HomeJobsEast of EnglandCentral Bedfordshire3+ PQE Commercial Property Solicitor/Senior Associate
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⚡ Source: ReedRef: 49956732

3+ PQE Commercial Property Solicitor/Senior Associate

Reed·Central Bedfordshire, East of England·Posted 39 months ago
💰 £42-60k/year⭐ Senior
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Job description

Original text imported from Reed

Are you Looking to work with an award-winning local firm that puts their clients and staff at the forefront of all they do?

We are excited to be looking for a Commercial Property Solicitor/Senior Associate to join a growing, friendly and supportive team.

Experience & Skills

  • Achieve billing, time and fee earning targets set and co-operate with the firm’s credit control arrangements
  • Proven project and time management skills
  • A confident and professional manner
  • Work effectively within a team but also as a leader
  • Be professional, organised, competent, enthusiastic, and ambitious.
  • Be able to work independently and as part of a team with other fee earners, providing advice and assistance whenever needed to develop knowledge and skills within the rest of the team.

Good experience in the following practice areas is a requisite:

  • Commercial leases/occupiers (grants/surrenders/assignments/ LTA 54 renewals);
  • Grant of easements;
  • Freehold and leasehold acquisitions and disposals
  • Options and overage; and
  • Property finance (e.g. debentures/charges)

The ideal candidate would also have either good or some working experience in the following areas:

Commercial and residential development sites including:

  • conditional sale agreements
  • site assembly
  • ransom strips
  • options
  • sub-station leases
  • collaboration/JV agreements
  • promotion agreements
  • Acting for landowners in respect of sales to developers (experience of developers requirements)
  • Ancillary knowledge of planning law/construction process.

Agricultural work including:

  • Agricultural law
  • Farm Business Tenancies/Occupational agreements
  • Estate management
  • Entitlements

Benefits:

  • Agile working (up to 40% working from home)
  • 25 days' holiday (FTE) (plus statutory holidays)
  • Pension scheme
  • Death-in-service/Life assurance benefit scheme
  • Critical illness insurance cover
  • Eye care voucher
  • A structured career progression plan tailored to you and with the aim of enabling you to achieve your career goals and ambitions including up to Partnership.

Salary dependant on experience

For more information, please apply with your CV.

SpeedCV AI

Key skills

AI-extracted from the job advert

Must-have skills
Commercial property law (3+ PQE)Commercial leases (grants/surrenders/assignments)LTA 1954 lease renewalsGrant of easementsFreehold and leasehold acquisitions and disposalsOptions and overageProperty finance (debentures/charges)
Nice-to-have
Development site assembly and conditional sale agreementsAgricultural lawFarm Business TenanciesCollaboration/JV agreementsPromotion agreementsPlanning law knowledge
Soft skills
LeadershipAutonomyProfessionalismAmbitionTime managementCollaborationOrganisation
SpeedCV AI

Application advice

5 AI-generated recommendations to maximise your chances.

1

⭐ Lead your CV personal statement with your PQE level and specific commercial property sub-specialisms (e.g. LTA 54 renewals, options and overage) as the advert lists these as requisite experience areas.

2

📊 Quantify your billing performance: e.g. 'Consistently achieved 95% of £180k annual billing target across a 3-year period' — the advert explicitly lists billing targets as a key requirement.

3

🌐 Dedicate a 'Practice Areas' section to mirror the advert's two-tier structure: list your requisite skills (commercial leases, property finance) separately from your desirable skills (agricultural law, development sites).

4

🎯 Highlight any partnership-track ambition in your personal statement, as the firm explicitly offers a structured progression plan up to Partnership — signalling they value long-term career commitment.

5

🤝 Include a bullet on supervising or mentoring junior fee earners, as the advert asks candidates to provide 'advice and assistance to develop knowledge and skills within the rest of the team'.

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Suggested CV bullets

3 bullets our AI drafted for this specific advert, mirroring its ATS keywords.

