Senior In-House Employment Lawyer

We are looking for an experienced and accomplished Senior Employment Lawyer to join our dynamic in-house Employment team.

In this role, you will serve as a trusted advisor, ensuring compliance across various jurisdictions and providing expert legal guidance to support the Firm’s global operations. While the role has an international scope, the primary focus will be to support the firm’s UK offices, currently London and Manchester.

What you’ll be doing:

• Advising HR and business leaders on a wide range of employment matters, from complex investigations and performance management to long-term absence and managed exits.
• Guiding the business through organisational change, including restructures, redundancies, TUPE and contractual variations.
• Helping us stay ahead of the curve with employment law developments, compliance measures, and risk mitigation strategies.
• Drafting, reviewing, and negotiating a variety of employment-related contracts and documentation.
• Leading or supporting employment litigation, including settlement negotiations.
• Designing and delivering impactful training for HR and internal teams.
• Collaborating with internal teams – including D&I, ER, Comms and Legal – to support strategic initiatives.
• Managing relationships with external counsel, insurers and brokers as needed.
• Continuously improving processes and legal service delivery across the team.

What we are looking for:

• A qualified employment lawyer (England & Wales) with solid experience in UK employment law.
• Excellent judgment, commercial awareness, and the ability to deliver clear, pragmatic, and user-friendly advice.
• A team player with strong interpersonal skills, capable of building credibility quickly across diverse teams.
• A minimum of 3–4 years’ PQE (or equivalent experience), ideally gained advising HR and senior stakeholders in a fast-paced legal or commercial setting is likely to be required - (candidates who have gained the relevant level of experience over a shorter period will also be considered).
• Experience working in-house and in a global organisation

Overview of our Legal Department:

Our Employment team are part of the firm’s Legal Department which is made up of both qualified lawyers and non-lawyers and exists to manage the firm’s risk exposure and to provide advice to the business on a range of legal and compliance issues. We support partners and staff in pursuing the effective management of regulatory, legal, operational and information security risk to preserve and maximise the value of the firm over the long term. We do this by taking responsibility for a range of actions, by sharing in the performance of others and by assisting partners and staff to manage risk themselves through training, awareness raising and the provision of relevant intelligence, services, and materials.

Our vision is for our department to be recognised as a leader amongst comparable, elite law firms. That means being acknowledged internally as providing an excellent service in a commercial and empathetic manner. It means adequately meeting the needs of the firm while remaining agile and cost effective; constantly refining our techniques, objectives, and ways of working to respond to changes in the business and the threats we face.

Inclusion

Freshfields is an equal opportunities employer and all applications received by the firm will be considered by the firm based on their merit alone and we welcome applications from all suitably qualified individuals regardless of background. All offers of employment will be conditional on the candidate having/securing the right to work in the UK and providing the firm with evidence of that right (as required by the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006) prior to employment commencing.

Freshfields is a Ban the Box employer. We ask applicants to disclose criminal convictions only when a conditional job offer is made. A conviction does not automatically lead to withdrawal of the offer: we make decisions on a case-by-case basis and take several factors into account (e.g. the role you are applying for and the circumstances of the offence). You would have the opportunity to discuss the matter with us before we decide.