Legal knowledge
Herbert Smith is a market-leading international law firm, attracting some of the most talented people in the market – as well as leading clients and transactions. It’s a stimulating and fast-moving environment, where you could work alongside the industry’s top lawyers at the cutting edge of legal thinking.
An essential resource
The library and information and legal professional development groups work closely with all the firm’s practice areas and other support teams. They ensure excellence in the firm’s legal know-how resources and legal training.
Led by Richard King, head of legal knowledge, these groups focus on:
- Library and information – running the firm’s central library, supporting the practice areas’ legal information needs and libraries, and managing the firm’s online legal resources.
- Legal professional development – coordinating the firm’s legal training programme, delivering legal skills training and designing new training solutions across the practice areas. This group supports new trainees and fee-earners and partners across the firm as well as business users of the library.
- Legal know-how – developing innovative systems and supporting existing resources. This ensures we remain at the leading edge in capturing and maximising internal know-how for the benefit of our lawyers and clients.
The team in library and information is mainly made up of information professionals, and in legal professional development the team is a mix of lawyers working as professional trainers and administrators.
Wide ranging roles
The library team provide company and business information as well as legal information, which is fed into the entire business. The roles within the library are flexible and provide much variety in their combination of enquiry and research work. You will support not just the lawyers but other teams across the firm, including the acceptance team in AMIG (accounts and management information). Whilst the library is based in London it also supports the other international offices.
Developing your career
We put a substantial emphasis on training, which ensures a solid career path from induction and all the way through your career. This includes legal foundation courses and professional development, with regular courses being available to the library team. Nearly 80% of the team are qualified and there are good promotion prospects as demonstrated by several individuals. See profiles.
What makes our library services different?
- We are unique for a firm of our size in that the library team manages many on-line services as well as print materials.
- Unlike many law firms, our know-how capabilities are within the library team, which provides a more seamless service.
- The library has a central place in the firm – both geographically and on a business level. It is a bright modern and newly furbished library that is used by many people across the firm.
In short, Herbert Smith can offer you a valued role in this area, working in excellent surroundings with inspiring people.