Senior Legal Learning Lawyer, Knowledge & Innovation Group

About the Government Legal Department 

From energy to security, health to human rights, we help the Government deliver life changing law for citizens.
The Government Legal Department is the largest provider of legal services across government, working on high profile matters that are frequently scrutinised in Parliament and the media. Our work includes:

•    Developing and drafting legislation
•    Providing legal advice on policies 
•    Securing our economic and trade relationships
•    Ensuring value from commercial contracts worth billions of pounds
•    Providing the Civil Service’s employment law advice

We are at the heart of delivering the Government’s priorities and our success depends on our people. 
GLD is a non-ministerial government department, sponsored by the Attorney General. We are headed by the Treasury Solicitor, our Permanent Secretary and employ nearly 3000 people, including over 2000 legal professionals. Our offices include London, Leeds, Bristol, Croydon and Manchester as well as overseas. We provide specialist legal services including Litigation, Employment and Commercial Law as well as advising most Government Departments on the policies and services they deliver.

GLD also depends on a range of vital corporate services. These are essential to the smooth and efficient running of the Department and provide the foundation to enable GLD to deliver outstanding legal services. Our corporate functions include Strategy, HR, Finance, Digital, Data and Technology, Communications, Security, Commercial and Project delivery.  

Our vision is to be an outstanding legal organisation and a brilliant place to work where everyone can thrive and fulfil their potential. This is an exciting time for GLD, with cutting edge legal work on global issues and a transformation agenda which is ensuring the Department exemplifies the Modern Civil Service.   

To find out more about what we do visit the Government Legal Department’s webpage or have a look at this short film which showcases the breadth of work government lawyers and legal trainees are involved in. 

About the Knowledge & Innovation Group

The work of the Knowledge & Innovation (K&I) Group is core to all our legal work in GLD.

Ruth Ward, our Director of Knowledge, leads this group of lawyers, specialists and administrators whose role is to advance GLD’s Knowledge, Capability and Innovation Strategy (KCI Strategy), which supports all GLD’s broader strategic outcomes and is particularly aligned with the ‘capability’ and ‘professionalise’ outcomes.

The K&I Group’s key areas of responsibility are:

•    legal excellence: 
o    knowledge development and sharing in all its forms both within and across GLD Divisions, with the wider Government Legal Profession (GLP), and with clients;
o    legal learning across GLD and GLP with a particular focus on organisation-wide programmes

•    legal information and library services (including the subscription services (Lexis, etc) we manage on behalf of GLD and the GLP; and 

•    legal practice innovation and GLD’s broader grass-roots innovation activities;  
These areas of focus require K&I Group colleagues to be very collaborative and outward looking: facilitating and advising 
communities of practice and on local legal Division activity, as well as driving central initiatives; actively engaging with GLP colleagues; and pro-actively collaborating with the broader legal sector, government and academia.

This is a significant new role in the K&I Group, which is expanding and taking full ownership of legal training within GLD.  The role is within the Legal Excellence team and reports to the Head of Legal Excellence.  This is a leadership role, with responsibility for a team of five.  The post-holder will be expected to engage and collaborate with stakeholders across the organisation. 

The post holder will be responsible for ensuring that the legal training arranged by GLD is effective in meeting the legal training needs of government lawyers within GLD and the wider Government Legal Profession (GLP), policy colleagues and clients.  Responsibility for other training lies with HR.

Our lawyers all have their own collective and individual accountabilities for legal learning. The post holder will be expected to facilitate and influence the way in which our lawyers meet their accountabilities and to foster a culture of legal knowledge sharing and learning in our Subject Matter Expert (SME) communities and beyond.

Responsibilities will include:

• Playing a leading role in delivering the legal training priorities that are part of GLD’s Legal Excellence agenda.
• Horizon scanning to identify prospective changes to law and practice likely to affect our lawyers, policy colleagues and clients and formulating regular strategic plans to meet those training needs.
• Identifying gaps evident in the legal learning framework and associated legal learning pathways and leading work to fill those gaps and to further develop and embed those pathways.
• Driving the future development of the Government Legal Training Programme (GLTP), the annual programme of legal training to support and develop legal capability across GLD.  
• Working with our Centres of Excellence, Divisional Senior Civil Servant training leads and legal training committees to agree and then deliver on annual training priorities, through the annual GLTP and ad hoc training needs as they arise.
• Leading K&I projects that are related to legal training.
• Developing and leading a quality assurance function on our legal training (content, delivery, and mode of delivery), and supporting and coaching lawyers who deliver training to ensure that it is vibrant, informative, and inspiring.
• Providing a support and challenge function for champions of legal training, legal training committees, centres of excellence, KDLs and champion networks that design and produce training, particularly in identifying ways to ensure that our training offer is not siloed between Divisions and is delivered efficiently.
• Finding innovative and impactful ways to source training from external providers, particularly GLD’s Legal Services Panel and Panel Counsel and from across government.
• Leading legal training events engaging colleagues across GLD and externally.
• Ensuring that training content is kept up to date on our knowledge and learning platforms.

