Here. Now. All of us. Be part of the team championing bold action for climate, nature, and people in Scotland’s first National Park. Join us and be part of the change.
Job Title: Solicitor
Salary: £39, - £46, (Band D) per annum pro rata
Working Hours: 21 - 28 hours per week (flexible)
Contract: 12 months
Location: Balloch, with hybrid working model
The Role:
Are you practical? Curious? Love working closely with your business teams? Great at building strong relationships? Excellent at getting up to speed quickly? Always looking for better ways to do things?
Then come and help us deliver legal advice better. We’re redesigning how we provide legal advice to allow our teams to move at pace, so a flexible approach is a must. A broad commercial or litigation background may be helpful, but isn’t a prerequisite if you’re the sort of person who will roll their sleeves up and get stuck into whatever comes across your desk. A willingness to explore Microsoft tools to improve efficiency (eg Planner, PowerApp / Power BI / Power Automate etc) is helpful, familiarity with them would be a bonus!
Responsibilities:
1. Deliver user friendly, effective legal services for the National Park Authority.
2. Use expert knowledge to filter initial requests for legal advice, identify potential risks to the National Park Authority and assess whether any external advice is required from legal service providers.
3. Provide pragmatic legal advice and guidance on a wide range of legal issues (with particular focus on commercial contracts, public sector legal duties, disputes / litigation) to internal stakeholders, identifying risks to the National Park Authority and potential ways to mitigate identified risks.
4. Review third party legal documentation to identify potential risks to the National Park Authority and report to internal stakeholders. Draft legal letters, contracts and other documentation for lower risk matters.
5. Provide or source pragmatic legal advice to staff of all levels in relation to resolving disputes and other contentious matters.
6. Report to the Legal Manager on material legal matters, highlighting unresolved legal issues and associated risks.
7. Manage relationships with external legal service suppliers to ensure the legal service delivered is of a high standard, monitoring feedback on service delivery from internal stakeholders. Establish agreed service levels for external legal service suppliers and review performance against these.
8. Identify and report on legal training needs within the National Park Authority to the Legal Manager. Train, develop and positively engage all levels of staff within the National Park Authority on legal issues, processes and risk mitigation.
9. Review and contribute to policies and guidance for the National Park Authority as required, to enable legal compliance.
10. Identify, develop, coordinate and implement new procedures, template documentation and processes for managing a high volume of legal matters, to improve service levels.
11. Report to the Legal Manager on legal spend and identify potential ways to reduce spend or maximise value.
12. Manage, develop and monitor the performance of support staff that work with the team.
13. Undertake any other duties appropriate to the grade as required.
Who we are looking for:
Your skills, abilities and experience should include:
14. Proven experience of providing legal services as part of a busy caseload.
15. Experience of advising legal issues relevant to the National Park Authority. The focus of this role will be on non-property law related issues such as commercial contracts, funding agreements, public sector legal duties, managing disputes / litigation etc.
16. Experience of interpreting legal advice on a broad range of topics and providing legal information in a practical, user-friendly format.
17. Excellent management, interpersonal and communication (written and oral) skills.
18. Ability to understand complicated technical information to translate this to meet the information needs of a variety of audiences.
19. Degree of equivalent in a related discipline e.g. LLB.
20. Qualified solicitor or equivalent experience.
Ideally, but not essentially, you’ll also have:
21. Experience working as an in-house legal advisor/solicitor.
22. Experience of auditing processes to identify legal risks and improvements.
23. Experience of developing internal processes to promote legal compliance.
24. Specialist knowledge of legal issues relevant to public authorities such as subsidy control, freedom of information etc.
25. Knowledge of the wider government and external policy environment for the National Park Authority.
How to apply:
If you are interested in this role, please complete your application by 12th June @ 9am.
26. Access our application form on our job portal
27. Interviews will be in person
28. Interviews taking place 23rd or 24th June
Who we are and our values:
We offer flexible and remote working, with a generous pension scheme and annual leave allowance. Staff have access to wellbeing services and there is a strong focus on wellbeing throughout the organisation.
Being part of Loch Lomond & the Trossachs National Park Authority means being passionate about what you do, working hard to inspire and lead the way for others. We care about each other and are accessible and friendly treating each other with respect and understanding, we think about our planet with each decision we make. Together, we are the difference.
Loch Lomond & the Trossachs National Park Authority are proud to celebrate difference. Diversity of experience is vital in our success we want our business to be representative to the communities we work alongside. As an equal opportunity employer, we actively encourage applicants from a wide range of individuals, irrespective of age, disability, gender reassignment, gender identity and expression, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation.