JOB DESCRIPTION
About Herbert Smith Freehills
As one of the world’s leading law firms, we advise many of the largest and most ambitious organisations across all major regions of the globe. With over 5,000 people, including 3,100 lawyers and over 2,000 business services professionals, operating from our global network of offices across Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and North America, Herbert Smith Freehills is at the heart of the new global business landscape providing premium quality, full-service legal advice.
We recognise that the success of our business and our clients relies on the skills, knowledge and ideas of all our people. Our environment is one in which high performance is expected, in return, we will provide you with rewards and opportunities tailored to your personal and professional goals.
The Opportunity
Practice Area:
Financial Services Regulatory (FSR)
Our global FSR practice helps our clients solve their most complex and sensitive national and international regulatory challenges (both proactive and reactive), both non-contentious and contentious. We have specialists across our network of offices in Europe, North America, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East.
Our expertise covers the full spectrum of regulation, including authorisations and approvals; regulatory change; the regulatory aspects of transactions or restructurings; governance; risk management and compliance; market conduct; complaints handling; financial crime; and enforcement and investigations.
Our regulatory team includes Partners who have previously gained several years' experience working in senior in-house legal roles within the regulator or within financial institutions. We have also invested heavily in ensuring that our associates spend time on secondment with clients and with regulators.
The London Advisory (non-contentious) FSR practice specialises in advisory, regulatory change and transactions/commercial projects work. The team advises banks (traditional and challenger), investment firms (including broker-dealers and trading venues), asset managers, market infrastructure providers and other financial institutions on financial services law and regulation, including all major UK/EU regulatory regimes, including CRR/CRD, MiFID II, SMCR, MAR, EMIR, PSD2 and AIFMD. Areas of special expertise include strategic advice on emerging technology; sustainability; complex outsourcing; and governance and risk management.
The team regularly advises clients on their most strategic and challenging projects, including:
1. structuring and authorisation of new businesses
2. post-Brexit strategy and restructuring
3. corporate governance and senior management responsibility
4. regulatory change and commercial projects (including outsourcing)
5. new business and product structuring
6. client documentation and other financial sector contracts
7. BAU regulatory and compliance matters
8. high-value and complex financial sector M&A and other transactions
9. The lawyers in the non-contentious part of this practice area work closely with their counterparts on the contentious side as well as product specialists (e.g. Funds, Derivatives, Corporate Crime/AML, Insurance, Energy, ESG, TMT and other practices), sharing client work, business development and know-how.
Recent Matters
10. Advising an investment vehicle and its owner on a majority equity investment in Metro Bank as part of the October 2023 rescue of Metro Bank
11. Advising the Earthshot Prize (founded by HRH Prince William in 2020, it is an ambitious global environmental prize to discover and scale the best solutions to help repair our planet over the next 10 years) on regulatory issues on a new digital platform.
12. Advising a leading international cross-border bank on its Basel 3:1 implementation.
13. Advising a leading global financial services group on ESG related disclosure and greenwashing requirements.
14. Advising a number of FinTechs, BigTech and TradFi companies on digital assets/crypto and payments-related regulation.
15. Advising a leading challenger bank on prudential requirements.
16. Advising global asset managers on product and platform launches.
Key Responsibilities:
The role involves:
Knowhow management
17. Identifying, tracking, storing and updating the team on regulatory developments
18. Managing internal knowhow
19. Acting as a sounding board for associates to provide a steer on how to identify relevant sources of rules, guidance and knowhow
20. Assisting in the preparation of various information bundles for lawyers
21. Drafting technical legal updates
22. Coordinating with knowhow teams in other practice areas to contribute to cross-practice knowhow
23. Keeping precedents and knowhow notes up to date
24. Preparing new precedents and keeping precedents up to date
25. Helping to maintain a record of house views
26. Providing support with chargeable work including undertaking research for the fee-earners as needed
Business development
27. Assisting in the preparation of regular client briefings, alerts and blogs
28. Assisting the team with trade association work
29. Writing blogs on legal developments and reviewing and editing drafts from the team
30. Assisting the team with preparation for roundtables, conferences, client training and seminars, including identifying regulatory developments and helping to prepare content of slides and speaker notes
31. Coordinating with the business development team on BD initiatives
32. Attending client events
33. Assisting with pitches where technical input is required
34. Input into practice strategy thinking
Training
35. Assisting with the preparation and delivery of training to associates and trainees
36. Leading the knowhow section of internal FSR weekly meetings and participating in discussions on developments
37. Delivering external talks, recording webinars and podcasts
Supporting fee-earning
38. Undertaking or assisting fee earners with undertaking analysis and delivery of advice to clients.
Qualifications, skills and experience:
39. We would expect the successful candidate to have approximately 6+ pqe years' experience in financial services regulatory work, with PSL experience preferable. We would consider those with less or more experience, providing they meet the required competencies.
40. We expect that the successful candidate is most likely to have a broad spread of experience across several of sectors rather than narrow experience of one sector or area of FS regulation.
41. Academic excellence is essential for all positions within Herbert Smith Freehills. We would always expect at least a 2:1 degree (or equivalent). All applications should include full academic details including grades, subjects and transcripts where appropriate.
42. Fluency in spoken and written English.
Team
Corporate
Working Pattern
Full time
Location
London
Contract type
Permanent Contract
Diversity & Inclusion
At Herbert Smith Freehills you will be part of a diverse, innovative culture where high performance, client focus and highly engaged people are our differentiator. People at our firm come from a range of backgrounds and bring a wide variety of experiences and perspectives to their work with us. We strive to ensure that our inclusive environment means you feel valued and able to perform at your best by being your authentic self at work. We know that our future success not only depends on being innovative and progressive in the changing legal market but, most importantly, on our people feeling highly engaged in meaningful work.
We understand that you have commitments and personal interests outside of work and we strive to create a working environment based on mutual trust and respect, in which you can perform at your best whilst maintaining sustainable balance across your life.