City Solicitors Division, Children & Families Legal Services

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We have multiple vacancies across the following roles – Head of Group, Group Manager, Principal Lawyers, In House Advocates and Senior Lawyers

In House Advocates

Salary: £55,564 to £59,086 (competency bar at £57,895) per annum

Location: Town Hall, Albert Square, Manchester M60 2LA

Grade: 12

Hours: 35

Contract: Permanent

Closing date: 24 September 2023

Application: - Curriculum Vitae and detailed Expression of Interest setting out how your skills and experience meet the role profile

Our In-House Advocacy Service is in now in its 12^th year of operation!  We have achieved some incredible results given the quality of our work and the support to In House Advocates.  We provide legal advice and representation for Manchester, Salford and Rochdale Councils and the range of legal work is both interesting and challenging.  Joining a well-regarded and established team of 5 In House Advocates we are looking to fill vacant positions with investment to take our already outstanding results to a new enhanced vision for the future

Career development is important to us.  We recognise the value of mentoring, training coaching and development.  We provide support to enable our In House Advocates to pursue higher rights of audience and the management, support and quality of our work has also enabled several former In House Advocates to transfer to the Bar without pupillage!

The successful candidates whilst demonstrating a good working knowledge of local government law, will have the abilities to formulate and present quality legal argument to the Courts on behalf of our clients, both orally and in writing, within hearings of varying lengths and complexity.  You will have an extensive and proven knowledge of the law relating to children and families.  The successful candidates will also be able to evidence personal commitment to continuous self-development.

Your brief, received from internal team members, is also growing.  As an already effective team of lawyers, legal officers and business support team who produce incredible, outstanding results their vision for the future is also being enhanced.  Aligning ourselves with Children’s Services to deliver safe, efficient, and effective services to families, the enhanced vision is supported by a new “small teams” structure, an enriched training, mentoring and coaching tool and a new Case Management System.  Highly valued by our clients, our excellent relationships and continual looking for better ways of doing things and achieving greater heights produces an innovative, responsive, inclusive and transparent legal service. 

You will be a qualified Barrister, Solicitor or Chartered Legal Executive with Advocacy Certificate, able and committed to working in a flexible manner including outside normal office hours, when the role necessitates the same.  You will be a key member of the group, confident and able to work independently and act upon your own initiative. 

At the heart of everything we do is:

• the safety and needs of children
• high-quality representation of Children’s Services.

There is little else in life graver than a parent or carer losing a child from their care. How do we do this emotionally demanding work and not burn out? It’s through teamwork – working together, trusting each other, combining our experience, and sharing our knowledge and expertise to get the right result.

We support each other, laugh, interact, problem-solve and have difficult conversations. This promotes deep learning and a strong sense of belonging and common purpose, creating effective mutual relationships that achieve our team’s goals.  We feed on one another’s contagious enthusiasm for our projects with a dynamic team spirit made possible by the synergism between us all.

• Are your skills and legal mind being rewarded?
• Do you work together as part of a supportive team?
• Is your work wide-ranging and varied?
• Are you achieving your goals?

Be part of our incredible journey.

Why work with us?

We offer our lawyers flexible start and finish times with an effective hybrid working-practice model.  There’s opportunity for development and variety thanks to the way our teams practise in our Lexcel-accredited and supported legal service.

Legal work for public services in Manchester, Salford and Rochdale Councils and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority puts you among the few practitioners in England’s first, and biggest, devolved region, where major decisions are now taken in-house rather than in Whitehall and by NHS administrations.

If practising in a supportive public service legal team is the right cultural fit for you, please get in touch for an informal discussion.

To arrange an informal discussion on these roles please contact Alison Robertson, Head of In House Advocacy Services on email at alison.robertson@manchester.gov.uk

Manchester City Council is an Equal Opportunities Employer and we positively welcome applications from all candidates regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.