Legal Director - Family (5401)

Irwin Mitchell; Chichester; On-site; GBP 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading law firm is seeking a Senior Associate or Legal Director to join their national family team in Chichester. This role offers significant responsibility in managing complex family law cases while mentoring junior staff. The firm values ambition and aims to provide excellent career progression opportunities. With a friendly and inclusive work environment, employees benefit from generous holiday, pension schemes, and a range of well-being initiatives.

Benefits

25 days holidays plus bank holidays

Flexible pension schemes

Paid volunteering days

Health membership benefits

Qualifications

• Significant experience within private family law.
• Experience leading high-value, complex cases.
• Ability to mentor and supervise junior staff.

Responsibilities

• Play a key role in the growth of the family team.
• Manage day-to-day and high-value family cases.
• Build and maintain strong client relationships.

Skills

Private family law experience

Complex case management

Supervisory experience

Client relationship building

Work generation track record

Client service skills

Ambition and enthusiasm

Job description

About Our Firm

Our responsible business programmes are fundamental to who we are and our purpose. We’re committed to being a diverse and inclusive workplace where our colleagues can flourish, and we have established a number of inclusion network groups across our business to support this aim. Our commitment to social responsibility, community investment activity and tackling climate change is a fundamental part of who we are. It’s made up of four strands: Our People, Our Community, Our Environment and Our Pro Bono.

As part of the Irwin Mitchell Group’s onboarding process, all successful applicants are required to complete the Group’s employment screening process. This process helps ensure that all new employees meet our standards in relation to honesty and integrity, thereby protecting the interests of the Group, colleagues, clients, partners and other stakeholders. We carry out pre‑employment screening to establish your eligibility to work in the UK, conduct criminal‑record and financial checks with our trusted third parties, and the entire process will fully comply with data‑protection and other applicable laws.

Key Qualifications

• Technically competent, with significant experience within private family law
• Used to dealing with and leading both day‑to‑day and high‑value, complex cases
• A natural team player with experience supervising and mentoring juniors
• Able to build and maintain lasting relationships with clients and third parties and ideally already well established in Chichester
• A proven track record of winning or generating your own work
• Well‑rounded client service skills with the ability to empathise with a wide range of clients in order to resolve the most sensitive and complicated practicalities involved in family break‑ups
• Demonstrable ambition, energy and enthusiasm for continuing to build a successful family‑law team at the top of the market

Our Values

We’re proud of our values, and we’re looking for people who share them:

• To be pioneering with an imaginative outlook
• To be approachable and caring
• To be tenacious in the pursuit of our objectives
• To be efficient in the provision of our services
• To work with a foundation of integrity

Why Join Us

We’re a national law firm with a local reach. Our legal experts are here to help, whether it’s personal or business matters. We understand that everyone’s situation is different, and we’re more than just a law firm – we’re a team of people working together to help individuals and businesses navigate life's ups and downs. Working here, you’ll feel part of our friendly and inclusive environment.

We’ll value you for who you are and what you bring. We support each other and push boundaries to achieve incredible things and make a real difference to our clients and communities. We’re always looking to support our colleagues to work in a way that works best for them and everyone else, including our clients, the business and the regulators. Please speak to a member of our Recruitment and Onboarding team for more information.

Your Role and What You’ll Be Doing

We are currently looking to recruit a Senior Associate or Legal Director to join our award‑winning national family team to continue to grow our offering in Chichester. This is a superb opportunity to play a key role in the continued growth of a powerhouse national family team in one of the UK’s leading law firms. The position offers a high degree of autonomy, strong partner access, and excellent career progression opportunities.

Benefits

• 25 days holidays as standard plus bank holidays – you can ‘buy’ up to 35 hours of extra holiday
• Generous and flexible pension schemes
• Volunteering days – two days of volunteering every year for a cause of your choice (fully paid)
• Westfield Health membership, offering refunds on medical services alongside our Aviva Digital GP services

We also offer a wide range of well‑being initiatives to encourage positive mental health both in and out of the workplace and to ensure you’re fully supported. This includes our Flexible by Choice programme, which gives our colleagues more choice over a hybrid way of working subject to role, team and client requirements. We have been ranked in the Best Workplaces for Wellbeing for Large Organisations for 2024.