Environment Senior Associate – 7+ PQE

Job Description

Environment Senior Associate – 7+ PQE

Location: London, Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow or Aberdeen

Contract Type: Permanent

The Brief:

We are currently recruiting for a qualified lawyer with upwards of 7 years PQE to join our Environment Team, to focus on our Climate & Sustainability practice. The candidate will be based within our existing market leading Environment Team, ideally in any of our London, Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow or Aberdeen offices.

We are looking for someone with market leading skills and strong experience in providing both strategic and regulatory advice on the environment, natural capital and climate and sustainability to clients, and who also has skills and experience in contractual drafting and negotiation in this area. We recognise that a key skill will be adaptability and ability to collaborate and learn given the new and evolving nature of this practice area. Example areas of the type of experience we are looking for include:

• Advising on Biodiversity Net Gain and Nutrient Neutrality for developers;
• Advising on natural capital projects in the UK and/or overseas;
• Advising on carbon offsetting projects in the UK and/or overseas;
• Drafting and negotiating commercial agreements in relation to BNG, Nutrient Neutrality, natural capital investment, carbon offsetting and other ecosystems services outcomes; and
• Advising on other climate & sustainability matters, including climate reporting, extended producer responsibility and supply chain measures.
• Advising on the establishment and operation of natural capital projects, including habitat banks for Biodiversity Net Gain and Nutrient Neutrality, carbon offsetting and other ecosystems services.
• Drafting and negotiating of section 106 agreements and conservation covenants to secure natural capital projects.
  
  
  

This is an excellent opportunity to work on a broad range of both climate and sustainability and environmental matters and be part of a national team with senior top ranked specialists.

About the Team:

Our Environment Team sits within our market leading Planning & Environment team, which is the largest dedicated Planning and Environment team in the UK, with specialists involved in a wide range of major projects across the Energy, Infrastructure and Real Estate sectors.

Our Environment Team experts cover the full range of environmental law and also advise on a wide range of natural capital, climate change and sustainability matters. This includes:

• Net zero, carbon, biodiversity and natural capital advice, including nature-based solutions, offsetting, and EU /UK ETS compliance;
• Environmental aspects of major infrastructure consenting and development, including onshore & offshore renewables, carbon capture & storage, new water resources, and climate change resilience projects; and
• Regulatory advice e.g. advising on remediation liability, nuclear regulation, water licensing, waste management, environmental permitting, extended producer responsibility, F-Gas, WEEE etc.;
  
  
  

Our Environment Team also plays an active role in the firm’s multi-disciplinary Climate and Sustainability Advisory Practice. Our dedicated Environmental lawyers form a key part of this team, which includes specialist lawyers from across the firm, public policy professionals and our sustainability consulting team. As a wholly integrated consulting and legal advisory business, we enable clients to understand sustainability-driven requirements of investors, lenders, and regulators; comply with emerging legal frameworks, international standards and industry best practice; and stay ahead of stakeholder expectations. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to work alongside these colleagues as part of a multidisciplinary client team.

The candidate will therefore be part of a national practice and will have exposure to not only pure environment work, but also have the opportunity to work alongside our leading consenting lawyers, as well as the wider firm on climate and sustainability advisory work.

Key Clients include:

• Eden Project
• Anglian Water
• Harworth Estates
• Nissan
• Thames Water
• Nattergal
• Ebbsfleet Development Corporation
• Southern Water
• Morgan Sindall
• Drax Power Limited
• Plastic Collective
• Hydrovolt AS
• Environment Agency
• Royal Commission for AlUla
  
  
  

Work highlights:

• Advising the Eden Project on the establishment of a network of wildflower meadows that will generate Biodiversity Net Gain units that can be sold to developers and corporates. The meadows will also generate seeds that will contribute to the Eden Project Wildflower Seed Bank.
• Advising Nattergal in relation to a large scale re-wilding scheme it is developing, Boothby Wildland Landscape Recovery Project, which will rewild and create new and enhanced habitats and other ecosystem services. As part of this project, Boothby Wildland Limited intends to sell Biodiversity Net Gain units generated from the rewilded and newly created and enhanced habitats and ecosystem services to developers and corporates.
• Advising on all environment aspects of the £640m River Thames Scheme, the largest flood defence scheme in the UK, which would protect 15,000 homes, 2000 businesses and 300km of highway. The scheme consists of two flood alleviation channels of approximately 7.95km in length alongside the River Thames, with an area of 5.3km2, equivalent to half the size of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and a large new country park.
• Advising Anglian Water (alongside partner water companies Affinity Water and Cambridge Water) on all aspects of its Strategic Resource Option (SRO) water resource projects including the proposed South Lincolnshire Reservoir SRO, Fenland Reservoir SRO and Anglian to Affinity Transfer SRO.
  
