Corporate Associate
Corporate
Flexible
Apply nowCorporate Associate or Senior Associate (2 to 6 PQE) – Private Equity focus
We have an exciting opportunity for a motivated and enthusiastic Corporate Associate or Senior Associate to join our Corporate team led by Matthew Stoate and focus on the Private Equity sector. Working directly with Adam McKenna, Dominic Cromwell, Emma Clayton and the wider team, you will be based from Bristol, Exeter, Southampton or Plymouth with a blend of home and office working available. This is an excellent opportunity to progress your career and develop your profile, working as part of an innovative, collaborative and nationally recognised team.
Our Private Equity sector team works on a cross-discipline basis with repeat national and international clients with a real focus on Private Equity backed portfolio companies. This will give you the opportunity to undertake M&A as part of a buy-and-build or bolt-on investment proposition but equally to develop deep and meaningful relationships with clients, working with Private Equity sector colleagues from across Foot Anstey, to embed these clients into the firm.
From the outset, you will benefit from the right balance of responsibility and independence to work confidently with your own transactions and client relationships, combined with the support and supervision from senior colleagues to enable you to continue developing your skills and knowledge as you to progress. With some experience of developing relationships with corporate/institutional clients, you will be comfortable acting as the primary client contact and taking responsibility for managing transactions of various sizes.
Being the ‘go-to’ person within the team for certain clients, with a number of our clients being repeat acquirers, as such you will play a key role in furthering these relationships over time.
Acting primarily for the buyer side, you will be working with some ‘sophisticated purchasers’ who already understand the process and know how they like to work. You’ll appreciate the importance of knowing when and how to listen to your clients in order to advise in a way which works for them, and you’ll learn a lot about their businesses and priorities along the way. With other clients, we’re in the early stages of building lasting relationships which may become established in time, and your ability to communicate and develop trust will be central in achieving this.
You will have gained some previous experience of supervising trainees and junior lawyers, ensuring good quality, timely work is being done at right level whilst enabling senior lawyers to focus more on complex work and client development activities (and developing this aspect of the role yourself). Developing capacity within the team is a key feature as we grow and your support to achieve this will be essential. You will also be encouraged to work with our Change & Innovation Team to devise the right technology solutions to meet the needs of clients, using your understanding of their business strategy and direction.
What we’re looking for
You will be seeking to join a growing and entrepreneurial Corporate team where we take our work, but not ourselves, seriously. With an impressive client list and ambition to continue building new and lasting client relationships, you will play an active role in the continued success and growth of our team. Our clients enjoy working with us because we listen to them to understand their priorities, perspective and experience, so you will naturally possess a similar approach. You are likely to be an Associate / Senior Associate at a well-regarded firm seeking to accelerate your career and professional development with more direct responsibility and interaction with clients. We will expect you to have gained experience of having led or been involved in leading on purchases on varying sizes, and though you may not have worked specifically in the Private Equity sector, it will be of real interest to you.
You possess strong and proven rapport building and communication skills, being skilful in establishing and deepening trusted relationships with clients and generating lasting and significant connections with key client and internal contacts. You are enthusiastic to understand the commercial context of their business and know how to gain confidence in order to provide the right advice and service at the right moment in alignment with their short, medium and longer term goals.
Our team promotes a collegiate and collaborative culture, and we will expect you to engage and support less experienced members of the team in your work, delegating and supervising tasks to ensure that work is done at the right level whilst allowing you to focus on more complex matters. Teamwork is important to you and to us, and you know how to get the best from the people around you whilst maintaining high standards. You will be a strong communicator with experience of supporting colleagues in their development and possess the resilience to work under pressure by organising yourself effectively to meet deadlines as needed.
In return for your commitment and focus, we will provide you with the genuine scope to fast track your career within a team with a proven track record of developing and progressing its lawyers. We are proud to say that we do not operate glass ceilings, so your career progression will be entirely based on merit and under your control. Even better, the quality of work you will have access to is not connected to your location, so if you are the best person for the client, then you will work with them. To further support this, our Business Skills Academy will provide you with any additional support you need to develop your confidence, networking and client facing skills, whilst continuing to develop your technical skills. By working together, we’ll ensure you have the right environment to flourish to help you achieve your longer-term career ambitions.
Our offer to you
In return for your efforts, you can expect considerable scope for personal as well as professional development. Tailored to match the level you’re working at, we encourage people to engage with our popular and well supported coaching and mentoring programmes, which connect you to people right across the firm and at every level. We create space for mental and physical wellbeing with our weekly Lifestyle Hour, along with private medical insurance for all lawyers, 28 days annual leave and a sabbatical you can take every 5 years. Employees can also buy holiday, managing your benefits flexibly using our sophisticated portal to configure your total reward offer according to what you value most. As part of this, you can make ongoing or one-off donations to our charitable foundation and access our CSR programme where you can engage with community-based initiatives (as a team, or individually) twice a year, to give something back where you feel it matters.
Why Foot Anstey?
As one of the UK’s fastest growing law firms, Foot Anstey believes in helping our clients and people achieve their ambitions, unlocking new and exciting opportunities. Our team of business and legal advisors are motivated by understanding clients’ goals and collaborating with them and other advisers to deliver solutions. By becoming our clients’ most trusted advisor, we are enabling them to achieve their ambitions. How we do it is just as important as what we do. Our values define the way we act with our clients and one another every day, and because of these we think our culture and environment sets us apart.
Over our history we’ve grown from a high-street firm to a significant regional and national player working with leading brands and individuals predominantly across six key sectors: Private Equity, Retail & Consumer, Energy & Infrastructure, Islamic Finance, Developers and Private Wealth. Our strategy of gaining market share through meeting clients’ needs, investing in and developing high quality talent and using technology and innovation to enhance our services has led to significant growth. We now operate from nine locations: Truro, Plymouth, Exeter, Taunton, Bristol, Southampton and London, as well as a ‘hub’ base in Oxford and Manchester.
Our people are central to our success, in every part of the business. We actively support our employees to achieve their aspirations through offering meaningful careers with balanced rewards, which have been carefully designed to focus on personal wellbeing. We offer continual opportunities for support and professional development through our Business Skills Academy and Digital Skills Academy, and believe in empowering each other to achieve and strive to create a progressive and inclusive working environment. Being forward-thinking, we are open to discussing flexible working patterns for all of our vacancies, with over 40% of our existing employees having a permanent flexible working pattern. In addition, our impressive suite of flexible benefits will enable you to prioritise what matters most to you.
Creating a diverse and inclusive workplace is integral to delivering our strategy, and we were delighted to be awarded the National Equality Standard for a second time. We consider this to be right at the heart of our priorities, and goes way beyond our policies – it’s something we consider across everything we do, from the make-up of our client teams, encouraging staff to reach their potential, through to our leadership. We aim to support our clients and our people to achieve their goals, regardless of background, gender, race, beliefs, sexuality or other non-work related factors. We champion aspiration and encourage it in everyone that works with us. As such we actively encourage applications from all suitably qualified people, regardless of any characteristics protected by law. If you apply for this role you may be encouraged to answer our diversity and social mobility monitoring questions, so please be reassured that any answers you provide will remain entirely anonymous and confidential and will in no way impact your application.
Foot Anstey. Powering Your Ambition.