Essential Criteria

Experience

• Strong previous experience in a legal training role in private or public sector, which experience can include legal training carried out in addition to responsibilities as a practising lawyer.  
• Understanding and prior application of effective legal training approaches.
• Experience of culture and change management ideas and approaches to influence stakeholders.

Motivational Fit

Applicants will be expected to demonstrate:

• A high level of motivation to develop a new role, to act proactively, to engage with legal divisions and to lead and develop the team.
• Strong interest in the practice of law and in design and delivery of effective legal training.
• A desire to continue to develop skills in training, stakeholder and customer engagement; communication and facilitation; project planning and delivery.

Behaviours

Below are details of the Success Profile that make up this role.

You will be expected to provide evidence to show how you meet the criteria at interview stage.

We’ll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

Behaviour – Leadership
•    Promote diversity, inclusion and equality of opportunity, respecting difference and external experience.  
•    Welcome and respond to views and challenges from others, despite any conflicting pressures to ignore or give in to them.  
•    Stand by, promote or defend own and team’s actions and decisions where needed.
•    Seek out shared interests beyond own area of responsibility, understanding the extent of the impact actions have on the organisation. Inspire and motivate teams to be fully engaged in their work and dedicated to their role.

Behaviour – Seeing the Big Picture
•    Ensure plans and activities in your area of work reflect wider strategic priorities and communicate effectively with senior leaders to influence future strategies.
•    Adopt a government wide perspective to ensure alignment of activity.
•    Bring together views, perspectives and diverse needs of stakeholders to gain a broader understanding of the issues surrounding policies and activities.

Behaviour – Communicating and Influencing
•    Communicate with others in a clear, honest and enthusiastic way in order to build trust.
•    Explain complex issues in a way that is easy to understand.
•    Deliver difficult messages with clarity and sensitivity, being persuasive when required.
•    Introduce a varied range of communication methods, including the use of digital resources, whilst ensuring value for money.
•    Monitor the effectiveness of own and team communications and take action improve where necessary.

Behaviour – Delivering at Pace
•    Ensure everyone clearly understands and owns their roles, responsibilities and business priorities.  
•    Give honest, motivating and enthusiastic messages about priorities, objectives and expectations to get the best out of people.  
•    Ensure delivery of timely quality outcomes.  
•    Maintain own levels of performance in challenging circumstances and encourage others to do the same.

Qualifications – Minimum Eligibility Criteria

Academic and Professional 

Applicants should have a minimum of a 2:1 honours degree in their first degree (in any subject). Where an applicant holds an overseas degree qualification this should be equivalent to a 2.1 degree. GLD will consider applicants who do not have a 2.1 degree but only where satisfactory evidence of equivalent high level academic and/or professional achievement can be provided (e.g. via relevant experience and results achieved for the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL)/CPE, Legal Practice Course (LPC), Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC)).

Applicants must be qualified to practise as a Solicitor, Barrister or Chartered Legal Executive in England and Wales however, we also accept applications from overseas qualified candidates. You must have completed a training contract/pupillage/qualifying employment or have been exempted from this by the Law Society, the Bar Council or CILEx. 

Please note that candidates cannot apply more than 3 months before their qualification date.

Professional entry criteria for Chartered Legal Executives (i.e. Fellows): Chartered Legal Executives are eligible to apply where (i) a Qualifying Law Degree (QLD) is held; or (ii) the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL)/CPE has been completed; or (iii) where exams have been passed (i.e. a score of 50% or above achieved), at CILEx Level 6*, in all of the following seven foundation subjects in law:

1.    Contract Law
2.    Criminal Law
3.    Equity and Trusts Law
4.    European Union Law
5.    Land Law
6.    Public Law
7.    Law of Tort

*    Note: There are specific requirements relating to academic achievement in the CILEx Level 6 exams where these are being used to demonstrate 2.1 degree equivalence as set out below.

Chartered Legal Executives should note that GLD will be willing to accept an, overall, average score of 65% or above across exams passed in the seven foundation subjects in law (where studied at CILEx Level 6) as demonstrating 2.1 degree equivalence (where a 2.1 degree is not held).

We’ll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Leadership
• Seeing the Big Picture
• Communicating and Influencing
• Delivering at Pace

• Learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 27%

Job contact :

• Name : MB-GovQualified@tmpw.co.uk
• Email : MB-GovQualified@tmpw.co.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : MB-GovQualified@tmpw.co.uk