This is an excellent opportunity to join our full service national Construction and Engineering team.  Following continued growth in client instructions, and in response to client demand, we are looking to grow our construction team. 

Ideally we are looking for you to work in either Leeds, Newcastle or Edinburgh.

What does the team do?

We provide the full range of dispute resolution and transactional advice, delivering a seamless service to our clients encompassing everything from large complex international infrastructure projects to domestic construction contracts.  Our work is varied and diverse providing specialist construction advice to an exciting and high profile list of clients.  Our clients include central government departments, many household name retailers, utility providers including water, oil and gas, Tier 1 and other large contractors and developers, housebuilders and social housing providers, universities and educational establishments, defence contractors, banks and insolvency practitioners.

Our transactional work encompasses delivering major projects in the  energy, education, living , manufacturing and transport sectors , working hand in hand with our real estate , procurement and banking teams. We regularly draft framework agreements, alliancing contracts, building and engineering contracts , development agreements, consultants appointments and supporting documentation.

The disputes we advise on arise out of a broad range of construction and engineering projects, including defending and bringing claims for delay disruption, loss and expense, defective workmanship materials and design to the Technology and Construction Court (TCC) and advising clients in relation to adjudications, arbitrations all forms of Alternative Dispute Resolution and insurance related issues.  

The successful  candidate can expect a varied caseload within a close knit team headed up by experienced and pro-active partners.

What experience are you looking for?

We're looking for you to bring upwards of a years' previous experience of working within construction disputes or on transactional matters, or a mix of both .  You'll need strong academic ability, a thorough approach to complex legal analysis with swift assimilation of complicated sets of facts.  Your written advice will be fluent and concise and your high level of commerciality will enable you to address the client's overall objectives. Strong interpersonal skills will give you the ability to deal diplomatically and effectively with the different interests of our clients.

As important however will be the ability to work with and alongside a range of colleagues, across locations, as most of the projects we deal with involve multi-disciplinary teams. This is an exciting time to join this team and the role offers an unrivalled opportunity to learn from the best, to develop a career in a growing specialism, and to be mentored and supervised in a supportive environment.

To be successful in this role you'll need as a minimum:

• A legal qualification with 1 + year's post admission experience.
• Experience gained from working in a  specialist construction legal team.
• Experience of development transactions and projects, or of dispute resolution, or a mix of both
• Capable of working independently on straight forward transactional matters or disputes
• Ability to work cross-office, as part of a wider project team , and with other teams
• Willingness to support business development activities
• Desire to develop technical knowledge with support

We continually work hard to create an open culture that sets us apart from other firms. Our culture gives us much more of a human feel, emphasising that we're more than just suits!

As signatories to the Mindful Business Charter, it's important to us that our people are able to maintain healthy and happy lives, both in and out of work. We have a number of resources and initiatives designed to support health and wellbeing and we're very happy to talk flexible working.

Through our DEI initiatives we create an environment in which difference is valued. We have an Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Group, led by our Board Sponsor, which works with our colleague networks (we currently have firm supported networks for race, ethnicity, and cultural heritage, LGBTQ+, disabilities, neurodiversity, families, and women's career development and we're in constant dialogue with our people about how we expand our networks to better support everybody). Find out more about DEI at WBD here. We encourage applicants from all social backgrounds, ethnicities, disabilities, gender identities and sexual orientations.

We are committed to ensuring our recruitment process is inclusive and accessible to all. If you have a disability or long term condition and need us to make any adjustments to give you the best possible recruitment process, please let us know by contacting the recruiter on the right hand side of this page. Please also let us know if you need this job advert or the application form in a different format.

We will offer an interview to candidates with a disability or long-term condition who meet the minimum criteria for this role. You can opt into this scheme within the application form. Your response to this question is only used for this purpose, is only visible to the recruitment team and is not used for data monitoring. 

We are an in-house recruitment team and will always aim to fill our roles directly in the first instance. If you're an agency, please click here for ways that you can work with us.