Lawyer

Job Title: Lawyer
Starting Salary: £52,138 plus £5,398 Market Enhancement with the opportunity to progress to £57,652, plus £5,424 Market Enhancement per annum
Hours: 37
Location: Stevenage
Contract Type: Permanent
Directorate: Resources

About the team

Working in a large and successful legal team that provides comprehensive legal service in all areas, our lawyers are crucial to the County Council's continued success. We have high standards for our services and we are pleased to be recognised as a Centre of Excellence by the Law Society's Lexcel quality standard assessor.

With more than 100 colleagues in the team, it is one of the largest legal teams in local government and offers a complete legal service to clients across the County Council, District Councils and other public sector bodies.

Herts Legal is a great opportunity for ambitious, passionate and organised Lawyers who want to join a supportive and flourishing public sector legal team.

Requirements

• You will be a qualified Solicitor, Barrister or Chartered Legal Executive
• Demonstrable ability to manage a varied and demanding caseload
• Strong written and oral communication skills, used to build and maintain working relationships, and to produce and present reports
• Experience in working effectively as part of a team
• It is possible that the role could involve travel to other parts of Hertfordshire so access to your own transport would be beneficial
• We welcome applicants who possesses excellent drafting skills and the ability to negotiate documents for a wide range of matters.
• Previous experience of working within a Local Authority environment would be useful but is not essential.
• Specific requirements for relevant teams can be found below

Our Legal Teams

Environment

Giving legal advice and support to client departments and District Councils on various planning, highways and environmental issues, the Environment Law Team is looking for someone with extensive knowledge of the broad range of environmental work, including s106 agreements, highway agreements, minerals planning, waste planning, advising planning committee, rights of way, advising on the effects of changing legislation and case law.

Commercial

You will need to provide strategic advice on procurements, subsidy control and data protection, as well as interpreting different contractual documents. The role also requires you to stay updated on changing legislation and the effects of changing legislation and case law, and to be interested in developing expertise in other areas, such as subsidy control.

This role is about being aware of both the legal and the commercial aspects of contracts, procurement and future service delivery across Hertfordshire County Council.

You should ideally have extensive knowledge of a wide range of commercial work, including construction contracts, company secretarial work, various concession, goods and services contracts, funding agreements, and pension arrangements.

Adult, Children & Health - Education Lawyer

This role will primarily focus on the provision of Education advice and to ensure that the decisions made by the client department and schools that subscribe to an Education Helpline are within legal boundaries and achieve their aims and objectives and accord with applicable legislation and County Council policy. You will need a comprehensive understanding of the legal framework and case law relating to Education while handling a varied and busy caseload.

Property

We are looking for applicants who have excellent drafting skills and the ability to negotiate documents for different property transactions. You should have extensive knowledge of the wide range of property work, including Landlord and Tenant matters, conveyancing, and researching and advising on the effects of changing legislation and case law, and also be interested in learning more about other areas, such as agricultural law.

Childcare Litigation

Providing high quality litigation and advice service to our Children's Services department, we are looking for candidates with a working knowledge of the Children Act 1989, Adoption and Children Act 2002, Public Law Outline 2014 and the Children and Families Act 2014, to investigate and advise on the implications of changing legislation and case law, attend and advise at legal planning meetings, to conduct advocacy before the Family Court and manage a caseload of child care matters.

Dispute Resolution

This role offers the opportunity to be involved in a wide variety of legal areas including Civil Litigation, Housing, commercial property, Highways and planning disputes as well as debt recovery in order to support the full breadth of the services of the County Council, Partners and External Clients (which include Stevenage Borough Council) You will need to be able to provide accurate, comprehensive and timely legal advice while conducting litigation across a number of different courts and tribunals, managing a varied and demanding caseload.

Your Work directly supports in the County Council's efforts to improve Residents Lives, and champion Equality, Fairness and Sustainability. Are you up for the challenge? Would you like to make a difference?

This job role is within the Corporate Services, level 13 job profile. Please locate this via:

Job profiles - Corporate services

To hear more about this opportunity please contact Stephen.Dorrian@hertfordshire.gov.uk / 07813 400504 for an informal discussion about the role

Interview Date: arranged on an ad hoc basis

Benefits of working for us

How to apply

As part of your application, please upload your most recent CV. Ensure your CV is up to date with your employment history (including any employment gaps), and including any training/qualifications. We encourage you to include examples of where you have demonstrated the requirements/criteria in the advert / job profile to allow the panel to fully recognise your skills and abilities. You will have the opportunity to include a short covering paragraph within your application to give us a little more information about your skills, knowledge, and experiences.

Disability Confident
We are proud to be a Disability Confident employer and guarantee an interview to anyone disclosing a disability whose application meets the minimum criteria for the post.

Driving required
You'll need to have the ability to drive and/or travel around Hertfordshire, either using your own mode of transport or a company car to travel to other locations.

English Fluency
The ability to converse at ease with members of the public and provide advice in accurate spoken English is essential for the post (for those whose language is a signed language the provision of a sign language interpreter who speaks English to the necessary standard of fluency will be required). Further information about the legal requirement can be found here.