Head of Lawyer Support

Lawhive

ABOUT WOODSTOCK LEGAL SERVICES: Woodstock Legal Services isn’t your typical law firm. We’re breaking the mold – ditching the jargon, delivering expert advice, and doing things differently in the legal world. We've gathered our wisdom from years of legal experience and paired it with a willingness to break the mold. At Woodstock, you’ll be part of a people-first culture where ideas are welcomed, collaboration is second nature, and your contribution really matters. We invest in our internal teams because we know they’re the engine that keeps everything running and we’re proud of the culture we’ve built together. About Woodstock Legal Services & Lawhive Partnership The Woodstock vision was to create a law firm that felt different, one where lawyers had true freedom and flexibility within a community of grade A lawyers and the best operational and regulatory support on offer - all while ensuring our clients remain our constant focus. Since 2014, Woodstock has grown into a community of more than 60 lawyers, built on the principle that legal practice can be both professional and personal. We set out to create a place where lawyers have the freedom to shape fulfilling careers, and where clients benefit from clear, expert advice delivered with genuine care. That vision remains at the heart of everything we do. By joining the Lawhive Group, we are strengthening this vision - combining the trusted relationships and values that define Woodstock, with innovative tools that ease the pressures of legal work. This means our lawyers can dedicate more time to what matters most: guiding and supporting our clients. Legal Cashiering at Woodstock Our Accounts team handles the financial operations that keep the business running smoothly – from consultant payments and invoicing to compliance, reconciliations, and reporting. They work closely with teams across the firm to ensure accuracy, transparency, and efficiency in everything they do. The team is led by Head of Accounts, Ellie Emery, who oversees day-to-day processes and supports our consultants with finance-related queries. What You'll Do We’re looking for a motivated and detail-focused Legal Cashier to support our legal finance function, with a particular focus on property transactions and completions. You’ll assist in ensuring compliance with the SRA Accounts Rules and help manage the day-to-day financial operations within the team. This is a hands-on role that’s ideal for someone with some experience in legal cashiering or conveyancing finance who’s keen to develop their skills and grow within a supportive team environment. Key Responsibilities * Processing client and office account receipts and payments * Managing a high volume of property transactions and completions end-to-end * Bank reconciliations * Ensuring transactions are accurate and in compliance with SRA Accounts Rules * Ensure all financial processes adhere to internal controls and regulatory standards What You'll Bring * 2 years experience in legal cashiering, * Bonus: exposure to property transactions and completions * Happy to commit to a hybrid working environment, based in our office in Poole, Dorset * Excellent working knowledge of the SRA Accounts Rules * Strong organisational and time-management skills with attention to detail * Experience using legal accounting software * Excellent communication skills Interview Process * Introductory call with our Talent team * 1:1 with your hiring manager * Technical interview / practical skills assessment * Values interview with one of our Founders * We offer! UK Benefits ✈️ 33 days’ annual leave (25 + bank holidays) plus your birthday off 🎄 Extended Christmas holiday 💰 Pension contribution ☮️ Give back - support a good cause with a charity day each year ⛳️ Regular socials/team events Diversity at Woodstock Legal Services At Lawhive, we know that diversity of thought is critical to delivering outlier outcomes. As such, we’re always working hard to ensure we build a diverse, inclusive team, and as we scale, we’ll only ever increase the focus we apply to this.

Octopus Legacy

The Company We’re Octopus Legacy: one of the fastest growing tech companies in the country, part of the UK’s most exciting and best-trusted group (you may have heard of some of our sister companies…) and we have a mission. We’re on a path to scale, aiming to become a household name while transforming an outdated  industry and helping our customers prepare for, and find support after, death. But we can’t do it alone, and that’s why we’re assembling a team of top performers to build with us. Ready to be part of something big? THE ROLE We’re looking for a commercial lawyer to support the company on commercial and contract matters, assist the legal team with compliance, and handle a variety of ad hoc day-to-day legal issues. This is a new role reporting to our Head of Legal. While the focus will be on drafting and negotiating a wide range of commercial contracts and agreements, the fast-paced, dynamic nature of our business means you’ll gain exposure to a broad spectrum of challenging legal topics. This role is also ideal for an experienced paralegal looking to take the next step into a commercial in-house role. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES * Support procurement processes: Drafting and reviewing contracts with third parties. * Support partnerships: Drafting and assisting with the negotiation of contracts with partners (e.g., charities, employers, IFAs). * Identify potential legal and business risks in proposed operations and advise stakeholders on how to successfully navigate or mitigate them. * Contract management: Oversee contracts throughout their lifecycle, from drafting and negotiation through to variations, change orders, innovations and renewal. * Act as a key point of contact for stakeholders across the business on contract, commercial and corporate law matters (with the support of the Head of Legal), handling ad hoc queries. * Advise on and maintain our suite of contract templates and assist with bespoke drafting. * Conduct legal research on issues relevant to the business. * Assist the legal and compliance function in ensuring the company complies with applicable laws and regulations. OUR MISSION Octopus Legacy is the place to plan for death and find support after loss. When people think about planning for death they think about wills, life insurance and funerals. We take these cold processes and turn them into something more human, letting people share more than money: voice notes, music, recipes. A legacy that connects them while they're here, and after they're gone. Founded by Sam after his mum died suddenly, we're a group of people who work in death because we've been affected by it. We know the difference a good plan makes, and what it's like when there isn't one. We see a world where people talk openly about death and work out the real meaning of legacy, one that connects to them. We're here to make that world happen. WHO ARE YOU? * At least 1 year of in-house experience, ideally in a fast-paced or startup environment * 2 yrs PQE (desirable but not essential) * Experience with commercial contracts and general in-house advisory work * Interest in compliance (legal, regulatory, or operational) * Highly organised, with excellent attention to detail and a pragmatic approach to risk * Comfortable working in a lean team and wearing multiple hats * Clear communicator who can break down legal concepts for non-lawyers BENEFITS * Octopus share incentive scheme. * 27 days holiday + an extra day off for your birthday. * Work from anywhere in the world for up to 4 weeks per year. * Vitality Health & Life Insurance. * Pension scheme. * Enhanced parental leave. * Free Will & LPAs + discounts on other Octopus services. * Cycle to Work Scheme and access to the Electric Vehicle (EV) Salary Sacrifice Scheme. * Octopus Giving: we match any charitable fundraising you do up to £500. * Octopus Springboard: where we help our employees become fully-fledged entrepreneurs. * Dog-friendly office, breakfast every day, snacks and wellness activities.

