We are looking for an Associate/Legal Executive to join the transactional side of our Farms Estates Rural Land (FERL) Team in either our Exeter or Bristol offices. We fully support hybrid working, tailored to suit the needs of the team, key stakeholders, and the individual.

This is a unique opportunity for a driven and ambitious individual to collaborate closely with lead Partner Edward Venmore and a highly regarded, innovative team. We welcome applications from those who share our vision and bring a spirited, driven, and innovative mindset to the role.

What you’ll do

Our lawyers are experts in agricultural law, with extensive regional and national experience. They bring a wealth of knowledge in handling both high-value and complex farming and land matters. As a trusted advisor, you will actively contribute to the continued success and growth of the team. Our growth strategy offers unparalleled opportunities for progression, responsibility, and involvement, fostering your development as a legal professional. Our ambition is matched by a culture that makes life at the firm both rewarding and engaging.

From the outset, you’ll enjoy a perfect balance of independence and support. You’ll handle your own matters while benefiting from the guidance and supervision of senior colleagues, ensuring continuous skill and knowledge development. In return for your commitment and motivation, we offer excellent career development opportunities, combining structured and flexible learning options tailored to your progression. Through our Business Skills Academy, you’ll receive comprehensive support to enhance your confidence, networking, and client-facing skills, alongside your technical expertise. Together, we’ll create an environment where you can flourish and achieve your long-term career ambitions.

What we’re looking for

We are seeking an individual with rural transactional experience who is ready to advance their career. Your experience may encompass farm and land sales/purchases, country house sales/purchases, refinance work, receiverships of rural property, easements and licenses, and rural tenancies. You should be self-motivated, enthusiastic, and committed to sharing knowledge and building capacity within our team, while also collaborating with broader specialist areas across the firm, including energy and development.

In return for your dedication and focus, we offer genuine opportunities to fast-track your career, allowing you to contribute to the ongoing growth and development of our Farms, Estates, and Rural Land practice. We proudly operate without glass ceilings, ensuring your career progression is based entirely on merit and under your control. Additionally, the quality of work you will access is not limited by location; if you are the best fit for the client, you will work with them.

Our offer to you

In return for your efforts, you can expect considerable scope for personal, as well as professional, development. We encourage people to engage with our popular and well supported coaching and mentoring programmes, which connect you to people right across the firm and at every level. We create space for mental and physical wellbeing with our weekly Lifestyle Hour, along with 28 days’ annual leave (plus a day in your birthday month), private medical insurance (eligibility applies) and a sabbatical you can take every 5 years. You can also buy holiday, managing your benefits flexibly using our sophisticated portal to configure your total reward offer according to what you value most. As part of this, you can make ongoing or one-off donations to our charitable foundation and access our CSR programme where you can engage with community-based initiatives (as a team, or individually) twice a year, to give something back where you feel it matters.

For further details of our benefits packages, please visit the link attached – Our benefits | Foot Anstey

Successful applicants will be required to complete a pre-employment screening process which includes a financial integrity check and a DBS check. If you wish to discuss any issues or questions in connection with this, or anything else, please do speak in confidence with a member of the Talent Acquisition Team: recruitment.team@footanstey.com

Why Foot Anstey?

As one of the UK’s fastest growing law firms, Foot Anstey believes in helping our clients and people achieve their ambitions, unlocking new and exciting opportunities. Our team of business and legal advisors are motivated by understanding clients’ goals and collaborating with them and other advisers to deliver solutions. By becoming our clients’ most trusted advisor, we are enabling them to achieve their ambitions. How we do it is just as important as what we do. Our values define the way we act with our clients and one another every day, and because of this we think our culture and environment sets us apart.

Over our history we’ve grown from a high-street firm to a significant regional and national player working with leading brands and individuals predominantly across seven key sectors: Private Equity, Retail & Consumer, Energy & Infrastructure, Islamic Finance, Developers, Private Wealth and Charities. Our strategy of gaining market share through meeting clients’ needs, investing in and developing high quality talent and using technology and innovation to enhance our services has led to significant growth. We now operate from nine locations: Bristol, Southampton, Exeter, Plymouth, Truro, Taunton and London, as well as a ‘hub’ bases in Manchester, Guildford and Oxford.

Our people are central to our success, in every part of the business. We actively support our employees to achieve their aspirations through offering meaningful careers with balanced rewards, which have been carefully designed to focus on personal wellbeing. We offer continual opportunities for support and professional development through our Business Skills Academy and Digital Skills Academy and believe in empowering each other to achieve and strive to create a progressive and inclusive working environment. Being forward-thinking, we are open to discussing flexible working patterns for all of our vacancies, with over 40% of our existing employees having a permanent flexible working pattern. In addition, our impressive suite of flexible benefits will enable you to prioritise what matters most to you.

Creating a diverse and inclusive workplace is integral to delivering our strategy, and we were delighted to be awarded the National Equality Standard for a second time. We consider this to be right at the heart of our priorities and goes way beyond our policies – it’s something we consider across everything we do, from the make-up of our client teams, encouraging staff to reach their potential, through to our leadership. We aim to support our clients and our people to achieve their goals, regardless of background, gender, race, beliefs, sexuality or other non-work related factors. We champion aspiration and encourage it in everyone that works with us. As such we actively encourage applications from all suitably qualified people, regardless of any characteristics protected by law. If you apply for this role, you may be encouraged to answer our diversity and social mobility monitoring questions, so please be reassured that any answers you provide will remain entirely anonymous and confidential and will in no way impact your application.

Foot Anstey. Seriously Ambitious.

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Associate / Legal Executive - Farms Estates Rural Land (FERL)

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