What we are seeking
We invite applications from UK-based solicitors with seven or more years’ post-qualification experience in leading firms or in-house. The qualities we seek are technical excellence, dedication to clients and a desire to work in a different way. Your expertise may be in any commercial practice area.
A client following is rarely essential, for reasons explained in our recruitment brochure.
What we can offer
We operate a self-employment model that we call a chambers practice. This is a solicitors’ firm which is structured like a barristers’ chambers, but forms a single, unified practice. Culturally, it preserves some of the best features of the traditional City firm, such as high standards and selectivity enabling strong client-facing messages – in our case, our four promises to clients.
Our chambers model realises the full potential of the self-employment structure, making us a powerful competitor to traditional firms. Our partners are all experienced lawyers from a City or leading regional firm background. They advise clients in an agile, pragmatic style, individually and in teams, guided by our four promises. This inspires real loyalty in clients.
Our emphasis on working in teams is a priority shared with leading traditional firms, which is less common among new model firms. Our aim is not to provide a platform to enable lawyers of eclectic expertise to work independently. Rather, it is to facilitate strong teams for commercial advice, involving high calibre lawyers who can all rely on each other.
Our two offices are places where meetings with clients and colleagues happen, relationships develop and collaboration occurs. Any partner can work in either office at any time, without prior arrangement, or can work remotely.
We provide all the normal technical and professional resources to be expected of a new model firm. We also provide resources that are less tangible and more particular to us. These are what make Temple Bright more than the sum of its parts and more than just an infrastructure. Benefits in this category include the firm’s brand, reputation and network, uniformly excellent colleagues in relevant practice areas, and help from the firm’s founders who remain hands-on. They also include a flow of referrals and opportunities to join transaction teams, such that a client following is not essential for most new joiners. We recruit based purely on calibre.
Our model solves a problem for clients and for lawyers. For you, it means the opportunity for a fulfilling career in a firm that grants you more freedom, while preserving the integrity of your CV; an innovative firm that maintains the cohesion and focus of the best traditional firms.
An article from 2013 describes the firm’s origins and outlook. It was first published on a website aimed at the start-up community in London and we include it here in edited form.
Source by Temple Bright
Source Professional Support Limited is our sister business launched in 2024, providing flexible legal support in collaboration with Temple Bright. Source makes available lawyers for full-time or part-time in-house placements, as further described on our Source page and on the Source website, www.sourceprosupport.com.
Source benefits Temple Bright's partners. Partners who have joined the Source Panel are informed of suitable assignments with Source clients (from three months to a year or more), for which they can opt to be put forward. Such assignments can offer valuable experience, contacts and income. Partners who are not on the Panel may also benefit, through Source clients instructing them at Temple Bright. Source promotes the advantages of the Temple Bright collaboration to its clients, which are often larger businesses with in-house legal teams.
Membership of the Panel is open to any partners wishing to work in this way, to complement their Temple Bright practice. The combination of placements through Source and private practice within our chambers model can result in satisfying variety and increased income certainty, while your professional emphasis develops in your preferred direction over time.
Learn more and apply to TB
Lawyers wishing to learn more or apply to join Temple Bright are invited to deal with the founders directly. You can confidentially contact our co-founder Tim Summers, by phone or email or by using the form below.
You can use the form to request a confidential version of our recruitment brochure, intended for solicitors qualified to practise in England and Wales who are considering emailing us their CV. This adds information about our internal arrangements, including the financial deal for lawyers. We think this is the best among those offered by the major SRA-regulated new model law firms.
Your personal information will be kept confidential subject to our privacy policy.
“I worked at Travers Smith for 12 years before approaching Temple Bright in late 2012, when the firm was looking to open an office in London. It was the only “new model” firm I considered and I was initially drawn towards its emphasis on high standards and cohesion. When I first met Tim Summers and Justyn McIlhinney in person, I found their message to be compelling.
“Tim and I opened the London office in March 2013 and, since then, both the London office and my own practice have gone from strength to strength. Although it was quite a leap to relinquish the comfort of a well known City firm, I welcomed the opportunity to be instrumental in establishing Temple Bright’s London presence and, thankfully, my initial instincts about the firm proved to be correct.”
Sam Elworthy, Commercial, London office
