Job Description

We are looking for an experienced Real Estate associate to join WBD Advance, our alternative legal services group. The team has over 100 lawyers, paralegals, management information specialists and legal project managers who provide a wide range of services and solutions to clients, and it supports the wider firm on high volume workstreams, end-to-end managed services and bespoke projects. The bulk of the team are in Bristol and Plymouth, so ability to attend either of these offices at least two days per week would be preferred, with the other days working from home.



The ideal candidate will be experienced in core commercial real estate transactions and know how to deal with planning issues and reporting to lenders. They will be happy to manage a team of paralegals and take a hands-on approach to training and supervision. You will join a sub-team of WBD Advance comprising 3 lawyers 15 paralegals. The team delivers real estate projects including title reviews for government departments, post completion services for clients across the firm, including well-known retail clients, and document production and completions for high street lenders, national developers and utility providers.

What will you be doing?

We're looking for a lawyer, technically strong, and preferably with some previous experience of supervising others and/or of volume work, to undertake:


Transactions such as licences to alter, licences to sub-let and lease renewals - acting for pension providers and government departments. Document production (planning and infrastructure agreements) - overseeing the initial drafting, document negotiations and completion process for S278, S38 and S104 agreements. Liaising with colleagues in our planning team on particularly complex matters. Document production - acting for utility service providers in relation to deeds of easements and wayleave agreements negotiated with landowners. Real Estate Finance related transactions - high volume redemptions, deeds of substitution, transfers of equity, re-possession and receivership sales and reporting on title.

Our existing client base spans several different sectors; with the team having a high volume of instructions in the following areas:


Investors and Developers - dealing with high volume plot acquisitions for investor clients, post completion support, freehold reversions, certificates of compliance and deeds of variations for national house builders. Planning - S278 agreements for national highways authority, S103 and S38 agreement for national house builders. High street retail chains - post completion support with SDLT submissions and Land Registry applications. Charities - light touch due diligence exercises ahead of potential mergers or asset transfers.

You will work to the senior lawyer within the team and take responsibility for managing one or more of the existing workstreams. In either case, the role will include technical supervision and development of paralegal team who support the workstreams, working closely with the Legal Solutions Centre Director and Partners, and the wider firm's Real Estate team to continue to build these services. You may also work with project managers and legal technologists to onboard new workstreams or clients and embed them within our established model. Your role in WBD Advance which also has its own Real Estate Finance team and Commercial team with whom you will work closely when projects and services overlap, will also involve being an advocate for innovation and service delivery within the firm to support on the optimisation of legal work, and to assist with winning of new clients. WBD Advance is a collaborative working environment with a varied workload and a track record of sustained growth, and so is great place for someone to consolidate all the knowledge that you've developed so far, build on your technical expertise, as well as gain experience in project management, people management and emerging legal technologies.

What are we looking for?

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


To be a UK qualified lawyer (applications from CILEx qualified candidates welcome); A minimum of 3 year's qualified experience working in commercial real estate, real estate finance, planning or a similar specialism; and Previous experience of supervising at least 1 person, within a legal team.

What makes it great to work here?



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.