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An excellent opportunity to join our Antitrust, Competition and Trade Team as a Professional Support Lawyer.
About us
CMS is a Future Facing firm with more than 80 offices in over 45 countries and 5,800+ lawyers worldwide. We combine deep local market understanding with a global perspective. We are passionate about building strong relationships with our clients, our people, and the communities we work in.
About the Team
Our Antitrust, Competition and Trade team handles a broad range of high-quality work including EU and UK mergers, competition investigations, competition litigation, behavioural advice and a wide range of regulatory and trade work, including sanctions. The team also advises extensively on public procurement matters, state aid and CMA consumer enforcement issues.
The team comprises 7 partners and a team of 18 other fee-earners, plus a dedicated Professional Support Lawyer based largely in London, but also in Edinburgh and Brussels. It is part of a wider Competition Group across CMS comprising more than 225 competition lawyers worldwide. This is therefore an excellent opportunity for someone looking to further their career in a dynamic and internationally focused competition team, with a balanced practice across transactional, contentious and advisory work.
About the role
The PSL will deliver the knowledge strategy for the competition team. This will involve developing and maintaining knowledge resources and templates, monitoring and analysing legal developments, providing legal and practical expertise to support the team, and organising and delivering training.
The PSL will have significant technical legal skills, but will also work closely with the partners to bring vision and ideas to the table. They will develop good working relationships with members of the business development and knowledge teams, including PSLs working in other practice areas across the firm.
The key functions of the role will be:
Know how & resources
- Develop and maintain high quality know how resources, including client advice, internal guidance, notifications, submissions and training materials.
- Maintain the team's core templates, questionnaires and checklists, ensuring they are kept up to date with the latest legal developments.
- Work with the knowledge team to optimise the functioning of our internal knowledge platform, using feedback from team members to identify priority areas for knowledge capture and development.
- Monitor and analyse legal and regulatory developments relevant to the team's practice, carrying out in-depth research to support client initiatives where needed.
- Prepare regular internal newsletters showcasing new know how and highlighting legal developments of interest to the team.
- Research and share use cases for AI-based tools, e.g. Harvey & Copilot.
Internal & external training
- Coordinate schedule of topics and speakers for team know how sessions, providing support to juniors where needed.
- Prepare and deliver training for team members on recent developments in competition law and liaise with other practice groups to provide internal training sessions on key topics.
- Coordinate the delivery of Trainee Training and Commercial Foundation Programmes.
- Provide ongoing training to team members, trainees and new joiners on the use of our internal knowledge platform.
- Provide appropriate guidance and training on the effective use of firm-wide knowledge tools.
Business development
- Coordinate and prepare timely alerts and thought leadership articles on topics of relevance to clients.
- Develop content for a range of client-facing materials, including external presentations, training and pitch documents.
- Draft and deliver new/updated content for legal publications.
- Work closely with the business development team to provide support for added value initiatives, including seminars/webinars and new regulatory hubs.
- Help coordinate the team's input for directory submissions.
About you
The role would particularly suit an experienced PSL or someone who is currently in/has recently left a senior role in private practice.
Role Specifics
- Based in London, with a minority home working element.
- Supporting colleagues in London, Edinburgh and Brussels.
- 3 days per week minimum but this is negotiable.
- OC/Senior Associate level and a self-starter.
- Mainstream UK & EC competition experience e.g. merger control, investigations, abuse of dominance, anticompetitive agreements, subsidy control, State aid, procurement. Trade or sanctions experience would be a bonus.
What's in it for you?
If you would like to read more information regarding our range of benefits, please visit our Rewards & Benefits page on our website.
Equal opportunities
We are a Level 2 Disability Confident Employer, and we actively encourage applications from people with disabilities, whether visible or invisible. If you require assistance, or if you would like to discuss any accessibility requirements or adjustments as part of the recruitment process, please contact Becky Lowe at who will be happy to support you.
Ready to apply? Here are the next steps.
We look forward to receiving your application online via the CMS careers site. Please contact our Talent Acquisition team if you have any questions.
