Legal Director

A leading UK law firm with a network of offices from the South Coast to Scotland, working together as one national team. An innovative practice and the first top 100 law firm to achieve “Gold Standard” Investors in People, our values and culture are not just words on our website but are the heartbeat of the firm. The lack of barriers between departments, a real lack of hierarchy, zero tolerance for arrogance and pomposity makes Shoosmiths a fantastic place to work.

Our national banking and finance team advises clients on a range of financing transactions across a wide variety of sectors, often with a multi-jurisdictional element. Acting for borrowers, lenders and investors means we have a practical understanding of the needs of all parties to a financing transaction. Our expertise extends to corporate lending, acquisition finance, asset finance, real estate finance (both investment and development), project finance and invoice discounting both on a bilateral and a syndicatable basis. We work closely with some of the UK's major banks and financial institutions, and have approved panel status with many of them.

Our excellent national team is going from strength to strength, with the recent addition of two more Partners to our Birmingham office. To complement this, our busy London team is now looking for an experienced Real Estate Finance specialist to join our team.

Due to a period of growth we have an excellent opportunity for a Legal Director to join our London team and take a vital role in business development and in originating and managing real estate finance transactions, often with complex capital structures, from instruction through to completion. There will also be the opportunity to manage juniors in the team and supervise them both locally and remotely, in running smaller transactions.

Working closely with our national Banking team and our local London legal advisors, we would expect you to have a sound knowledge of the real estate finance market, be confident drafting and reviewing facility documentation on the LMA or bank standard form, be able to draft and negotiate bespoke intercreditor or priority documentation and to be well versed in the different types of security documentation. You should also have strong project management skills as a number of our transactions involve liaising with firms in other jurisdictions or pulling together different disciplines within Shoosmiths. 

The successful candidate will have significant experience advising borrowers, lender and investors on the full spectrum of real estate finance transactions, and be confident in in managing and driving the transaction to completion. You will also have a strong track record of team working, collaboration and supervising and developing junior members of the team, as this will form a significant part of this role.   

We consider this to be a competency level 3/4.

Shoosmiths is a committed Equal Opportunities employer promoting equality of opportunity. This means that everyone who either applies to or works for the firm is treated equally, whatever their gender, age, ethnic origin, nationality, marital status, disability, sexual orientation or religious beliefs.