Knowledge Counsel - Litigation 12m FTC

Mayer Brown is an international law firm positioned to represent the world’s major corporations, funds, and financial institutions in their most important and complex transactions and disputes. We are recognized by our clients as strategic partners with deep commercial instincts and a commitment to creatively anticipating their needs and delivering excellence in everything we do.

We are a collegial and collaborative firm where highly motivated individuals with an unwavering commitment to excellence receive the opportunity, support, and development they need to grow, thrive, and realise their greatest potential all while supporting the Firm’s client service principles of excellence, strategic partnership, commercial instinct, integrated strengths, innovation, and collaboration across our international firm.

If you enjoy working with team members whose defining characteristics are exceptional client service, initiative, professionalism, responsiveness, and adaptability, you may be the person we are seeking to join our Knowledge Management department in our London office as a Knowledge Counsel – Litigation on a 12 month fixed term contract.

The Department:
Knowledge Management

Litigation:

Our Global Litigation & Dispute Resolution practice handles virtually any type of legal dispute anywhere in the world. We advise in major national and cross border disputes, across our various core industry sectors, and offer coordinated access to more than 500 litigators worldwide.

In London we have more than 80 lawyers, offering full service capabilities to seamlessly support our clients through their high-stakes disputes, and we have vast experience with all manner of courts and tribunals, including both domestic and international arbitration.

The London Litigation group have full service capabilities, working together with our US, European and Asia teams to provide clients with complete representation on local and multi-jurisdictional matters. 

Much of our work involves cross-border elements and co-ordination with other Mayer Brown offices, local counsel, and/or other practices within the firm. Our “one-firm” culture allows us to provide our clients with a seamless and global strategy.

We advise financial institutions and other corporates and businesses on their compliance obligations and the management and avoidance of litigation risk. Our team has acted for a number of global banks in relation to some of their highest value and highest profile cases.  We have a deep knowledge of the industry and we are highly experienced in disputes involving structured finance, derivatives, complex financial products, metals trading, prospectus disputes, asset management and corporate trust disputes.  

Purpose of the Role:

This role requires an experienced lawyer who will help to continue development of the Knowledge Strategy for the Litigation Practice Group (“the Group”) and implement projects to meet the Group’s knowledge needs; monitor developments in the legal and business environment in order to keep both the Group and its clients up to date; provide legal and practical expertise to support the Group’s practice, both directly and through the mentoring of junior lawyers; create, develop and manage the Group’s collection of forms, precedents and research materials; organize, design and deliver Group training; help evaluate and support adoption of modern tools for legal services configuration and delivery, including artificial intelligence, and provide other support as needed.

Hours:

Standard hours are 9:30am to 5:30pm with flexibility in accordance with the needs of the business. Our current working from home policy allows for two days working from home, subject to business need. This policy is subject to change and does not form part of contractual terms.

Legal Knowledge

• Monitoring and keeping the team up-to-date and ahead of the curve on important developments in relevant law or business environment.
• Leading on the drafting and updating of the team’s knowledge resources, in particular standard forms and precedent documents, to ensure the team has access to first rate materials.
• Developing materials to assist the team in making M&A deal processes more efficient and streamlined.
• Capturing, curating and maintaining, via the firm’s “Global Knowledge Bank” (GKB) and the team’s intranet site, market-leading knowledge resources, which include in particular standard forms, precedent documents, best practices, how-to memos, legal research documents and other relevant resources.
• Advising and acting as a “sounding board” for partners and fee-earners on technical legal queries and, where appropriate, giving advice directly to clients.
• Advising on and mitigating risk for the team by keeping abreast of legal and regulatory developments that may impact the team’s practice, working closely with its risk partners and the firm’s Legal Risk Management team.
• Working with partners and fee-earners to create new and improve existing processes to capture practice-related knowledge content and encourage the sharing of information and knowledge generally across the team.

Lawyer Training and Technical Expertise

• Working with partners and fee-earners in collaboration with the London Learning and Development team to identify and plan core practice-related training, including ideas for the utilisation of technology and different approaches to deliver an engaging training programme for the team.
• Capturing valuable training materials and making them easily accessible to the team.
• Developing and delivering legal training for fee-earners to assist them with locating practice-related internal and external team knowledge.
• Supporting partners and fee-earners with their preparation of materials for internal and external client training.
• Where appropriate, delivering training to clients directly in conjunction with partners and fee-earners.

Client-Facing Initiatives

• Monitoring and analysing key legal and market developments and trends and clearly communicating to the team how these will impact the fee-earners day-to-day practice and their clients.
• Identifying opportunities for the team to use its internal know-how, expertise and insights to deepen client relationships and sharpen its profile with key clients.
• Drafting, researching and assisting partners and fee-earners with the legal content for client alerts, articles, thought leadership pieces and other client-facing products.

Innovation, Legal Technology and Legal Project Management

• Identifying and supporting the team to identify and implement internal efficiencies through the use of legal technology.
• Working with the firm’s Legal Innovation & Strategy team to explore cutting edge approaches and legal tech (including the use of AI) to drive more efficient client service delivery for the team.
• Engaging with the firm’s Legal Project Management team on legal process improvement and project management initiatives for the team.
• Where relevant, working with the firm’s Document Automation team, to identify suitable knowledge resources for automation.

Knowledge Management Strategy

• Leading, advising and generating ideas on the development and delivery of the team’s knowledge management (“KM”) strategy to align with the team’s business objectives and the firm’s global KM strategy.
• Clearly and consistently communicating the KM strategy to the team.
• Regularly engaging and working with partners and fee-earners to inform priorities and strategic decisions on KM initiatives for the team

Other

• Participating in regular meetings of the firm’s KM function and liaising regularly with other Knowledge Counsel/Lawyers at the firm to facilitate the sharing of best practice and knowledge.
• Pro-actively develop relationships across the firm, connecting legal and practical expertise relevant to the team.
• Providing other knowledge support to the team as may be assigned by the Litigation partners or Director of Knowledge Management (Europe & Asia).

Qualifications:

• A qualified Solicitor (England & Wales) with 10 years or more post qualification experience.
• The candidate must have attained his or her law degree from a reputed institution, achieving a minimum grade of 2.1 or equivalent

Experience, skills and personal attributes:

• Minimum of 10 years’ experience practicing as a Litigation / Disputes lawyer for an international law firm.
• Excellent knowledge of English contract law.
• Significant Litigation subject-matter expertise
• High professional standards with a passion for delivering a quality product.
• Excellent drafting and research skills.
• Well-developed organisation skills and attention to detail.
• Understanding of different learning processes and methods of training.
• Excellent people skills and a good, clear communication style.
• Ability to work effectively within an established, close-knit team.
• Ability to confidently interact with people at all levels and build credibility and relationships in all areas of the business.
• A commercial and pragmatic outlook.
• Self-motivated and possesses a very pro-active, independent attitude to owning and progressing workflows.

At Mayer Brown, we are committed to creating an inclusive work environment that offers our people the opportunity and support they need to succeed.

Our culture promotes mutual respect, acceptance, cooperation and productivity among people from all backgrounds and values different perspectives and ideas.

One of our core values at Mayer Brown is to promote inclusion at all levels within the business which is actively supported by our Employee Resource Groups - LGBTQI+, Fusion (Race & Ethnicity), Multi-faith, Women, Enable (Disability), Social Inclusion and Opportunities Network and Work and Me (Family).

We are happy to discuss any reasonable adjustments that individuals may require throughout the recruitment process and once they have joined the Firm.