Solicitor

Let us introduce ourselves… 

It is the people at Shakespeare Martineau that make us so special. By understanding what our people want, giving them the support they need, recognising everyone’s contribution and realising the unique power of teams; together we win.   As a firm we are focused on proactively building and developing diverse teams, bringing different backgrounds, personalities and perspectives together. We play to our strengths, pushing ourselves to be consistently better than yesterday and deliver amazing solutions for our clients. We empower our teams with a high degree of individual responsibility; we self-manage and encourage everyone to be responsible for their own learning, knowing it makes us even better at what we do!    

We believe in trusting our people to make the right decisions for themselves from how you dress to how, when and where you work – we focus on outputs.  

Want to find more about our amazing benefits?

The team:

It’s about more than just providing an excellent service, it’s about building friendships and long term relationships. Our residential development team are open, honest and jovial and enjoy what they do.

The teams are located across 4 of our office hubs in the Midlands and sit within our infrastructure and specialist markets business unit. Although they span 4 different geographic locations it’s very much one team and they work together to provide exceptional service advising clients on both personal and business matters. Being part of a large national law firm has great benefits and means we can all collaborate with others in the firm, drawing on a breadth and depth of market and technical expertise.

Neil Gosling heads the team. He has acted for the majority of the country’s top 10 national house-builders as well as for significant institutional landowners, private builders and developers. He has enviable experience in dealing with all aspects of the acquisition and disposal of consented and unconsented land, strategic land, consortium-led purchases and complex multi-phase mixed-use regeneration schemes.

The opportunity:

Would you like to work with a wide range of clients, from national PLCs to small local developers? Would you like to be part of a dynamic, forward thinking team and have excellent quality work?

This is a great opportunity for someone who enjoys client facing work, loves variety and getting stuck in, in this role you will have exposure to hands on experience from day one. 

You will support senior members of the team on complex development land acquisition and disposal work, including strategic land option and promotion agreements, carrying out title reviews and due diligence. You will also manage your own case load, which will include land transfers and infrastructure agreements. You will act for a range of clients including real estate developers, promoters, landowners, and affordable housing providers.

Your key duties will include:

• reviewing and reporting to clients on title documents and search results
• drafting and negotiating real estate documents, such as conditional and unconditional sale and purchase agreements, promotion agreements and options, deeds of easement, transfer documents and infrastructure documents etc
• supervising paralegals
• liaising with clients in a professional manner
• working to strict deadlines
• working with a team of experienced lawyers on a broad range of acquisition work
• working as part of a team on larger scale deals and running your own caseloads of matters

Skills and experience you will have:

• 0-5 years’ previous experience of real estate work (for Newly Qualified candidates, relevant experience gained  in Real Estate during your training contract is essential)
• residential development land acquisition experience is preferred
• experience of running a high volume of files and a track record of achieving client expectations on time, every time
• experience of drafting property documents

Key competencies you will need:

• a high degree of initiative and the ability to cope with varying demands and changing deadlines
• excellent organisational and prioritising skills
• the ability to work in a busy team
• good interpersonal skills

We embrace agile working and offer a blended approach to where and how we work.

We appreciate that people have different needs and preferences and we’re keen to be flexible, after all, we value what you do, not where you do it.

We have hubs in Birmingham, Leicester, London, Milton Keynes, Nottingham, Solihull, Stratford-upon-Avon and Sheffield. This role will be predominantly home based with travel as required into Birmingham or one of our other West Midlands hubs 

Please be aware, for some vacancies, where we receive high numbers of applications we may need to bring the close date forward.

Due to the nature of the work undertaken, confirmation of employment will be subject to a variety of checks which will be carried out once an offer of employment is accepted. Details of the checks can be found here.

Shakespeare Martineau is a committed equal opportunities employer. We seek to attract, develop and retain talented people from a diverse range of backgrounds and cultures. We value and respect individuality and encourage a culture within our business where people can be themselves and be valued for their strengths and experiences. Everyone who either applies to or works for the firm is treated equally, regardless of their gender, age, ethnic origin, nationality, marital status, sexual orientation or religious beliefs.