Senior Business Development Executive

Lewis Silkin is a UK top-100 commercial law firm with offices in London, Oxford, Cardiff and Hong Kong. The firm is recognised by clients and industries alike as being distinct: for its deep understanding, insight and advice to creative, innovative and brand-focused businesses; for its market-leading international practice in employment, immigration and reward; and for delivering pragmatic, commercial advice in a refreshingly human way.

With 59 partners and more than 300 staff, the firm is structured around two key divisions.

In employment, immigration and reward, it is consistently top-ranked, and was named HR Law Firm of the Year 2015 by the Legal 500. With over 100 lawyers, Lewis Silkin’s employment and immigration team offers an unrivalled service supporting clients, including many of the world’s leading businesses, on their HR, employment and immigration law needs domestically and internationally. 

The creators, makers and innovators team is made up of leading advisers for creative, innovative and brand-focused businesses, offering a deep understanding of the industry sectors in which clients operate combined with real expertise across a wide range of legal services. From start-ups to multinationals, the firm’s comprehensive and commercially focused advice helps clients succeed in an increasingly complex and converged international marketplace.

The Business Development and Marketing team is responsible for supporting the business development strategy of the firm and the co-ordinated delivery of all business development and marketing activities. The BD team is split into two divisional teams and a central team.

Lewis Silkin are leading advisers to the creative industries and creative economy, offering deep understanding of the industry sectors in which our clients operate combined with real expertise across our range of legal services. This role will be aligned to the Creators, Makers and Innovators division providing a broad range of business development and marketing support to a number of practice groups (e.g. brands and IP, commercial, corporate, real estate and litigation) and the firm’s six key sectors.

The Senior Business Development Executive will support the division with their plans to grow fees from existing clients and develop new relationships. The job holder will work alongside the Divisional Head of Business Development, another Senior Executive and an Executive. They will also have access to shared resources in the Central Business Development team.

The job holder will focus primarily on business development and communications activities (key client management, targeting new business, proposals, events and external communications etc), working directly with lawyers and other members of the BD team. You will take direct responsibility for specific projects but will need to have a broad skill set and aptitude for a wider range of marketing activities to support activities. The job holder will be responsible for playing an active role in ensuring the department’s activities are carried out in a timely and efficient manner and that day-to-day tasks are managed effectively.

Specific responsibilities include, but are not limited to the following:

Marketing and BD planning: work with each legal practice group to support their work within our key sectors and set in place a range of activities to meet defined objectives. Manage the delivery of an activity schedule working with available resources (central team shared resource, secretarial teams, external support from our PR agency etc.).

Sector specific/specialist groups support: Working with teams on specific sector and/or specialist service initiatives. The role holder with have the opportunity to carry out sector/service research, identify new clients and implement plans which will increase our profile, win new clients and generate additional fees as well as implement marketing initiatives e.g. events, publications, digital marketing etc.

Proposals: managing the preparation of capability documents and proposals, compiling a divisional credentials database and managing the process for collating deal information, monitoring proposal win/loss rates.

Directory submissions: Compile the directory submissions for the practice areas and sectors this role supports and work with the Divisional Head of Business Development to ensure a robust process is in place for managing the submission process within the division.

CRM: supporting the Divisional Head of Business Development with the implementation and roll out of a Key Client Programme. Promoting best practice use of the firm’s Client Relationship Management database - InterAction - ensuring users are using the tools effectively but also exploring the ways in which they can be developed to drive business and client development, whilst ensuring GDPR compliance.

Events: work with the divisional BD team to design and implement an events programme for the legal practice groups and sector groups and working with the central BD team to ensure these are executed under best practice guidelines to achieve a good ROI.

Marketing communications: working with the divisional BD team on communications such as updating of brochures, capability documents, team sheets, newsletters, website content and industry award submissions.

Client development: Work with the Divisional Head of Business Development and lawyers to help manage client development – both existing clients and the ‘pipeline’ of client opportunities; providing research, analysis, information on fees, cross-selling opportunities etc.

Abilities and desired qualities:

• Degree or equivalent education; CIM qualifications are desirable to introductory or Professional Certificate level.

• Expectation that the successful candidate will have at least 4 years’ BD experience (with 2+ years in an executive role and experience in a senior role), preferably in a professional services environment, ideally legal.

• Good written and communication skills, with an ability to communicate at all levels from senior partner to junior staff.

• Comfortable taking a brief for a project, working as part of a project team with supervision or working on own initiative.

• Proactive attitude, seeking out opportunities for development and learning.

• Sense of humour, drive and tenacity.

• Strong team player.

• Flexibility to work additional or out of office hours, where business needs dictate.

• Advanced Skills in MS Office packages, and experience of database management, preferably knowledge of Interaction. Experience of MS Publisher and/or Adobe InDesign desirable.