Lawyer (or Legal Officer- up to 1 years PQE)

At HMRC we are committed to creating a great place to work for all our colleagues; an inclusive and respectful environment that reflects the diversity of the society we serve.

We want to maximise the potential of everyone who chooses to work for us and we offer a range of flexible working patterns and support to make a fulfilling career at HMRC accessible to you.

Diverse perspectives and experiences are critical to our success and we welcome applications from all people from all backgrounds with the experience and skills needed to perform this role.

HMRC Solicitor’s Office and Legal Service (SOLS) gives legal advice on issues arising from HMRC’s work and conducts HMRC’s litigation. Our work impacts the lives of millions, as we help to collect the money that pays for the UK’s public services and provide targeted financial support to families and individuals. We have around 1450 people including lawyers, tax professionals, advocates, paralegals and administrators. Our strength is in our diverse people and the inclusive working culture that brings us together.

We work in supportive, specialist teams, that handle a broad range of different areas of law including general public law (human rights, administrative law, freedom of information) tax law, commercial law, insolvency law, information law and criminal law, employer’s liability for personal injury, focusing on either policy and operational advisory work or litigation.

See what it’s like to work at HMRC: find out more about us or ask our colleagues a question. Questions relating to an individual application must be emailed as detailed later in this advert.

Why HMRC? 

Things at HMRC probably don’t work the way you’d think.

 Tired of constant 60-hour plus weeks and the corporate grind?

Would you like to work on complex legal issues that make a positive difference to the nation’s finances? If you’re nodding your head reading this, you’ve come to the right place.

We offer hybrid working, with a 40% average office attendance (and court time is counted as office hours), actual flexitime and genuine work-life balance alongside fascinating technical work.

Advisory Lawyers

Our advisory lawyers give advice on the interpretation and application of legislation. This includes advising HMRC and Treasury ministers on a wide variety of taxes, including business tax, personal tax, customs, excise, environmental taxes and VAT law. We also advise on other issues, such as benefits & credits, insolvency, information law and international law and treaties. Our advice encompasses areas of public and administrative law. We implement policy through primary and secondary legislation, including through the annual Finance Bill. We support policy colleagues at all stages of the parliamentary process as well as drafting a high volume of statutory instruments.

Our commercial lawyers give advice on high value and complex public procurement and contractual commercial legal issues within government. This includes providing legal support to HMRC’s largest transformation programmes including IT and Estates. We support HMRC’s day to day banking and general commercial operations, including all aspects of commercial contracts, intellectual property rights, public procurement and state aid, contract and supplier management, and dispute resolution.

Our criminal lawyers give advice and support to investigators and policy makers, supporting HMRC’s tax enforcement activity in investigating serious complex fraud and other criminal non-compliance.

Litigation Lawyers

Our litigation lawyers conduct litigation across the full range of HMRC work. We litigate some of the most challenging and important high value, complex Government litigation. These include big money tax cases and cases ranging from resisting judicial review challenges to litigating civil cases against those who benefit from the proceeds of crime. Our cases will often involve novel and challenging points of law and contribute to developing the interpretation of the law. We regularly litigate through the higher courts to the Supreme Court.

Who are we looking for?

We are recruiting qualified lawyers and we would like you to apply whatever level of experience you have.

We have vacancies for lawyers in both our advisory and litigation work. You do not need any existing knowledge of our work or tax experience. We will give you training and support to develop your knowledge and expertise and you can expect to move teams within our diverse practice every few years to build up your skills and experience.

If you have already developed a specialism in any of our work areas, we’d be keen to know about that, so please tell us about it in your application form. Please bear in mind that you will be offered a role in order of merit and not necessarily within your specialism.

Diversity, inclusion and equality

We want everyone to feel valued, supported and comfortable being their true self at work. We are proud to be a diverse and inclusive employer, supporting social mobility and giving opportunities to people no matter what their background. That’s why we have several staff diversity networks including race, disability, LGBTQ, gender and carers. You’ll be able join any of these networks (and more as part of HMRC) when you join us and getting involved is easy.

