Shape Your In-House Career. On Your Terms.

Womble Bond Dickinson (WBD) is a leading international law firm known for combining legal excellence with a genuinely collaborative, client-focused approach. Through WBD Advance InHouse, we provide high-calibre in-house lawyers to work directly within our clients' legal teams, offering flexibility, variety and genuine in-house experience backed by the strength of a top-tier law firm. 

At Womble Bond Dickinson, we've always believed great legal careers don't follow a single path. That belief sits at the heart of WBD Advance InHouse, our flexible legal resourcing solution designed for lawyers who want high-quality work, real variety, and genuine balance.

There is no "one size fits all" approach at WBD Advance InHouse, we give you the choice of how you would like to be engaged; either as a permanent employee, on a fixed term contract, or on a consultancy basis.

Who We're Looking For

We are currently growing our core permanent team of WBD Advance InHouse Lawyers and are also open to those who would prefer the flexibility of a fixed term contract. 

We are looking to speak with commercial lawyers with between 3-8 years of post-qualification experience, ideally gained from working as in-house Legal Counsel but we are happy to consider candidates currently working in private practice and keen to make the move in-house.  

As well as a strong technical skillset, you will have a commercial and pragmatic approach with the ability to quickly integrate into new environments and must be able to build good relationships with stakeholders across our client's businesses in addition to providing high-quality work.

You will be curious and collaborative in your approach; part of the role of a WBD Advance InHouse Lawyer is to strengthen client relationships and work with relevant WBD Partners to identify potential opportunities for growth with the client they are seconded to.

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

• At least 3 years post-qualified-experience (PQE) as a Solicitor in England & Wales, Scotland or another Common law jurisdiction
• Experience either working within or advising clients within the following sectors: Energy & Natural Resources, Technology, Financial Services, Insurance, Public, Government and Third Sector, Manufacturing, Transport, or Retail and Hospitality
• Proven experience in delivering high-quality commercial work including drafting, reviewing and negotiating a variety of commercial contracts along with experience in at least one of the following: procurement, IP, data protection, company secretarial, or technology contract / agreements
• At least 6 months of in-house legal experience gained either as a qualified lawyer in an in-house legal team, on secondment to a client from a private practice law firm or from having trained in-house

Why WBD Advance InHouse?

WBD Advance InHouse offers something different. You'll be embedded within our clients' businesses, delivering practical, commercial advice while enjoying the support, resources and backing of a leading international law firm without the fee earning targets.

As a permanent WBD Advance InHouse employee, you will be consistently seconded to our clients' legal teams, performing the role of an in-house lawyer but fully integrated into Womble Bond Dickinson with access to the same resources, know-how and training opportunities as our fee earners.  Being employed on a permanent basis offer both stability and variety by completing secondments with clients across a wide variety of sectors.

Alternatively, working with WBD Advance InHouse on a fixed term contract for the duration of a secondment allows flexibility between secondments while also benefitting from the same resources, know-how and training as permanent team members.

What You'll Get

• High-quality, meaningful in-house work with leading organisations
• Exposure to different sectors, teams and challenges
• Continued development of your technical and soft skills to allow you to perform at your best
• The backing, resource and support of Womble Bond Dickinson and the additional collaboration and community of the WBD Advance InHouse team
• A culture that values collaboration, innovation and doing things the right way
• An employer that values your life outside work and helps you achieve the right balance; we can accommodate full and part-time working patterns and most secondments are either fully remote or hybrid.
• WBD employee benefits

If you're an in-house lawyer ready for your next chapter, or a private practice lawyer looking to transition into in-house work, we'd love to talk.

Discover how flexible in-house law can really be – with WBD Advance InHouse.

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.