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Senior Associate – Contentious Probate

Legacy & Trust Litigation

Exeter, Bristol, Southampton, Plymouth, Truro

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We are looking for a specialist contentious trust and probate Senior Associate to work in our dynamic and fast-growing Legacies & Trust Disputes team. The team deals with inheritance disputes for a nationwide private client base and for national charities and is ranked in tier 1 for private client contentious probate in the South West, as well as tier 1 for Charities (Legacies) UK-wide in Chambers. This is a great opportunity to work with a high calibre client base from the outset. In this role you can expect to work flexibly from home and in the office as needed to meet the changing needs of the clients and the wider business.

What you'll do

You will have your own busy caseload from the start, taking responsibility for all aspects of contentious trust and probate work. You will work closely with a Managing Associate and 5 other specialist lawyers plus trainee and paralegal support. Our contentious probate lawyers sit within a wider team of over 25 people that has evolved to meet the needs of its charity clients providing dispute resolution, estate administration and legacy income management. We also collaborate with our colleagues in our wider Private Wealth Sector including agricultural, mental capacity, tax and family teams for the benefit of our private clients.

You will be working within an innovative environment where being proactive and forward thinking of behalf of our clients is actively promoted. We use bespoke technology solutions and legal design to interact with our clients in order to deliver exceptional service. We encourage personal development through our Business Skills & Digital Skills Academy and other opportunities such as client secondments.

What we're looking for

With at least 5+ years PQE, you can readily demonstrate solid post qualification experience as a genuine specialist in contentious trusts and probate, and experience of running your own caseload. You will be a true team player and have ACTAPS and/or STEP qualifications, or we will be willing to support you with this.

With your level of experience, you will be supervising and/or supporting the development of junior fee earners in your current role and be positive and approachable in doing so. We consider ourselves to be a high performing, welcoming and inclusive team, and your first-class communication skills will enable you to become a key member, gaining the trust of a broad range of internal and external stakeholders. In this role, you will have exceptional opportunities to develop strong and lasting client relationships, and you will be personally motivated and enthusiastic about this prospect, with a view to building or extending your profile in this complex and challenging area of law. As part of an ambitious and enthusiastic team, we will support you to engage in or lead a range of business development opportunities in order to continue developing your profile and progressing your career over time.

If you have any questions or would like to discuss this role, please contact our Recruitment Team via email in the first instance, and we will come back to you as soon as we can: [email protected]

 

Why Foot Anstey?

As one of the UK's fastest growing law firms, we believe 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 the right solutions at the right time.  We are on an exciting journey to become our clients’ most trusted advisor, enabling them to achieve their ambitions, and we think how we do it is just as important as what we do. Our values guide the way we act, every day, from the way we operate as a business to how we treat our colleagues and clients:

  • collaboration over convention
  • championing aspiration
  • being refreshingly human
  • embracing entrepreneurial spirit
  • delivering integrated thinking

We're proud to have grown from a high-street firm to a significant regional and national player working with leading brands and individuals predominantly across six key sectors: Retail & Consumer, Financial Services, Energy & Infrastructure, Media & Entertainment, 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 seven bases: Truro, Plymouth, Exeter, Taunton, Bristol, Southampton and London.

At Foot Anstey our people, like our values, are at the very heart of our business. We work hard to help our employees achieve their aspirations through offering meaningful careers with balanced rewards, which have been carefully designed to focus on personal wellbeing. Wellbeing matters to us and our people enjoy a range of benefits which we think are a bit special, such as the weekly Lifestyle Hour to use as you wish, and our Family Hour option which makes a day of annual leave go so much further across the year.

Being forward thinking, we are continually offering opportunities for support and professional development through our Business Skills Academy and Digital Skills Academy. We believe in empowering each other to achieve and strive to create a progressive and inclusive working environment where everyone can feel valued and rewarded. Understanding that being flexible makes us stronger, we actively encourage a variety of working patterns for most of our vacancies, dependent upon the needs of the team, and over 40% of our employees have a permanent flexible working pattern. 

Throughout the pandemic, most of our people have been working on a flexible, remote basis, and as we work towards a 'new normal' we anticipate a gradual return to our offices over the upcoming months in line with Government guidance.

The recruitment process

Your time is precious and we fully appreciate what goes into applying for one of our roles. As such, we strive to acknowledge your application immediately and respond within 7 days regardless of outcome.  We review applications on a rolling basis and don’t use closing dates for our roles as a result of this. Once shortlisted, we typically undertake a two-stage interview process, and naturally much of this is done via Microsoft Teams, though some in person interviews and meetings are beginning to take place. Our Recruitment Team will support and guide you throughout the process, ensuring you receive ample information about us and the role.

Creating a diverse and inclusive workplace is central to our business, and essential to delivering our strategy, so we were delighted to be awarded the National Equality Standard in 2018 and to successfully renew this in 2021.  It is right at the heart of our priorities.  This goes 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 are committed to ‘powering your ambition’, which defines and sets us apart as a firm. It means that 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 are encouraged to answer the diversity and social mobility monitoring questions. The answers you provide will remain entirely anonymous and confidential and will in no way impact your application.

We're looking forward to hearing from you.

Foot Anstey. Powering Your Ambition.

 

 

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