Title Commercial Property Lawyer
Salary 30-70K+
Location Cornwall Devon
Job Information

Required knowledge and experience:
The successful candidate will have 0-3 years PQE and be specialising in Commercial Property. Our required candidates will have experience in transactional work; acquisitions and disposals of commercial property.

We are also seeking that at least one of our candidates has experience of business leases and lease renewals. We expect the successful candidate to have good team working and collaborative skills as our client offers a modern open plan work environment housing professional construction, property litigation and residential real estate expertise.

Our client expects and profiles The Clients’ to be the central core of the law firm and all lawyers to have a commercial professional approach to work practice and our client’s commercial ethos.

We are seeking to find:
Lawyers with the ability to –
•Present orally when required;
•Conduct effective case and transaction management;
•Develop and expand strong client relationships;
•Communicate concisely both verbally and in writing with colleagues and clients;
•Draft documents that are clear and concise;
•Interview and advise clients, helping them decide the best course of action;
•Research the relevant legal issues applicable to a case;
•Conduct negotiations where appropriate.

Key tasks:
The successful candidate will be working for our Senior Partner in the commercial property team on a range of transactions and projects across our key commercial market sectors (as work demands require) including:
Local Government – Acting for several central government departments on their property matters and on national, strategic projects.
Healthcare – Surgery development schemes including several practices coming together to develop new “super surgery” premises, a pharmacy and other healthcare practitioners. This is a growing part of our practice and is counter-cyclical.
Schools and Academies – Our client is acting for a number of schools and assisting them with property issues including estoppel, service occupancies and issues arising out of development and sale agreements. We have also undertaken a substantive number of property related projects in connection with Academy conversions.
Free Schools – Our client has been appointed by the Education Funding Agency for property, construction and procurement work in the creation of free schools. This is high profile work assisting the client and includes number of construction projects.
Local Authority – Our client acts for Local Authorities on a range of town centre regeneration schemes.
Residential Development – Despite the challenges in the residential development market generally, our client’s residential development work teams continue to thrive with a combination of strategic land acquisition and promotion work, corporate restructuring of landholdings, refinancing, and leisure-related developments.
Student Accommodation – Our client acts for national providers of student accommodation acting in joint ventures, on a range of developments across the counties of both Devon, Cornwall and Somerset.
Insolvency – Our client has seen a resurgence in their property insolvency practice specialising particularly in LPA receiverships based on our successful banking and secured lending practice and our client’s profile among the agents and surveyors that take LPA receivership appointments.
Secured Lending – despite the economic indicators we continue to win multi-million pound lending jobs from the major lenders.
Estates Management – Our client acts for a number of major occupiers of national estates such as local top-tier Chartered Accountancy firms; and has been involved in over many substantial lettings and acquisitions for them this year. Our client has also been involved in numerous property management and litigation matters such as dilapidations disputes, disputed notices, arrears and breaches of covenant with support from the litigation team.

Further work tasks:
• Business generation.
• Contribute to appropriate business development activities of the team and the Firm.
• Wherever the opportunity arises, promote the services of our client’s team from across the Firm to the client for whom they are acting.
• Introduce new clients to our client’s firm.
• Achieve agreed business development targets (if any).
• Identify and attend appropriate networking opportunities.
• Collaboration/people processes.
• Play an active role within the team and support other team members during busy times.
• Involve the secretaries and other support staff in an effective way.
• Take responsibility for delegated work, ask for guidance in respect of matters which are unclear and report errors which need to be resolved.
• Commit to attendance at team/departmental meetings/individual training meetings.
• Financial management (under the supervision of a Partner).
• Achieve financial and hours targets as set by the partners.
• Demonstrates an understanding/awareness of working capital and regular billing and refer matters as necessary in a timely fashion to partner.
• Bring matters to the attention of the partner and/or clients at the appropriate time and updates fee estimates accordingly.
• Actively participate in / contribute to the scoping of work.
• Proactively and regularly seek work from all areas.
• Comply with the SRA Accounts Rules.
• Deal promptly with any working capital exercises.
• Promote knowledge sharing.
• Adopt knowledge sharing behaviours at team, departmental and Firm level.
• Contributes to knowledge sharing initiatives to improve efficiency and profitability
• Support the team’s Knowledge Champion in building and cascading knowledge sharing resources, protocols and practices.
• Contribute to the development of the firm’s know-how and precedents.
• Demonstrate best use of precedents and know how to save time and costs.
• Quality standards.
• Demonstrate consistent compliance with the Firm’s quality policies and procedures as set out on the internal intranet.
• Learning and development.
• Attend the Management Course Stage 1 within the first three years of qualification.
• Comply with CPD requirements and identifies specific training needs.
• Attend appropriate departmental training sessions.
• Attend appropriate internal courses (e.g. management and IT skills).
• Provide informal and formal training as appropriate (e.g. induction, mentoring and internal team presentations).

Our client is looking for two lawyers 0-3 PQE; to apply for this position please contact:
Jonny Scott-Slater, Ashley Armstrong LLM or Zena Zennor.
Telephone – 01872 274227
CV2 – cornishexecutive@aol.com
Confidentiality is assured at all times.