Construction Solicitor - Junior to Mid-Level

Location: Manchester 

The Opportunity

We are working with a rapidly growing legal practice, integrated within a global professional services firm, to find a talented Construction Solicitor at Manager level (associate to managing associate level) to join their thriving Real Estate & Construction team in Manchester.

This is a genuinely different proposition to a traditional law firm role. Sitting within a multi-disciplinary professional services environment, the role offers a quasi in-house experience — close proximity to commercial decision-making, tax and deals colleagues, and clients — while retaining the technical depth and career progression of private practice.

The Real Estate team was established in 2013 and has grown to 11 lawyers, including 5 Partners, with further expansion planned through 2026. The team acts on repeat investment, development, and asset management mandates for private equity funds, sovereign wealth clients, and listed property companies. With one Construction Partner and one Construction Senior Manager already in place, this hire will add crucial additional capacity to a growing practice area.

What You'll Be Doing

• Providing non-contentious legal advice across a broad range of construction matters
• Building relationships across other teams and with clients to develop multi-disciplinary solutions
• Project managing matters and driving them to conclusion

What We're Looking For

• Post-qualification experience in construction, ideally gained within a department acting for investment and/or development clients with repeat instructions
• Experience with real estate (and ideally infrastructure) building contracts, professional appointments, collateral warranties, and other ancillary documents including bonds and parent company guarantees
• Experience with development funding and/or development management agreements would be advantageous
• An entrepreneurial, self-starting mindset — excited by the prospect of delivering multi-disciplinary legal services in a different environment
• The commercial awareness to see legal solutions within a wider business context, with ambition to grow into a more rounded business adviser
• A collaborative, proactive team player, comfortable working across disciplines and backgrounds, and keen to support junior colleagues' development where appropriate
• The relationship-building skills to identify and develop new opportunities, both internally and externally
• Strong technical grounding, with solid knowledge of relevant legislation and the confidence to drive mandates forward
• Strong academic, technical, and personal skills

Candidates are likely to come from law firms, though those from competitor firms or in-house backgrounds will also be considered. Diverse profiles are particularly welcomed for this role, in a sector recognised as needing greater diversity.

Why Consider This Move

• A rare opportunity to help build a construction and wider real estate practice from a position of real momentum, backed by an already strong real estate tax and advisory client base
• Genuine flexibility on charge-out rates, given the firm's fixed-fee-oriented commercial model
• Exposure to a global network spanning 81 jurisdictions
• A multi-disciplinary way of working that gives lawyers exposure to tax, consulting, and deal advisory colleagues from day one — a markedly different experience to conventional private practice
• A genuinely entrepreneurial culture, with an explicit mandate to challenge convention and find better ways of delivering outcomes for clients

For a confidential discussion about this opportunity, please get in touch.