Associate

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 55 partners and more than 340 staff, the firm is structured around two key divisions; Employment, Immigration and Reward, and Creators, Makers and Innovators.

The Employment, Immigration and Reward team is consistently top-ranked, and was named HR Law Firm of the Year 2015 by the Legal 500. With around 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.

You will form part of the Commercial team, which deals with the full range of non-contentious commercial, technology, outsourcing, e-commerce, privacy, data, consumer, IP, marketing and media law.  Your primary focus would be commercial and technology transactional work and ideally also on data privacy and consumer law.

The team is an energetic and sociable group with an extremely impressive and varied client base, predominantly in the retail, technology, marketing and media sectors and also in the automotive and professional services industries. 

You will work with a number of partners within the team.  You may, depending on your experience, be expected to be the lead associate on certain transactions and to manage trainees working with you.  You would have partner supervision to varying degrees (depending on the matter) but should be comfortable in leading on, and negotiating, transactional work.  Your workload will be predominantly transaction led with some advisory work, e.g. on consumer and data privacy.

The successful individual will ideally be 2-6 years’ PQE with strong technical legal skills, excellent drafting skills and extensive experience of non-contentious commercial contracts, outsourcing, technology and e-commerce projects.  You should have substantial experience from working in a medium or large private practice law firm or a niche commercial/technology/data practice.

The role will carry out work in the following areas:

drafting, negotiating and advising on a range of commercial contracts, including:

• services agreements (including client/agency agreements between brand owners and marcomms agencies);

• distribution/agency agreements;

• franchise/sponsorship agreements;

• media buying and publishing agreements;

• outsourcing agreements;

• R&D agreements;

• software development, licensing and escrow agreements;

• SaaS and other cloud based agreements;

• website and app development, back-end services, hosting and support agreements;

• website/app terms and conditions including privacy policies;

• general e-commerce agreements;

• ad-tech business contracts;

• consultancy agreements and terms and conditions of sale and purchase (B to B and B to C);

• advising clients on legal, regulatory and commercial issues in the fields of technology,and ecommerce (in particular cross border data flows and data protection issues);

• providing commercial, IP and data protection support to corporate fee earners on transactional work and/or to support other team members on IP audit work;

You should also have excellent analytical and communication skills and be comfortable running your own files with appropriate supervision (where required).

The team markets actively in various sectors  and  you will be expected to contribute to the production of written material such as client guides, client training and to the giving of talks and seminars, so should be very keen to engage in Business Development.

Knowledge of retail, leisure, technology, automotive, financial services, marketing and/or media sectors would be advantageous.

Additional information

IT skills required:

• Competency in MS Office suite.

Educational and professional qualifications required:

• Qualified UK lawyer with a current UK practising certificate.

• Excellent academics.

The successful individual will be a key part of a hard-working, friendly and supportive team; therefore, the ideal candidate will be a strong team player and have experience working in a high performing and collaborative environment.

This passionate team continues to go from strength to strength and has a particular focus on growing its technology and commercial offering.  We are looking for a dedicated team player, who has a good use of initiative and who also has a sense of fun!
 

No agencies please.

Lewis Silkin is an equal opportunities employer.