Associate / Senior Associate - Real Estate - Contentious Construction

The role

This role is a great opportunity for an experienced lawyer to join the firm's growing construction practice group. The role provides a mix of contentious and non-contentious work but has a predominant focus on contentious work.

The current balance of work in the team is 60% non-contentious, 40% contentious, almost exclusively UK-based and all building-related, involving both standard form and bespoke agreements.  There is currently a small, but expanding engineering or infrastructure client base, but the current workload reflects a significant bias towards residential development, derived from the wider Real Estate department.  The team works closely with both the Development and the Real Estate Finance teams, for commercial and residential development schemes. The team also acts for contractors and subcontractors.

Role responsibility

• Handling contentious matters and dispute advisory work up to and including ADR, expert and determination and adjudications (plus enforcement proceedings in the TCC), dealing with wide range of matters including final account and delay claims, quality of build claims, construction insolvency, bond claims, ACM cladding, professional indemnity and other insurance-related claims.
• Dealing with standard form contracts (JCT, RIBA, CIC, FIDEC), professional appointments and collateral warranties
• Working for developers and developer contractors, professional consultants and some specialist sub-contractors in respect of commercial and residential development schemes
• Drafting bespoke and standard construction, development agreements, professional appointments, warranties, bonds, licences etc.
• Providing advice in respect of funding arrangements, procurement routes, and a range of standard form construction contracts.
• Drafting schedules of amendments to various standard form contracts, duty of care deeds and reviewing insurance certificates
• Negotiating and drafting bespoke appointments and warranties for consultants and sub-contractors.

About you

Ideally you will be able to demonstrate;

• Proven experience working of relevant contentious and non contentious construction work
• Experience in dealing with large sized funders and developers
• Experience in high value transactions and the ability to run matters through from instruction to completion
• Detailed knowledge of adjudication practice and procedure;
• Strong organisation skills with the ability to manage client deadlines
• Good communication skills, confidence in dealing with both internal and external stakeholders
• Exceptional client facing skills and the ability to operate as a 'trusted advisor'
• The ability and drive to develop long standing client relationships
• A broad technical grounding across real estate
• The ability to deal with complex technical problems
• A commercial approach to problem solving and providing innovative solutions
• Thoroughness and attention to detail
• Confident and effective advocacy/communication style
• Willingness to become involved in and actively participate in business development and profile-raising activities

Benefits

• Competitive salary
• 25 days annual holiday
• Permanent Health Insurance
• Life Assurance
• Interest free Season Ticket Loan
• Private Healthcare
• Pension Scheme
• Staff Introductory Scheme
• Employee Assistance Programme

About us

We are a London based, full-service law firm, specialising in providing straightforward advice to entrepreneurial businesses and individuals on domestic and international matters.

We have grown substantially in recent years, including two mergers and an office move. We’ve also matured in terms of our approach to providing advice to our clients, seeking to simplify and improve the experience of working with a modern, independent law firm.

We’re proud of our journey. Without losing sight of where we’ve come from, we are focused on where we’re going. We are evolving and growing every day. And just like our clients, we are ambitious and moving forward. Many of our clients are entrepreneurial, ambitious enterprises who are often privately or family owned, or private equity backed. We are one of the only London based law firms with a large private wealth offering alongside significant business law capability.

The firm also advises major corporates on particular specialist legal matters who find our straightforward approach a compelling alternative to larger, less personal firms.