When you join us, you join a friendly and helpful community. We’ll give you the support you need to grow in confidence, help you enjoy your time inside and outside the workplace ensuring you have a good work-life balance. We believe that we are a great place to work.

For more information on our diversity networks see page 7 of the “Your Little Extras and Big Benefits” booklet.

Disability Confident Scheme

We run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria. If you consider yourself to have a disability as defined by the Equality Act 2010, you can apply under that scheme.

We’ll invite you to attend an interview if you:

• Meet all aspects of the eligibility criteria.
• Meet the standard set in the online tests and against any job specific criteria.

Eligibility Criteria

You must ensure that you meet all the eligibility criteria listed below. Our application form will ask you to show this.

Academic

You need to have a minimum of a 2:1 degree in your first degree (in any subject). If you hold an overseas degree qualification this should be equivalent to a 2.1 degree.

If you have a lower degree classification (or do not hold a degree), we may consider your application but only if you can provide satisfactory evidence of an equivalent high level academic and/or professional achievement.

For example, if you can tell us that you have:

• Significant relevant experience
• A commendation or distinction in the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL)/CPE or the Legal Practice Course (LPC)
• An LLM or other postgraduate degree
• Very competent on the Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC) or
• An overall average score of 65% or above across exams passed in the seven foundation subjects in law (where studied at CILEx level 6): contract law, criminal law, equity and trusts law, European Union Law, land law, public law and law of tort

We won’t be able to provide you with a supervisor for CILEX training.

Professional Qualifications

You need to be qualified as a Solicitor or Barrister or Chartered Legal Executive in England and Wales (or that you will be qualified within 3 months from the date of the application).

Solicitors Barristers or Chartered Legal Executives must have completed a training contract/pupillage/qualifying employment or have been exempted from this by the Law Society, the Bar Council or CILEx. Chartered Legal Executives must have a Qualifying Law Degree or have completed the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL)/CPE or have passed exams (i.e. a score of 50% or above achieved) at CILEx Level 6, in all the seven foundation subjects in law: contract law, criminal law, equity and trusts law, European Union Law, land law, public law and law of tort.

If you are a qualified lawyer in a jurisdiction outside England and Wales, we need you to become qualified in England and Wales within 2 years of starting employment with us, and your employment will be conditional upon you successfully becoming qualified within this time. This may cause you some cost. Further information on qualification is available from the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and the Bar Standards Board (BSB).

As noted above, you only need to be in an office location on average for 40% of your time.  However, HMRC welcomes applications from those who need to work a more flexible arrangement and will agree to requests where possible, taking into account our operational and customer service needs. We can’t guarantee that we can meet all requests to work flexibly, as agreement will be subject to business ability to accommodate, and any request to work a more flexible arrangement should be made prior to your acceptance of the provisional offer. 

We may offer you a post in any of the locations you select, please only list those places where you would be prepared to work.

Your office location is contractual so if you are successful, there is an expectation that you will attend that office location as required by the business. You need to consider how you will meet this requirement before you apply and discuss any concerns with the vacancy holder before accepting any role.

For some roles there may be an occasional need to travel in the UK or abroad, including overnight stays.

We are not offering visa sponsorship for any of these posts.

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

• Working Together
• Communicating and Influencing
• Managing a Quality Service

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

• Online written exercise to test your Legal Skills by a deadline. We will give you all the necessary information, including about the relevant law, to enable you to complete this.

  • We will also ask you questions regarding the legal scenario at intervie

• 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%

Find more about HMRC benefits in ‘Your little extras and big benefits handbook’ for further information or visit Thinking of joining the Civil Service.

Job contact :

• Name : Briony Kernan
• Email : recruitmentteam.sols@hmrc.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : hmrcrecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk