Junior Legal Counsel

Essentials

Role: Junior Legal Counsel

Platform: PPHA and Seahorse

Status: Full time, permanent

Base: London. We work 4 days in the office, 1 WFH.

Salary: TBD

Bonus: up to 15%

Start: ASAP

Benefits

• 25 holiday days per year
• 4 Me Days per year
• Team social events and trips
• Wellness allowance of £70 per month
• Private healthcare with Vitality
• Mintago financial platform
• Drive Electric salary sacrifice
• Enhanced maternity, paternity and parental leave
• Employee referral scheme, £2,000 towards a getaway of your choice

Core mission

As Junior Legal Counsel, your core mission is to support the successful execution of HSPG’s real estate transactions, ensuring legal processes progress efficiently and commercially.

You will be an integral member of the legal team, managing and progressing a wide range of transactional and operational legal matters across the business, including loan drawdowns, acquisitions, disposals, leasing, and legal support. You will enable commercial decision-making by providing practical legal guidance.

This is a hands-on and execution-focused role. You will take ownership of the detail and coordination required to keep matters moving – ensuring nothing is dropped or left unresolved.

You will work closely with internal teams, external lawyers and stakeholders and will proactively manage relationships and hold all parties to account to achieve seamless transaction execution aligned with HSPG’s strategic objectives.

You will support with legal research, drafting and process improvement across the legal function, helping the business scale efficiently with the implementation of innovative and tech-enabled processes and strategies.

Core responsibilities

Accountability

• Optimising drawdown and condition precedent processes to ensure efficient delivery across the group’s financing arrangements
• Proactively working with external advisers and pursuing outstanding deal items to ensure timely execution
• Supporting the legal team in providing clear, structured guidance to stakeholders
• Hands-on execution: taking ownership of detail and coordination to keep matters moving
• Managing relationships with internal teams, external lawyers and stakeholders to achieve aligned, seamless transaction execution

Specific experience

1. Qualified solicitor practising at a UK law firm or in-house and specialising in real estate (around NQ-2PQE). In-house experience is helpful but not essential.
2. Experience leading and supporting residential and/or commercial real estate portfolio acquisitions, disposals, and financing is essential. Transactional experience in the Affordable Housing sector is beneficial but not essential.

Specific behavioral competencies

• Communication: excellent written and verbal communication skills, providing clear and concise instructions – tailoring your communication style depending on whether you are speaking to external lawyers, internal non-legal deal teams or otherwise.
• Analytical: ability to synthesize complex legal issues into simple information for non-lawyers inside and outside the business.
• Efficiency: obsessed with achieving optimal efficiency for you and your team; continuously tweaking and refining legal processes to meet timelines.

Core mission — 90-day wins

Early traction and strategic control.

1. Gain a solid understanding of HSPG's strategy and mission and take ownership of discrete workstreams.
2. Foster good working relationships with our main panel firms.
3. Successfully drive:
   1. one property acquisition to exchange/completion; and
   2. one financing drawdown to completion.
4. Have assisted in streamlining at least one significant transaction process to increase efficiency (including incorporating AI into our processes).

12-month impact outcomes

Material impact and results within first 12 months.

• Have a comprehensive understanding of the wider business and drive at least 15 acquisition and/or drawdown processes to completion.
• Maintain strong working relationships with our main panel firms.
• Implement the streamlining of at least two significant transaction processes to increase efficiency (including incorporating AI into our processes).
• Be an integral part of the team providing advice on a wide range of legal queries – including at least three queries from each of the sales, acquisitions, investment and management teams.

Specific experience – further details

1. Qualified solicitor practising at a UK law firm or in-house and specialising in real estate (around NQ-2PQE). In-house experience is helpful but not essential.
2. Experience leading and supporting residential and/or commercial real estate portfolio acquisitions, disposals, and financing is essential. Transactional experience in the Affordable Housing sector is beneficial but not essential.

Observations

These points are intended to guide your approach to the role and the expectations of performance.