  
  

About the Candidate:

The successful candidate will have a strong academic background and ideally will have gained experience working in a large regional or national practice with an understanding of the levels of service delivery required. They will be a team player, have strong client and work handling experience, excellent interpersonal skills, and a drive to getting involved in new and innovative areas of law and advisory work.

The role requires a lawyer who is technically excellent, but, equally important, commercially aware and enthusiastic about business development. We are looking for a confident advisor, with experience advising on new legal regimes in the dynamic environmental and climate market, a strong client focussed approach, who is willing to take responsibility as the main client contact and motivated to supervise and develop junior members of the Environment Team across the full spectrum of their work.

What will we offer you?

• We are a market leading, dynamic and growing team who work together to produce outstanding results for our clients.
• We invest in our team and have a first-class training and career development programme, monthly 121s, career discussions and biannual appraisals. Our training reflects our position as a market leader in communications and sourcing. Our training will assist you to develop as a specialist with valuable sector knowledge and the ability to deliver the highest quality of services.
• Early responsibility and opportunities to develop client relationships.
  
  
  

At Pinsent Masons we value diversity and inclusion. We are committed to creating a better workplace where all our talent can succeed and feel like they belong. We want to attract, retain and develop people at all levels and encourage applications from all suitably qualified candidates whatever your ethnicity, religion, age, physical or mental disability/ long term condition, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression or any other characteristics protected by local law in the jurisdictions in which we operate.

We want everybody attending an interview to be comfortable and able to fully demonstrate their experience and talents. If you require any additional support or adjustments to help you do this, please let us know.

About the Firm:

Pinsent Masons is a global 100 law firm, with over 3,800 employees operating out of 28 locations across Europe, Asia Pacific, Africa and the Middle East. We have a long-standing reputation for delivering high-quality legal advice rooted in a deep understanding of the sectors and geographies in which our clients operate. Our global reach ensures that we are well-placed to advise on complex multi-jurisdictional matters across a full range of legal disciplines.

The firm has significant multinational credentials in the financial services, energy, infrastructure, real estate, and advanced manufacturing and technology sectors. Services provided across these sectors include asset management and investment funds, corporate and M&A, commercial, competition, litigation and arbitration, banking, restructuring, insurance, regulatory, construction, projects, pensions, property, planning and environmental, procurement, outsourcing, employment, share plans and incentives, technology and tax advice.

We champion change and promote progress to make business work better for people. Pinsent Masons has embedded a range of diversity and inclusion initiatives to create an environment in which its people can flourish. We operate an agile working scheme, which offers our employees flexibility in terms of where, and how, they work.

We stand out for our innovative approach to service delivery. For example, the firm has developed a number of in-house legal technology and project management solutions, operates a hub of freelance lawyers, called Vario, and a global Diversity and Inclusion consultancy, Brook Graham. Put simply, we offer a range of professional disciplines to our clients, enabled by our people, process and technology.

You will be working for a firm that has:

• an ESG Board Committee to inform the firm on its ESG and sustainability targets and metrics and support for clients with each member leading specific firm wide ESG objectives.
• supported 130 charity partners on social impact programmes and supported 30,000 young people in our commitment to inspire young lives.
• advanced senior leadership gender parity, creating an all-female leadership team for the firm’s Australian three office network.
• exceeded our 20% minority ethnic UK trainee target achieving 21.4%.
  
  
  

Awards

We’re being recognised equally by commentators and other market movers through a plethora of awards spanning every region and culminating in being named law firm of the year by Legal Business, the FT’s most innovative law firm in Europe (for the third time in eight years), winning their sustainability award in Asia Pacific and being ranked as Thomson Reuters’ leading legal brand in their UK index.

We have been recognised as by Stonewall as a Top Global Employer. Recognising that we are a leading employer in advancing LGBT+ inclusion. Pinsent Masons is recognised as a 'Top Ten Employer for Working Families in 2023' for the seventh consecutive year. We are accredited as a Disability Confident Employer by the Department for Work & Pensions and we were the first law firm to sign up the global Valuable 500

Please click here to view full list of our global awards and nominations - www.pinsentmasons.com/accolades

Should you require further details, please contact our in-house Lateral Recruitment Advisor Johenn Choi who can discuss the role and requirements.

Contact details:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/johenn-choi

[email protected]