Associate - Employment

A&O Shearman is a new global industry-leading law firm, with 48 offices in 29 countries worldwide. Our fluency in English law, US law, and the laws of the world’s most dynamic markets, enables us to provide unmatched insight and seamless delivery to clients. We work on challenging and important deals and disputes that have the potential to shape the future.

We offer exceptional opportunities for our people; opportunities to work for the world’s leading businesses; to transform the status quo, and to deliver your best work, helping you and your career to thrive, while delivering unparalleled outcomes for our clients.

Whether you're helping clients solve complex challenges, transforming the ways we manage our business, or ensuring the smooth-running of our operations, this is an environment where you can belong and excel. We provide first-rate training and development, we are committed to diversity, equity and inclusion and we provide support and ways of working that help you optimise your wellbeing.

What truly defines a career with us? We recruit the best and ask for the best of you. And together, we will redefine success.

Department purpose

A&O Shearman Belfast plays an increasing role in delivering important elements of major litigation cases and transactions, as well as in coordinating teams of lawyers from around the world. A&O Shearman Belfast are a key part of A&O Shearman's advanced delivery of legal services to its clients, making intelligent use of technology and complementing the traditional law services provided by A&O Shearman throughout the world. We have created a truly collaborative culture where talented individuals work together and can flourish to achieve great things. Recognised as one of the market’s leading employment practices, we have experience of working with clients on both contentious and non-contentious work including employment documentation, workplace issues and policies, data protection, discrimination, restructuring and redundancies, executive issues, employment-related litigation and the impact of corporate M&A and restructurings.

Many of our clients are heavily invested in globalisation and continue to expand their international platform. This means that workplace issues have multiple dimensions: a strategic level, a cross-border level and a local dimension on the ground. With employment lawyers located across Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and the U.S., we work in partnership with clients to develop individual, sophisticated and creative solutions to modern workplace issues. Our team is renowned for being at the forefront of using innovative tools to assist clients to meet their needs and challenges on HR-related matters. With a client-centric approach we cover not only standalone advisory and corporate transactional support but also provide clients with a more bespoke approach which includes providing training, regular legal bulletins and a broad range of value added services. We are committed to the development of best practice within employment and devote a considerable amount of time and resources to training our lawyers to ensure our clients receive the best, practical and robust advice.

Key relationships
- Employment Partners, Associates and the wider team
- A&O Shearman Belfast Legal Partner, Senior Associates, Managing Associates and the wider team
- Clients (internal and external)
- Legal Technology and Project Management Office teams
- Business Development Manager
- Wider A&O Shearman community

Role and responsibilities
- Providing strategic guidance to clients
- Advising on restructuring programmes, employment contracts, HR policies, diversity initiatives in addition to general employee relations and employment related cases
- Managing employment tribunal claims in addition to corresponding litigation and mediation
- Attending client meetings
- Managing client expectations and project delivery appropriately
- Business development - development of personal plan; assistance with and implementation of business development campaign
- Legal research
- Drafting, reviewing and amending documentation
- Supervision of junior team members

Key requirements
- Qualified lawyer with strong technical knowledge with regards to employment law
- Strong transactional experience
- Intellectual curiosity and versatility
- Self-starter with the desire and ability to continuously acquire, build upon and share knowledge
- Detail-focused and self-motivated approach
- Strong organisational skills, with the ability to manage multiple deadlines
- Excellent client relationship skills
- Strong commercial/business acumen with the ability to deliver creative and pragmatic solutions and advice
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to interface at all levels and particularly to win the respect of the partner and fee-earner community, building strong relationships with both internal and external stakeholders
- Collaborative team player with the