Senior Associate M&A at Robert Walters

Job description

A rarely available senior associate position at one of South Africa's leading law firms has just become available. Reporting directly to one of South Africa's premier M&A specialists, this role offers outstanding career progression for an M&A lawyer who is a leader in their field.

Competencies:

• Legal technical and commercial ability
• Legal technical knowledge - has a strong command of legal concepts relevant to M&A. Thinks laterally to cut through the detail and identify key issues;
• Legal drafting and communication - reliably produces a complete and polished work product suitable for delivery to client without significant parner editing;
• Business awareness and solutions - demonstrates an understanding of the client's business and commercial objectives and anticipates client concerns. Demonstrates a solutions orientated approach to client issues, taking into account the wider business context;
• Effective negotiation - understands legal, commercial and strategic issues underlying negotiation points. Able to negotiate documents and legal principles to finality with limited supervision; and
• Project management - takes accountability for delivering against agreed timelines. Identifies, clearly instructs and effectively manages a team of lawyers in/across practice groups/offices on a particular matter. Anticipates potential issues and plans accordingly. Communicates proactively with the client/team to keep them informed of progress and ensures the partner is aware of any developments.

Teamwork

• Manage and develop people - gives regular, comprehensive and constructive feedback to junior lawyers;
• Delegates work to junior layers taking into account their capacity, level of skill and exposure to different types of work and complexity;
• Provides clear instructions and direction with reasonable deadlines taking into account partner/client demands; and
• Cross functional collaboration and stakeholder engagement.

Business Development

• Ability to build, develop, nurture and leverage internal and external networks - grows internal relationships, begins to receive referrals from other partners and senior associates in other practice areas, engages with peer contacts at clients, starts to raise the firms profile by being involved with external bodies, attending industry/client events and by expanding contact network;
• Cross functional colaboration - engages collaboratively across departments and practice groups, develops networks across offices, identifies opportunities to cross-sell across practice groups and offices;
• Ability to apply and utilise structured business development methodologies - takes responsibility for understanding the practice group and firm's business plans as well as the strategic vision of the firm;
• Work with partner/Business Development team to develop own business plan linked to the strategy of the firm and practice group.

Computer Literacy

• Proficient in Word and Outlook; and
• Knowledge of 3E, InTapp, Excel and PowerPoint advantage.