Principal Lawyer - CLU

Job Title: Principal Lawyer - Childcare Litigation
Starting Salary: £63,471 plus £7,333 market enhancement progressing to £71,045 plus £6,666 market enhancement per annum
Hours: 14.5 per week with feasibility to offer up 18.5 per week
Location: Stevenage with hybrid working opportunities
Contract Type: Permanent
Directorate: Resources

About the team

The Childcare Litigation team deals with all child protection and adoption litigation on behalf of the Local Authority, as well as supporting the client department with conduct of pre-proceedings PLO matters and ad-hoc advice on any matters relating to children.

About the role

Jointly leading the Child Litigation Unit with two other Principal Lawyers, you will have responsibility for management of a team of lawyers and paralegals/ trainees.

This role is instrumental to ensuring that the service provided to Children’s Services is of a consistently high quality, and you will be client facing and regularly meet with key clients and external partners to discuss service delivery. You will supervise and where necessary develop the team to provide this service.

Sitting on the Legal Services Management team you will with the support of the Director and Assistant Chief Legal Officer for Litigation, be responsible for budget monitoring, capacity and resourcing within the team. Alongside these management responsibilities you will also hold or oversee a reduced but active case load of child litigation matters.

There is an opportunity to shape the way legal services are delivered and liaise with colleagues in private practice, CAFCASS, the Judiciary and other external partners to ensure efficiency.

About you

Essential

• Significant experience in holding a diverse range of child litigation matters
• Experience in managing a team
• Demonstrable ability to build and maintain strong relationships with clients and stakeholders
• Exceptional time management skills, demonstrating the ability to prioritise and organise workload

We welcome applications from candidates who currently reside in the UK with established proof of right to work documentation. We are not able to offer sponsorship at this time for this role.

This job role is Level 14. Please locate the job profile here:

Job profiles - Corporate services

To hear more about this opportunity please contact Victoria.Wilders@hertfordshire.gov.uk for an informal discussion about the role.

Interview Date: to be confrimed

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.

Additional information

We are changing
Hertfordshire County Councilis undergoing Local Government Reorganisation (LGR). If you are employed by Hertfordshire County on 1 April 2028, it is expected that most roles will transfer to the newly-created unitary councils on existing terms and conditions under TUPE (Transfer of Undertakings – Protection of Employment) principles.

LGR is one of the biggest changes we will face in a generation. It will reshape how we work and how services are organised and gives us a real opportunity to build something better. To find out more, visit https://www.hertfordshire-lgr.co.uk/

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.

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.