How to tailor your CV

Add these 3 bullets under your most recent experience:

  • Managed a portfolio of 35 commercial lease transactions annually, including LTA 1954 renewals and lease assignments, achieving 98% of a £160k billing target in each of 3 consecutive years.
  • Drafted and negotiated options and overage agreements on 6 residential development sites, securing landowner clients an average uplift of £120k per site above base sale price.
  • Advised on property finance security packages (debentures, legal charges) for 4 lender clients across transactions totalling £8.5M, completing all matters within agreed turnaround times.

Free to copy — tailoring requires a 30-sec CV upload.

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Letter preview — tailored to Reed

Dear Hiring Manager,

Commercial property law at a firm with a genuine partnership progression track is exactly where I want to develop my career — which is why the 3+ PQE Commercial Property Solicitor role at your Central Bedfordshire practice immediately stood out. With hands-on experience in LTA 1954 lease renewals, options and overage drafting, and property finance including debentures and legal charges, I am well placed to contribute to your fee-earning team from day one.

My background in commercial property has spanned freehold and leasehold acquisitions, commercial lease negotiations, and acting for landowners in developer-led transactions. I have consistently met billing targets whilst supporting junior colleagues, and I am comfortable managing a varied caseload independently whilst collaborating closely with other fee earners.

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SpeedCV AI

Interview questions

10 questions generated from this advert.

Technical

  • Walk us through your experience handling LTA 1954 lease renewals — what are the key procedural pitfalls you watch for?
  • How do you approach drafting options and overage provisions, and what are the most common negotiation points with the other side?
  • Describe your experience with property finance transactions — what types of security instruments have you worked with (debentures, legal charges)?
  • What is your experience acting for landowners in sales to developers, and how do you manage their expectations around conditional contracts?
  • How familiar are you with Farm Business Tenancies under the Agricultural Tenancies Act 1995, and what issues most commonly arise in practice?

Behavioural

  • Tell me about a time you managed multiple complex property transactions simultaneously — how did you prioritise and meet deadlines?
  • Describe a situation where you had to lead a junior team member through a difficult transaction. What approach did you take?
  • Give an example of when you identified a risk in a commercial property deal that the client had not anticipated. How did you handle it?
  • Tell me about a time you had to work independently on a high-value matter with minimal supervision. What was the outcome?
  • Describe a situation where you had to balance client demands with billing and time recording targets. How did you manage both?
SpeedCV AINEW

STAR answer examples

Model answers using the Situation-Task-Action-Result framework. Adapt to your own experience.

1Question

Describe a situation where you had to manage multiple complex property transactions simultaneously — how did you prioritise and meet deadlines?

Situation: During a particularly busy quarter, I was simultaneously running 14 active commercial property matters, including 3 LTA 1954 lease renewals with imminent court deadlines and 2 freehold acquisitions approaching exchange. Task: I needed to ensure no deadline was missed whilst maintaining billing targets and client communication standards. Action: I built a weekly priority matrix, colour-coded by statutory deadline, and blocked two focused drafting sessions daily. I delegated title report preparation on two lower-risk matters to a trainee I supervised. Result: All 14 matters progressed on time, I hit 102% of my quarterly billing target, and the trainee's title reports required only minor amendments — a development win for the team.
2Question

Give an example of when you identified a risk in a commercial property deal that the client had not anticipated. How did you handle it?

Situation: I was acting for a landowner client selling a 4-acre site to a residential developer under a conditional contract. Task: My role was to review the draft agreement and protect the client's position. Action: During due diligence I identified that the overage clause had a 20-year trigger window but lacked a mechanism to prevent the developer from implementing a minimal planning permission to extinguish the overage early — a risk the client had not been advised of by their previous solicitor. I renegotiated the clause to include a minimum unit threshold before the overage could be extinguished. Result: The client retained an overage entitlement ultimately worth £95,000 on the subsequent sale of 18 additional units three years later.

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