Managing Associate; PQE - Health & Safety

Overview

The Department Mishcon de Reya's Health & Safety practice is a market-leading team within the firm's White-Collar Crime & Investigations group, led by Kizzy Augustin, who has specialised in this area for over 20 years. We provide specialist advice to corporates, directors, and individuals facing regulatory scrutiny, investigations, and prosecutions by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), local authorities, fire authorities, the Environment Agency and other enforcement bodies.

Our expertise spans workplace fatalities, serious injuries, inquests, regulatory compliance, corporate manslaughter and environmental offences.

Our Health & Safety lawyers have extensive experience defending clients in complex and high-profile matters, including fatal accident investigations, multi-agency and cross-border investigations, inquests, and criminal prosecutions. The team takes a holistic approach to health and safety, viewing it not merely as compliance but as a broader issue of operational risk and resilience for our clients. We advise on proactive statutory compliance strategies, crisis management following workplace incidents, and the defence of enforcement notices and prosecutions.

The team works closely with colleagues across the firm, including our employment, corporate, and reputation management specialists, to provide a comprehensive and seamless service to clients.

Our lawyers advise on numerous cases involving serious health and safety issues across multiple sectors, with particular strength in:

• Fire and building safety (including post-Grenfell regulatory changes)
• Construction and real estate health and safety - assisting developers, landlords, managing agents and contractors with CDM 2015 and the Building Safety Act 2022
• H&S for "duty holders" (even in low risk environments such as offices) creation and stress testing of policies and practices
• Corporate Manslaughter investigation and prosecutions
• Coroners' Inquests - representing employers, businesses and families
• Environmental / Waste Management investigations and prosecutions
• Leisure and Retail / Hospitality businesses - regulatory compliance support
• Healthcare services - CQC and other regulatory investigations and advisory support

Our team is diverse and includes those from top boutique criminal defence practices and the Bar as well as former prosecutors. They also appear as advocates in court proceedings.

The breadth of the firm's practice means that we can, for example, call on the firm's reputation lawyers to manage difficult press and social media situations; we have a top tier employment team able to give advice to employers or employees involved in an investigation or we can offer robust corporate advice on the creation, sale or acquisition of a business with support on due diligence research where there may be H&S, environmental or other regulatory considerations.

We are seeking an exceptional Managing Associate to join our Health & Safety team and assist in continuing to develop this growing practice area. This is a rare opportunity to work on high profile and interesting health and safety matters, with exposure to complex regulatory investigations, prosecutions and advisory work across multiple sectors.

As a Managing Associate, you will play a pivotal role in supporting the Partner to deliver expert legal advice to both individuals and corporate clients in investigations and in health & safety and other criminal regulatory proceedings. You will have the opportunity to advise on investigations involving the HSE, CPS, Local Authorities, Fire Authorities, Environment Agency, CAA and the CQC, amongst others.

You will be expected to advise on all aspects of a H&S / criminal regulatory case, and experience of police station and/or regulatory investigations is required. You should be able to demonstrate how to provide strategic advice in response to serious workplace incidents, including fatalities and major injuries. Ideally, you will have experience of Magistrates' / Crown Court procedures, as well as advising on appeal strategies.

You must be able to manage the administrative aspects of a case, from matter opening…