Legal & Business Research Adviser
3 days ago
London
Job Title: Legal & Business Research Adviser \nDepartment: Global Research and Resources Hub \nReporting to: Head of Research and Knowledge Resources \nJob Location: London / hybrid (minimum 60% in the office) \nContract Type: Permanent \n\n \nThe Firm \n\n HFW is a sector‑focused global law firm. We have over 700 lawyers working across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australia. We take a progressive and commercial approach to supporting our clients, combining legal expertise with a deep understanding of the industries in which they operate. \n\n The Role \n\n The Legal and Business Research Adviser plays a critical role in empowering lawyers and business services teams with high quality insight, analysis and intelligence. Combining expert legal, business and industry research with training, current awareness and innovation, the role supports client work, business development and strategic decision making across the firm. \n\n Acting as a trusted adviser, the postholder provides judgement based research support, helps colleagues navigate an increasingly complex digital and AI enabled research landscape, and contributes to the ongoing development of the firm’s research, knowledge and information capabilities. \n\n Key Responsibilities \nLegal, Business & Industry Research \n\n\n\t • Deliver high quality legal research support, including case law, legislation, regulatory materials and authoritative commentary, monitoring developments through judicial, legislative and parliamentary processes. \n\t, • Provide business, industry and sector research, including company profiling, market and competitive analysis, client and contact intelligence, press and media research. \n\t, • Summarise and present research findings in clear, concise, decision ready formats tailored to the needs of lawyers and business teams. \n\t, • Develop, maintain and refine legal and sector specific current awareness products, including daily legal updates and tailored alerts.\n\t, • Set up and manage ongoing monitoring for clients, sectors, industries and regulatory developments.\n\t, • Continuously review and enhance content quality, relevance and delivery formats to reflect evolving user needs, priorities and working patterns.\n\t, • Design and deliver engaging research and library training, including inductions, trainee programmes, practice embedded sessions and ad hoc support. \n\t, • Develop scalable, digital first learning resources such as research guides, short videos, toolkits and on demand materials. \n\t, • Promote best practice in legal and business research, digital literacy and effective use of research tools. \n\t, • Offer coaching, mentoring and practical support to apprentices, students, secondees and work experience placements to help them learn effectively while embedded in the team.\n\t, • Act as a key contributor to the development and maintenance of library intranet pages and digital knowledge platforms. \n\t, • Liaise with IT, Risk and external suppliers to ensure research systems, databases and tools operate effectively, are user centred, and integrate with firm systems. \n\t, • Support the evaluation, piloting and responsible adoption of AI enabled research tools, including:\n\t, • Assessing strengths, limitations and appropriate use cases\n\t, • Supporting colleagues in using AI tools appropriately and ethically\n\t, • Manage subscriptions, including renewals, invoicing and catalogue records. \n\t, • Maintain and develop collection records and metadata, ensuring accuracy, accessibility and usability. \n\t, • Support international offices to ensure holdings are accurately recorded. \n\t, • Act as a visible and approachable point of contact for lawyers and business services teams, delivering responsive, high quality support. \n\t, • Manage access to online resources, including new joiner/leaver processes and permissions administration. \n\t, • Participate in service development projects and initiatives that enhance the value and impact of research and knowledge support across the firm.\n\t, • Significant experience delivering legal and business research within a professional services or legal environment.\n\t, • Strong knowledge of legal information sources, research methodologies and current awareness tools.\n\t, • Proven ability to analyse and synthesise complex information into clear, practical outputs.\n\t, • Experience designing and delivering training, with an emphasis on user focussed and digital learning approaches.\n\t, • High level of digital literacy, including research platforms, intranets and content management.\n\t, • Experience supporting or evaluating AI enabled research tools in a legal or information context\n\t, • Understanding of data quality, research risk and ethical considerations in AI assisted research\n\t, • Experience working with library systems, serials management and knowledge platforms.\n\t