Business Development Manager

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, 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 Business Development & Marketing team is comprised of two teams – Business Development (Sectors and Practices) and Marketing Communications.

The Business Development teams provide a broad range of strategic and day to day marketing and business development support as well as managing a range of cross-practice and firm-wide initiatives.

The Marketing Communications team delivers a range of core firm wide services including digital marketing and brand management, design, marketing tech, events management, marketing data/reporting, internal and external communications.

The Role

The Business Development Manager will work collaboratively with the Co-Chief Marketing Officers as well as other key stakeholders and colleagues across the firm to support the firm with its plans to grow fees from existing clients and developing new relationships. The role offers a balance of project ownership/autonomy with the opportunity to get involved in team initiatives. The role requires significant interaction with partners, lawyers and other business services teams and the Manager will be expected to develop a trusted advisor relationship with key stakeholders at all levels.

Specific responsibilities include:

• One of two dedicated BDM point of contacts for the Employment Practice.
• Dedicated BDM point of contact for the Future of Work Hub
• Dedicated BDM point of contact for key firmwide sector groups.
• Working as part of a team to optimise relationships with our International alliance – Ius Laboris
• Strategy and planning – work with key stakeholders to devise and execute BD and marketing plans in line with the firmwide strategy and objectives of the department.
• Client development - work with individual partners and teams to manage client development –provide analysis on client trends, fees, cross-selling opportunities etc
• Tenders and pitches – deliver winning pitches and responses to RFPs: assessing pitch opportunities and making recommendations on approach; helping the team to define and articulate their offering; drafting of the tender document; coaching pitch/tender teams; post-pitch debrief and analysis (both internal and external) and feeding learnings into the process.
• Marketing communications – at Lewis Silkin our BD team operates with a campaign mindset. As BD Manager you will be responsible for managing the campaign-focussed marketing communications ‘mix’, working closely with specialist colleagues to cover public relations, event management as well as internal communications to continually raise the profile of the groups you look after. 
• Return on investment - work with the team and the fee earners to identify efficiencies in processes and ways of working and improve ROI

• ‘Champion’ firm wide initiatives - ensure buy-in to firm-wide programmes such as effective use of CRM system (Interaction); web and digital presence and development; business development and marketing training and coaching
• Market analysis and research - identify opportunities arising from new legislation and developments in our practice areas, trends in the market and changes in our clients’ businesses; industry sector research; supporting the Divisional Head of Business Development with growth/ marketing plans for the division

Experience and Skills Required

• Educated to degree level and/or Chartered Institute of Marketing
• Expectation that the successful candidate will have at least 5 years’ BD experience, preferably in a professional services environment (required), or law firm (desired).
• Expectation that the successful candidate has been in a Manager role previously.
• Broad experience of managing and implementing a diverse set of marketing and business development programmes.
• Able to influence and persuade through demonstration of experience and knowledge.
• Ability to work to deadlines, juggle multiple projects and deliver under pressure.
• Self-starter who can show initiative and get on with tasks without the need for significant supervision and direction.
• High attention to detail and strong client focus.
• Able to communicate with a broad population of contacts - both written and oral.
• Professional, proactive, creative, good humoured and enthusiastic approach to all work and interactions.
• Strong team player.
• Advanced Skills in MS Office packages (required), Adobe InDesign (desired) and experience of database management, preferably knowledge of Interaction (desired).

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.