Employment Senior Associate

Employment Senior Associate | 5+ Years PQE | Legal 500 & Chambers Ranked | Manchester

A rare opportunity for an experienced Employment lawyer to step into a senior and influential role within a highly regarded firm, where you will be at the forefront of a busy and growing department rather than another face in a large team.

The Firm

This firm sits within the Top 200 nationally and has built a reputation that consistently attracts lawyers from Top 30 international practices. The draw is simple: better work-life balance, a quality of work that matches or exceeds what they were doing before and a culture that actually lives up to what it promises. Most of the partners have been with the firm for over ten years, staff retention is excellent across the board and the firm's track record speaks for itself.

This is not a revolving-door firm. The people here choose to stay, and the reasons for that become clear quickly. The environment is collegiate, the leadership is accessible and there is a sense that the firm invests in its lawyers for the long term rather than extracting what it can in the short term.

The Team

The Employment team is Legal 500 and Chambers ranked, with a client satisfaction accolade that reflects the quality of its people as much as its advice. HR directors, boards and senior executives come to this team for pragmatic, commercially grounded thinking on their most sensitive and complex employment matters.

The team comprises four to five lawyers with the majority sitting at junior level. That structure creates an interesting opportunity for someone at mid to senior level to come in, take ownership and develop their management and supervisory skills in a way that simply is not possible within a larger, more layered team. You will be the senior fee-earner below partner level, which means real influence, real responsibility and a real platform to develop as a lawyer and as a leader.

The Role

From day one you will handle a varied and high-quality mix of contentious and non-contentious work including high-value tribunal claims spanning discrimination, whistleblowing and unfair dismissal, board-level restructures, TUPE, senior exits and urgent injunction work on confidential information and restrictive covenants. You will work directly with clients who regard the team as a trusted commercial partner rather than simply an external adviser.

Alongside your own caseload you will take day-to-day responsibility for supervising and developing the junior lawyers in the team, playing a hands-on role in their growth and contributing to the wider running of the department. For a lawyer looking to build real management experience and have a meaningful say in how a practice operates, the structure here offers something that larger teams rarely can.

Business development is actively supported rather than simply expected, with a dedicated marketing team helping with directories, awards and profile-raising to make it easier to build your own presence in the market.

The Ideal Candidate

• Employment lawyer with 5+ years PQE, confident managing a varied and senior-level caseload
• Strong drafter with a commercial communication style and an appetite for client development
• Comfortable supervising and developing junior lawyers and taking on a management responsibility
• Ambitious and looking for a role where they can have real influence rather than simply being another fee earner

What's on Offer

• A senior and influential role within a tight-knit, highly regarded Employment team
• The opportunity to develop real management and supervisory experience in a structured but autonomous environment
• Competitive salary, hybrid working and a dress-for-your-day policy
• A dedicated marketing function to support your profile and business development activity

To find out more, contact Joe Bryant at joe@jmc-legal.com or call 07441 937590