About Lester Aldridge

Lester Aldridge is a full-service UK law firm with a strong reputation across key sectors including; healthcare, shipping, banks & other lenders, housebuilders, ports & harbours, charities, AI and private clients. We are committed to delivering legal advice that creates commercial or personal opportunity for our clients and do that by building long-term client relationships.

We are at an exciting stage in our development as a firm and also to our approach to business development so this a unique opportunity to help shape that for a firm with bold and ambitious plans. Our first Business Development & Marketing Director joined in 2025 and is part of the Senior Leadership Team who have been working on plans for our new strategy.

Supporting the partners and fee-earners with BD to win and retain high-quality clients across our target markets is key to those plans. This role would also work alongside the BD & Marketing Director to develop the infrastructure to support the new BD approach.

Role Overview

We are looking for a BD & Proposals Manager to work closely with partners and fee-earners as well as the BD & Marketing Director and Marketing colleagues to identify and create BD opportunities and develop compelling, client-focused proposals that demonstrate LA's proposition.

This is a high-impact role with visibility across the firm, supporting strategic growth in our priority sectors.

Key Responsibilities

Bid & Pitch Management

• Produce compelling, tailored proposals (including credentials and tenders) that demonstrate Lester Aldridge's proposition in their approach. These could be from any part of the firm's full service offering (so offers a lot of variety).However, the Marketing & BD strategy will focus on target sectors and hence on collaboration across the firm in order to address clients' specific requirements.

• Manage multiple concurrent submissions, ensuring high-quality outputs to deadline.
• Support go/no-go decisions aligned to firm strategy and sector priorities.
• Develop and maintain a high-quality library of proposal-ready credentials, case studies, and CVs.

Sector Initiatives

• Help develop the firm's sector BD strategy eg

• Track sector issues for impact on clients and high value targets
• Identify opportunities to support clients and targets by drawing on expertise across the firm.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Partner closely with Partners and fee-earners across all parts of the full service firm.
• Challenge and shape bid strategy to improve win rates for high quality targets
• Support and coach fee earners in best-practice pitching and proposal development
• Facilitate review sessions and capture lessons learned from wins/losses
• Collaborate with Marketing on campaigns to attract targets through:
• Events (seminars, webinars) including identification of invitees and attendance.
• Content

Pipeline Management

• Ensuring new cold enquiries are responded to quickly by fee-earners.
• Help devise new processes (within current and emerging data infrastructure) for pipeline management at a firm, sector, team and individual level
• Ultimately, pipeline reporting.

Firm Initiatives

There may be new firm initiatives that will require support and input from this role eg

• Key client programme
• Alumni programme
• Pricing strategy
• CRM implementation

Key Skills & Experience

Essential

• Proven experience managing proposals in a law firm or professional services environment
• Ability to develop strong relationships with partners and fee-earners and be seen as a trusted adviser with credibility.
• Strong writing and editing skills, with the ability to produce high-quality, client-ready content
• Excellent project management skills and ability to manage competing deadlines
• Commercial awareness and understanding of client decision-making

Desirable

• Using tools such as LinkedIn and AI in research
• Advanced PowerPoint skills for proposal production
• Experience of CRM systems/pipeline reporting tools
• Experience working within one or more of Lester Aldridge's key sectors (e.g. healthcare, shipping, housebuilders, private wealth)

Key Competencies

• Strong communication and influencing skills
• Attention to detail and quality focus
• Collaborative and proactive approach
• Resilience and ability to work under pressure
• Strategic mindset with a focus on results

Reporting Line

• Reports to: Business Development & Marketing Director

Why Join Lester Aldridge?

• Opportunity to play a key role in the firm's exciting growth strategy
• Exposure to a broad range of sectors and legal services
• Collaborative and supportive culture
• Flexible/hybrid working approach
• Clear opportunity to shape and enhance the firm's proposal capability