Principal Associate - Employment

Gowling WLG; Birmingham; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid working

25 days annual leave

Private medical insurance

Life assurance

Sabbatical every five years

Maternity, paternity and adoptionLeave

Job summary

Gowling WLG in Birmingham (UK) is seeking a Principal Associate in employment law. You will lead a senior team, manage a client portfolio, and shape strategic advice across the full range of employment matters for employer clients.

The role involves mentoring junior lawyers, handling complex litigation, and driving business development. You will work in a hybrid setup with strong client communication, and contribute to training and development within the firm.

Qualifications

• Qualified Solicitor with 7+ years PQE and strong employment law expertise.
• Proven ability to manage client relationships and win new work.
• Experience leading and developing teams and mentoring junior lawyers.
• Excellent drafting skills and strategic advisory capability.

Responsibilities

• Lead and manage your own caseload for employer clients with minimal partner supervision.
• Provide strategic advice across the full range of employment law issues.
• Draft employment-related documents (service agreements, handbooks, etc.).
• Lead TUPE and large-scale redundancy projects and multi-site programs.
• Oversee litigation in tribunals and courts, including high-value matters.
• Develop business opportunities and client relationships; contribute to BD.

Skills

Client relationship management

People leadership

Business development

Legal drafting

Team mentoring

Strategy & advisory

Education

Qualified Solicitor

Job description

We are around 10 employment lawyers, working as one team across our London and Birmingham offices, with a national reputation in the employment law market. We distinguish ourselves by being good people to work with and offering practical advice, backed by the highest technical standards, which comes off the fence (not just information or legal opinions) and which is delivered in plain English.

As a Principal Associate, you will be one of the team's most senior fee-earners, acting as a bridge between partners and junior lawyers and playing a central role in the team's client relationships, people development and growth.

We offer excellent training and development for our lawyers, consistent with the firm's ethos, as well as being part of a firm which regularly wins awards for being a good place to work. As a team, we contribute to many of the initiatives which help deliver those awards.

The vast majority of our clients are employers, rather than employees. We act for employers in a wide range of sectors but have particular strength in a number of areas including tech, manufacturing (particularly automotive), financial services, social housing, construction and public sector (the firm being on the government CCS panel). We regularly work with international clients supporting their UK operations and on implementation of global policies, as well as with law firms based overseas on referrals in and out.

We have two PSLs focussed on excellence and making sure our lawyers are the best they can be: fully supported in the market where they operate. We also have close links with our colleagues practising employment law in our offices in Canada, France, Germany, China, Dubai and with our partner Juris Asia LLC in Singapore.

Main duties and responsibilities

This role will involve leading and managing your own caseload of matters for our employer clients, from major corporates or public sector bodies through to tech start-ups, with minimal partner supervision, and providing strategic advice across the full range of employment law issues, including:

• Advising clients on how best to deliver their objectives, despite the complexities of employment law
• Drafting all types of employment-related documents – for example, service agreements, handbooks, secondment agreements, consultancy agreements);
• Advising on legislative changes as they are proposed and finalised;
• Leading advice on TUPE, from application to day-to-day support on handling information and consultation exercises, including project-managing multi-site or multi-jurisdictional programmes;
• Leading advice on large-scale redundancy, re-structuring and collective consultation exercises;
• Corporate support;
• Transactional support to our commercial and real estate teams;
• Running all types of litigation, in the employment tribunal or civil courts, including complex, high-value and multi-claimant discrimination litigation and business protection disputes (including injunctive relief), with conduct of the matter from instruction to final hearing, managing counsel and supervising junior team members;
• Support with all types of ER issues, from advising on grievances or protected disclosure issues, through to family friendly queries, agency work and working time issues;
• Advising on trade union issues and industrial relations disputes;
• Advising on, conducting and overseeing workplace investigations, including sensitive and senior-level investigations;
• Employment-related data protection issues, including handling DSARs and employee privacy notices;
• Delivering training to clients;
• Taking a leading role in business development and profile raising for the team, including developing and executing your own business development plan, public speaking within the firm and on a broader stage, and authoring alerts/articles for clients and targets;
• Supervising, delegating to and reviewing the work of trainees, junior and mid-level associates and paralegals, acting as a mentor, providing regular constructive feedback, and contributing to appraisals and the development and wellbeing of junior colleagues;
• Acting as day-to-day relationship lead for a portfolio of clients, building trusted-adviser relationships with in-house legal and HR teams, and identifying opportunities to broaden instructions, including cross-selling the firm's other services;
• Taking full responsibility for the financial management of your matters, including scoping, fee estimates and proposals, budgeting, time recording, billing, WIP management and debt collection, working to an annual chargeable hours target of [X] hours and a personal billing target of [£X], and contributing to panel tenders and pitches;
• Contributing to the team's know-how and precedent bank with the PSLs, designing and delivering internal and client training, participating in firmwide initiatives (such as diversity and inclusion, wellbeing, responsible business and graduate recruitment) and contributing to the strategic development of the practice and its sector focus.

Key skills and experience

The ideal candidate for this role will be a qualified Solicitor with 7+ years' PQE (or equivalent experience).

The successful candidate will be able to demonstrate:

• Demonstrable post qualification experience gained in the field of employment law at a firm / department with a proven reputation in this field
• Expert, up-to-date knowledge of employment law and practice, with the ability to advise authoritatively on complex and novel issues
• A track record of leading and growing client relationships and originating new work
• A track record in in online business development
• Proven experience of managing matter budgets, billing and WIP, and of consistently meeting financial targets
• Experience of leading a broad range of marketing and profile raising initiatives
• Experience of authoring technical articles and presenting seminars and other briefing sessions
• Strong commercial acumen and the ability to give strategic advice aligned with the client's wider business objectives
• Demonstrable experience of supervising, delegating to and mentoring junior lawyers
• Experience of running a substantial caseload independently, including complex litigation and large-scale projects

We would look for the successful applicant to have:

• Excellent organisation and project management skills, with the ability to manage both your own and the team's workload
• Leadership qualities and the ability to motivate a team, together with the ability to develop relationships with colleagues and clients alike
• Proven attention to detail and drafting skills
• Sound judgement and problem solving skills, including knowing when to elevate
• The ability to adapt to a broad range of situations and circumstances and remain calm under pressure
• Strong interpersonal, communication and negotiation skills

What We Can Offer You:

The opportunity to work for a firm that has been recognised as one of best places to work in the UK and has been ranked by Great Place to Work for 26 consecutive years.

• A hybrid approach to office and remote working.
• 25 days annual leave, with the option to buy up to a week's extra annual leave
• Private medical insurance, and the option to add family members
• Life assurance covering four times your annual salary
• The chance of a three-month sabbatical every five years
• Maternity, paternity and adoption leave schemes
• A range of health and wellbeing programmes
• State of the art offices, in the heart of Birmingham City Centre, with an onsite restaurant
• Opportunities to flourish in your role through training and personal development

Gowling WLG is committed both to promoting equality and diversity in the firm and to Equal Opportunities in employment. The firm believes in equality of opportunity regardless of race or racial group (including colour, nationality, ethnicity, national origins), religion or belief, age, disability, sexual orientation, sex, gender re-assignment and gender identity, marriage and civil partnership, and pregnancy, maternity and paternity. This also includes any incidents of perceptive or associative discrimination and harassment.

At Gowling WLG we seek to attract and retain talented people from a diverse range of backgrounds and cultures, to create an exciting and rewarding place to work. Our aim is to fulfil everyone's potential and together to achieve personal and business goals.

If you have any queries in relation to this position or would like to see a full job description please contact Arun Kainth at [e-mail]