Adaptyv Bio

Adaptyv is building an automated lab that lets AI agents run biology experiments. We're entering the era of agentic science where AI models can now design novel proteins, propose hypotheses, and iterate on experimental results. But they can't run the experiments themselves - that's still a manual, months-long process. We're building the infrastructure that gives AI agents access to the physical world. We are one of the fastest growing biotech companies, trusted by leading biopharmas, frontier AI labs, and the techbio companies pushing the field forward. This is a rare chance to help advance some of the most important work happening in biotech today. Our automated lab is powered by a deep software + hardware stack: lab instruments worth millions of USD reverse-engineered into API-controllable hardware, dozens of devices orchestrated through complex workflows, full observability on everything that happens in the lab, processing pipelines for messy physical-world data, and AI systems that troubleshoot production results and accelerate assay development. We’re growing rapidly and are hiring for talented people to scale and support the massive demand for AI-driven wet lab experimentation. ABOUT THE ROLE We are building the most automated lab in the world, and that does not stop at the bench. A company that AI agents can run experiments in has to automate everything around the experiment too — procurement, hiring, admin, and finance. Finance is one of the most automatable functions in any company and almost nobody has actually done it. We intend to. That is the job: build an AI-powered finance stack. Our ledger, billing, cards and payroll all expose APIs, and we already close the books against them programmatically rather than by hand. You would take that much further, to where the model, the close, the cash view and the margin analysis largely run themselves, and your week goes on the decisions instead of the reconciliation. You would be our first finance hire, and it is hands-on. You will build the forecast, run the close across two entities, own cash, and be the person who can say what a protein actually costs us to make. WHAT YOU'LL DO * Own the forecast. Both directions: bottom-up from lab capacity, throughput and price per protein, and top-down P&L, burn and runway. * Own gross margin. What does an experiment actually cost us — DNA, reagents, consumables, instrument time, labour? Which products and which customers lose us money? * Own pricing, with commercial. What we charge, why, and where the floor is. Pricing at a lab company is a finance question wearing a sales hat. * Own the close. Group consolidation and intercompany management. Make it fast, make it correct, make it boring. * Own cash. Bank and card accounts across Switzerland and the US, AP runs, AR collection, payment timing. Know where the money is and where it is going before anyone asks. * Keep us compliant. Tax, VAT, audit, payroll, and the external firms we work with. You are not a lawyer or an accountant, but you know when to call one. * Investor reporting, fundraising support, and treasury management. * Equipment leasing and asset management. The lab runs on millions of francs of instruments. Lease or buy, how we finance it, what it does to the balance sheet, and keeping the asset register honest as we expand. * Automate all of the above. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR * You have built a finance function, not just worked in one. Several years in finance at a startup that actually scaled, and ideally you were early enough to have set things up rather than inherited them. * You can build a real model. Not a template. A model that ties operational reality — throughput, yield, capacity, headcount — to cash, and that survives someone pulling on it. * You write code, or you are visibly about to. SQL at minimum, Python ideally. This is the hard requirement most finance candidates will fail, and we mean it. We run on Claude Code across the company, and every system finance touches has an API behind it. The best version of this person automates their own function, writes their own tooling, and finds leverage the rest of us have not thought of. If your instinct is that finance is a spreadsheet-and-portal job, we will frustrate each other. * You understand the cost structure of a physical business. Reagents, instruments, consumables, capex versus COGS, yield loss. Lab, hardware, or manufacturing backgrounds all translate. Pure SaaS finance does not, on its own. * Swiss and European finance experience. VAT, social charges, employment law. A US entity alongside a Swiss one is a plus. * Ambitious, and in it for the company. We want someone who intends to be running finance at a much larger Adaptyv in three years, and who cares about what we are building rather than the title on the door. * Trustworthy with everything. Salaries, revenue, investor communications, board material. All of it crosses your desk. SCOPE We are a small company and nobody here has clean edges around their job. You will end up in the lab, in a room with a customer, and every so often doing something that is nobody's job simply because it needs doing. The centre of gravity is the numbers: the model, the close, cash, margin, pricing, and the board pack. That is the part that is yours and the part we will judge the role on. Procurement is a separate hire and the two of you will be joined at the hip on cost, but the sourcing and the vendor relationships are not yours to run. One thing it is not: a bookkeeping seat. The mechanical layer is handled, and if that is the job you want, this one will bore you. WHY THIS ROLE IS INTERESTING Most first-finance-hires at a startup spend three years cleaning up a SaaS P&L. Here, the finance question and the product question are the same question: an automated lab is a machine for converting money into experimental data, and how efficiently it does that is literally the business. You will be building the model of that machine, at a company that is about to expand it several-fold, while it is being used by the best pharma companies and the best AI labs in the world. And you will do it with a founding team that will hand you the API keys and get out of your way. Application deadline We are reviewing applicants on a rolling basis.