our clients on new ways of working as we scan the horizon, together.

About Digital Legal Delivery Disputes

We are experienced in complex large scale document reviews, sensitive and time critical investigations and regulatory matters, consumer claims assessments and volume claims management. Our teams work closely with and provide support to other Herbert Smith Freehills practice groups and we are continually expanding our service offerings. We are experts in complex review elements including legal professional privilege, commercial sensitivity and data protection working across all industry sectors including financial services, energy, retail, TMT and construction.

The Role

Senior Solicitors and Senior Former Practising Barristers ("FPBs") are experienced qualified Solicitors or Barristers, who work closely with the Senior Managers, Legal and Managers, Legal supporting them in supervising and training teams of Solicitors/FPBs, Trainees and Legal Analysts.

The role involves supporting the Senior Managers, Legal and Managers, Legal in supervising the performance of Solicitors/FPBs, Trainees and Legal Analysts on fee earning projects on a day-to-day basis. Senior Solicitors/Senior FPBs will be expected to assist the Senior Managers, Legal and Managers, Legal with strategic management and delivery of matters. They will also be expected from time to time, to lead projects, escalating to Senior Managers, Legal and Managers, Legal who will support as necessary.

Senior Solicitors/Senior FPBs are key to our delivery of the highest standards of client service and may occasionally be required to work into the evening to meet project deadlines.

Senior Solicitors/Senior FPBs will also have people management responsibility for groups of Solicitor/FPBs, Trainees, Legal Analysts. If qualified as a Solicitor in England and Wales, they may also have supervision responsibility for one of the Trainees in our team.

This role will require the successful candidate to balance using their legal knowledge, skills and experience to assist the Senior Managers, Legal and Managers, Legal in developing the disputes practice. It will also require a "can do" approach and – if appropriate, in specific circumstances – a willingness to lend a hand to other practice areas in the office, if time permits.

Note: limited travel, to the Herbert Smith Freehills offices or to clients, may be required from time to time.

Key responsibilities

• Management of own fee earning workload, including fee earning of a complex nature.
• Supervision of the junior legal team on day-to-day fee earning projects including dealing with complex issues on individual matters that are escalated by the team; ensuring that relevant legal issues are fully understood by the team working on an individual matter; and conducting quality control on the junior team's fee-earning work.
• Supporting Managers with and, where appropriate, taking responsibility for project management of large-scale document reviews, pre-trial support and customer file reviews or claims assessments.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with key internal and external stakeholders to ensure that service delivery meets expectations.
• Support the development of workflows for specific projects, including drafting relevant sections of case and client manuals or review guides and supporting our instructing teams generally with the drafting of project instructions.
• Scoping, set-up, training and pricing in relation to fee earning projects, often which are large scale.
• Supporting Managers with financial management, including reporting on WIP recovery and managing billing procedures.
• Ensuring own compliance with financial disciplines on matters (e.g. daily timesheet recording and target chargeable hours).
• Recruitment support as and when necessary.
• Assisting with people management, including performance reviews and performance management.
• Contributing towards team business planning.
• Providing any other assistance to the business on client matters and related tasks as required.

The responsibilities outlined above cannot totally encompass or define all tasks that may be required of the post-holder. The outline of responsibilities given above may, therefore, vary from time to time without materially changing either the character or level of responsibility or grade.

Qualifications and skills

Essential

• Qualified solicitor or barrister in England and Wales or Northern Ireland, but Republic of Ireland or other common law jurisdictions will be considered. (If not qualified in England and Wales then willing to complete process to requalify as such, if required.)
• Minimum of 3 years’ PQE, the majority of which should be within Commercial Litigation, unless exceptional circumstances exist. If you do not meet the 3 years PQE requirement, but feel that exceptional circumstances are applicable to you, then you will be required to submit a supporting statement outlining why you are an exceptional candidate (including relevant skills and experience) – i.e. you have spent a significant amount of time undertaking Commercial Litigation work, during or prior to your training contract/qualification.
• Strong analytical ability, coupled with sound judgement and ability to provide solutions to challenges.
• Strong IT literacy, including an aptitude for learning (and becoming proficient in) the use of software and IT applications.
• To be eligible for this role you must be based in the UK and live 100 miles outside of London.

Desirable

• Experience working in a commercial legal environment, ideally a private practice law firm.
• Knowledge and experience of legal work for the Disputes practice group, for example claims assessment, with the ability to project manage the process from instruction to completion.
• Experience of managing project teams, including direct reports.

Please note that applications for this role will close at 12pm on Tuesday 9th July 2024

Team

Working PatternFull time

LocationUK Remote

Contract type

At Herbert Smith Freehills you will be part of a diverse, innovative culture where high performance, client focus and highly engaged people are our differentiator. People at our firm come from a range of backgrounds and bring a wide variety of experiences and perspectives to their work with us. We strive to ensure that our inclusive environment means you feel valued and able to perform at your best by being your authentic self at work. We know that our future success not only depends on being innovative and progressive in the changing legal market but, most importantly, on our people feeling highly engaged in meaningful work.

We understand that you have commitments and personal interests outside of work and we strive to create a working environment based on mutual trust and respect, in which you can perform at your best whilst maintaining sustainable balance across your life.