Job Description
Term: Permanent Working hours: Full-time Department: LS Assist Location: Remote Specialism: LS Assist The firm 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 department The LS Assist service LS Assist is Lewis Silkin's low cost, fixed fee, high-quality commercial law service working with clients of all shapes and sizes from innovative start-ups to exciting household brand names. Our LS Assist clients often come from the tech, media and creative space and they love the value, cost-certainty and seamless service LS Assist provides to them. The LS Assist Library, comprising a bank of our key commercial precedents and guidance notes which is accessible through the LS Assist online portal, adds a further benefit to clients signing up for the service. We are now looking to grow the LS Assist team to keep up with client demand. The wider team LS Assist sits within our Digital, Commerce and Creative Team, which is at the forefront of innovative change keeping pace with the evolving business world. Offering deep industry knowledge and expertise, the team regularly advises our clients in matters relating to technology, advertising regulation, sponsorship, branded content, talent agreements, media buying, ad tech, and regulatory investigations. Underpinning our specialist knowledge is solid, general commercial law know how, but we understand that businesses want their routine commercial law queries serviced at a more economical rate than their specialist work. This is where LS Assist comes in. We pride ourselves on providing exceptional training to our lawyers to ensure the quality of our advice. All of our LS Assist lawyers are required to attend this training and are expected to demonstrate strong knowledge of commercial law basics as well as the ability to provide the type of commercially savvy, pragmatic advice which sets us apart. 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. Responsibilities LS Assist commercial lawyer role Love being a commercial lawyer and providing excellent legal advice for top brand name clients? Want to work flexibly and choose when, where and the number of hours and days you work? Want to avoid some of the stresses of private practice but still do great legal work in interesting sectors? If the answer is 'yes', talk to us about a career with LS Assist. The LS Assist commercial lawyer role involves providing helpdesk advice to our clients on a wide variety of commercial queries ranging from questions on contractual provisions (e.g. exclusions of liability, indemnities, termination rights, or a force majeure clause) to basic questions about consumer law or data protection. The role also includes supporting our clients on routine commercial projects, such as red-flag reviews of standard contracts, reviewing and reporting on a large number of similar agreements, or a health check review of all their precedent agreements. LS Assist doesn't generally include specialist, sector-specific advice, drafting agreements from scratch or negotiations, but the queries can be varied and from a wide range of clients giving LS Assist lawyers plenty of variety. Experience, educational and professional qualifications required You will be educated to degree level or equivalent and have strong commercial law experience. You will be qualified as a lawyer in Northern Ireland and/or England & Wales with a current practising certificate. We will also consider lawyers qualified in, and with a current practising certificate from, other common law jurisdictions if you have experience advising on English law. We are looking for experienced commercial lawyers who can deliver high quality advice, across a wide variety of 'business as usual' commercial queries, and who have the confidence to provide pragmatic, commercial legal advice. You'll benefit from the support and knowledge of our leading team of commercial lawyers (including being fully integrated into our training programme and with all the normal resources you'd expect from a top private practice firm available to you) but you should be comfortable working independently. As this is a wholly remote role, we are location agnostic. Although the hours our LS Assist lawyers work can be very flexible, LS Assist lawyers are not zero-hours employees or hourly/daily rate contractors. You will be engaged on a permanent employment contract and be an integral part of our team. Lawyers are entirely home based (though are very welcome to work from our offices from time to time should they choose) and can work part-time (as little as 1 or 2 days per week), including fixed hours and part-days, which enables them to manage work around personal commitments. We provide all the IT equipment needed for a home office set-up, connected to our systems and fully supported by our IT team. Working in the LS Assist team is unique and special - it's essentially a big job share arrangement working with other experienced and supportive job share partners! Lawyers receive a competitive remuneration package with access to extensive employee benefits and are fully integrated into the firm's Digital, Commerce and Creative team. They are invited to all the team's social events and have access to the firm's comprehensive professional development training and resources. Lawyers have no personal fee targets and are not required to do any billing, debt collection, business development or article-writing. Because of the fixed working hours and exceptional flexibility, LS Assist is particularly suited to lawyers who, for whatever reason, are finding that the standard demands on lawyers are impractical or undesirable for them and are looking to work in a different way. Additional information 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.