Residential Development Legal Assistant

at  Gateley

ABOUT US

The benefits
With support, coaching and feedback from some of the most engaging colleagues around our great development and progression opportunities will reward your commitment and loyalty. We offer a competitive remuneration package where you’ll be rewarded for your individual performance with an opportunity to receive an annual bonus.
In addition, we have a wide range of learning and development opportunities via our Learn platform to develop new skills and progress your career. Our My Flex comprehensive rewards package includes options covering annual leave (and the benefit of purchasing extra days), cycle to work, critical illness benefit, employee assistance programme, group personal pension, health care, season ticket loan and many more benefits (grade dependent). Finally, with Perks At Work/Home you can select a host of retail benefits that suit your needs alongside a Community Online Academy, free courses for all from fitness to coding to languages to hip hop dance.
We are Gateley
We are forward thinking and straight talking, our approach is to find solutions to the problems that our clients face. Gateley is a legal and professional services group, we are a group of formidable experts in all areas of law and business. Passionate problem solvers, we get our kicks from finding the right answers and getting our legal and business clients where they need to be. We support more than 5,700 active clients, ranging from FTSE 100 companies to private individuals, in the UK and beyond. Being part of Gateley is not just about the expertise that you bring; it’s about attitude too.
The ‘Gateley Story’ is the story of our people and our culture. It is what has got us to where we are today as a successful business and it’s the driving force behind the Gateley Team Spirit and the values that have shaped it. We have a set of shared internal values that capture what the Gateley Team Spirit is and this includes five elements that bind us all together as one Gateley: Ambitious for Success, Forward Thinking, Room to Breathe, Trusted to Do and Working Together. Every year across the group, we recognise members of our team that have gone and above and beyond and have lived these shared values. They are recognised at our annual Gateley Team Spirit awards.
Diversity, inclusion and well being
Diversity, inclusion and well-being is an important part of Gateley’s culture and values. We recruit talented people from a diverse range of backgrounds and cultures, providing equal opportunities for all to join our team regardless of age, sex, race, sexual orientation, disability, or culture.
We create an exciting and rewarding place to work that aims to fulfil everyone’s potential and together to achieve personal and business goals. We offer flexible working patterns to help our staff achieve a good work/ life balance and we encourage candidates seeking flexibility in their next role to apply for any of our vacancies.
We are proud to have been recognised by The Law Society as gold standard for our Diversity and Inclusion Charter and to be Stonewall Diversity Champions.

The role
This is an exciting time to join our market leading Residential Development Unit as the team continues to win repeat and new work from its impressive client base of recognised national and regional housebuilders. As a Legal Assistant in our fantastic Guildford based team you will enjoy working in a fast-paced environment and support our Site Set Up team.

Responsibilities include:

• File opening
• Management of billings
• Coordinating fee earners’ work
• Client onboarding
• Drafting legal documents and reports

The team
We are the leading residential development and urban regeneration legal team in the country acting for 18 of the top 20 UK housebuilders, institutional landowners such as Oxford University and other large-scale sector participants.
We advise over the complete life cycle of new build housing from initial heads of terms, acquiring the land, obtaining planning permission, building out the scheme and the sale of the new homes. Schemes range from local developments of 50 new homes up to 20,000 unit green field urban extensions and multi-billion pound urban regeneration schemes in central London.
We also advise our PLC clients at Group level on national issues such as cladding remediation post-Grenfell and Competition and Markets Authority investigations.
The team, which is over 240 strong and is based in 8 of our offices across England, operates within Gateley Plc’s Property Platform. This Platform comprises over 700 lawyers, surveyors, engineers, architects, accountants and support staff who provide a unique cross-disciplinary service delivery to out wider property client base.
Part of the team’s is the sale of the new homes once built. These sales, which total approximately 15,000 plots and £3 billion in revenue each year, are handled by the Plot Sales team out of three regional hubs using highly developed IT processes and automation.
The person

Personality fit is absolutely key in this role and our successful candidate will be a personable, enthusiastic and confident individual with excellent client management skills. They will also demonstrate the following attributes:

• Excellent commercial acumen
• Great communication skills, both written and verbal
• Commitment to forging strong working relationships with our clients
• Ability and willingness to learn
• Strong attention to detail
• An organised approach in managing time, work priorities and deadlines
• A strong team working ethic
• Good IT skills, ideally including previous experience of working with a case management system
• Discretion and professionalism at all times
• Calm under pressure and able to operate efficiently in a fast-paced and demanding working environment