Buchanan
Project Finance Associate
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Project Finance Associate (3 PQE – Special Counsel)
Location: London Practice: Project Finance / Projects Level: 3 PQE up to Special Counsel
The Opportunity
This opportunity comes with two brand new additions reflecting a team that's investing seriously in its own growth rather than simply patching a gap.
- It's a rare combination: a mandate with real urgency behind it, but also real breadth, since three separate hires means there's meaningfully more room here than in a typical single-seat search.
- There are candidates already in process, including a couple progressing via referral, but the team has been clear that this doesn't close the door on further hires quite the opposite. With three seats to fill, there's genuine scope to bring in additional strong candidates alongside whoever else is already in the pipeline.
The team itself is a substantial and experienced one:
- Seven partners
- Twelve associates
- Two special counsel
All working within a genuinely collaborative projects platform. The core focus is project finance, with some welcome additional exposure to project development work for those who want to broaden out beyond pure finance mandates. It's the kind of setup that gives newer joiners a real breadth of deal types to cut their teeth on, rather than a narrow diet of similar transactions.
This search is also landing at a strong moment for the practice area more broadly. Project and infrastructure finance has been one of the more resilient corners of the London legal market in 2026, with continued momentum in digital infrastructure, energy transition, and renewables financing keeping deal pipelines full even where other practice areas have been more cautious. Firms across the market have been actively adding depth in this space rather than just replacing departures, and lateral and associate hiring in finance more broadly has picked up meaningfully as lending conditions stabilise and competition among lenders increases all of which points to a genuinely candidate-favourable moment for anyone with solid project finance experience looking to make a move.
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What They're Looking For
This is a deliberately less rigid search than many in the market right now, with the emphasis squarely on capability and hands-on experience rather than strict pedigree. In practice, they're looking for:
- Genuine, hands-on project finance experience
- Exposure to project development work is a bonus, though not required
- Flexibility on firm background strong international firms are very much in scope, and the team has a track record of hiring well beyond the usual short-list of names
- Foreign-qualified lawyers are welcome, provided they bring relevant London market experience with them
This flexibility is a genuine differentiator compared to other, more rigid searches in the market at the moment with most teams recruiting at pace in 2026 are still leaning heavily on Magic Circle, Silver Circle, or US firm training as a first filter, so a search that's genuinely open to strong candidates from a broader range of backgrounds is somewhat unusual, and worth taking seriously if your CV doesn't tick every conventional box.
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Compensation
Compensation follows the Cravath scale (Elite US pay levels), with a bonus structure aligned to the leading US firms, including both a summer bonus and an end-of-year bonus. Sign-on bonuses are available, and associates can choose between a fixed or variable FX rate on their pay.
The billable hours target sits above 2,000, though in practice it's rarely a point of discussion internally, since most associates comfortably hit the mark given the current volume of work coming through the team.
Why Join This Practice
Beyond the flexibility on background, the appeal here is joining a team with genuine momentum behind it, at a moment of active investment and expansion rather than steady-state hiring.
Associates get exposure to both classic project finance work and elements of project development, an Elite US compensation platform, and perhaps most importantly given the scale of this hiring round a real opportunity to establish yourself early within a growing team, rather than joining a mature group where the shape of things is already fixed.
Interview Process
The process typically runs across three to four stages:
- An initial partner meeting
- Follow-up partner interviews
- Additional meetings with partners or senior lawyers
- A final stage with the wider team
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