Environment Senior Associate

Environment Senior Associate 7+ 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 non-contentious) 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:

1. Regulatory advice e.g. advising on remediation liability, nuclear regulation, water licensing, waste management, environmental permitting, extended producer responsibility, F-Gas, WEEE etc.;
2. 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;
3. 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;
4. Net zero, carbon, biodiversity and natural capital advice, including nature-based solutions, offsetting, and EU /UK ETS compliance; and
5. 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
• E.ON
• 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 from Morrisons.
• Advising Regenerate Outcomes on the bespoke suite of contractual documentation required for a multi-landowner 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 on-site contamination and off-site migration; and drafting internal policy guidelines that form part of a residential developer's 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 focused approach, who is keen to support our Environment Team across the full spectrum of their work. As 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 first-class 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 3,800 employees operating out of 28 locations across Europe, Asia Pacific, Africa and the Middle East.

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

Johenn.Choi@pinsentmasons.com

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