Environment Senior Associate

Environment Senior Associate7 PQE

Location: Glasgow Edinburgh Leeds Manchester or Birmingham

Contract Type: Permanent

Brief

We are currently looking to recruit a qualified environment lawyer to join our market leading environment practice to be based ideally in any of our Glasgow Edinburgh Leeds Manchester or Birmingham offices. We are looking for someone with strong experience of both providing strategic environmental advice to clients and contractual drafting and negotiation in this area. In particular we are interested in candidates with experience of contentious environmental work/ environmental litigation.

This is an excellent opportunity to work on a broad range of environmental and regulatory matters (both contentious and noncontentious) across the UK and be part of a national team with senior top ranked specialists.

What our Environment team is known for:

Our environment practice 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 covers the full range of environmental law. This includes:

• Regulatory advice e.g. advising on remediation liability nuclear regulation water licensing waste management environmental permitting extended producer responsibility FGas WEEE etc.;
• Transactional advice e.g. providing support to our corporate restructuring property projects and finance teams on transactional environmental issues e.g. contaminated land liability asbestos management permit transfer;
• Regulatory enforcement e.g. assisting clients with regulatory investigations; responding to civil penalty notices; and advising on the civil sanction enforcement powers employed by SEPA and the EA;
• Net zero carbon biodiversity and natural capital advice including naturebased solutions offsetting and EU /UK ETS compliance; and
• Environmental aspects of major infrastructure consenting and development including onshore & offshore renewables carbon capture & storage new water resources and climate change resilience projects.

The candidate will 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.

Key Clients include:

• bp
• Drax Power Limited
• Balfour Beatty
• Nuclear Decommissioning Authority
• Viridor
• FCC
• ENVA
• Motor Fuel Group
• Heidelberg

Work highlights:

• Advising bp on the environmental aspects of its flagship Net Zero Teesside CCUS DCO project and its flagship Hydrogen Projects in Scotland and England.
• Advising Motor Fuel Group on the environmental aspects of its acquisition of 337 petrol forecourts form Morrisons.
• Advising Regenerate Outcomes on the bespoke suite of contractual documentation required for a multilandowner regenerative farming project which is designed to increase land condition and generate natural capital outcomes (including verified carbon credits and biodiversity net gain units).
• Advising national house builders energy and infrastructure developers manufacturers Local Authorities and landowners on a range of environmental issues arising from the acquisition and sale of greenfield and brownfield sites including advising on detailed contaminated land risk allocations/ deeds of indemnity; arranging environmental insurance in respect of onsite contamination and offsite migration; and drafting internal policy guidelines that form part of a residential developers site approval process.
• Acting for Drax Power Limited on its Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) project.
• Advising developers contractors and landowners on environmental enforcement litigation and civil sanction risk in respect of alleged pollution incidents and environmental permit breach occurring during construction engineering and operational activities.

The Candidate Required

We are looking for a team player with a strong client focussed approach who is keen to support our Environment Team across the full spectrum of their noted we are particularly interested in candidates with experience of contentious environmental work/ environmental litigation.

The successful candidate will ideally have gained experience working in a large regional or national practice and understand the levels of service delivery required. They will have a strong academic background and an outgoing personality.

The role requires a lawyer who is both technically excellent and commercially aware. The candidate should be enthusiastic about business development willing to take responsibility as the main client contact and motivated to supervise and develop junior members of the team.

What will we offer you

• We are a market leading dynamic and growing global team who work together to produce outstanding results for our clients.
• We invest in our team and have a firstclass training and career development programme monthly 121s biannual career discussions and annual 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 best of class services.
• Early responsibility and opportunities to develop client relationships.

About the Firm

Pinsent Masons is a global 100 law firm with over 3800 employees operating out of 28 locations across Europe Asia Pacific Africa and the Middle East.

Awards

Were 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 FTs 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 you require further details please contact our inhouse Lateral Recruitment Advisor Anwen Wallington who can discuss the role and requirements.

Contact details:

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.

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