Ministry of Justice

A professionally qualified lawyer with extensive experience in the area of Magistrates’ Court jurisdictions, this role will report to the Legal and Professional Services Lead in the National Legal Operations Team and will support in the provision of legal subject matter expertise to HMCTS, MoJ and other agencies.

The Legal and Professional Services Manager will support the professional infrastructure of staff authorised to provide advice and exercise judicial functions in courts and tribunals, and work to improve efficiency and effectiveness by contributing to and supporting the implementation of change. The role holder will deal with issues affecting the strategic direction of core areas of legal and professional services.

The role holder will provide support to knowledge networks, particularly the Legal Advisers’ and Court Officers’ Service or JCS (formerly the Justices’ Clerks’ Society), to carry out the functions of an officer authorised by the Lord Chief Justice under s. 29 of the Courts Act 2003 to direct other authorised officers.

This is a national role in legal operations supporting the highest standards of knowledge management and quality assurance over procedural compliance and legal advice given by authorised court officers in the Magistrates’ Court.

Key Accountabilities

Providing legal subject matter expertise in Magistrates’ Courts jurisdictions as follows:

• Providing legal expertise and information to help support Legal & Professional Services Lead, the Civil Family & Tribunals Head of Legal Operations (CFT HoLO), MoJ Policy and Policy teams in other government departments to draft and introduce legislation which affects the Magistrates’ and Crown Court.
• Undertake research to provide specialist advice and guidance to support the Legal & Professional Services Lead and MoJ Policy to provide answers to ministerial correspondence and oral questions during passage of legislation.
• Ensure the guidance and knowledge content in the digital knowledge resources is kept up to date and suitably disseminated to Legal Advisers to enable them to have access to the latest and most accurate information to discharge their responsibilities, and to support the work of JCS committees. 
• Contribute to implementation of the government’s legislative agenda and initiatives affecting the Magistrates’ courts, supporting national working groups with other Justice Partners, assisting in drafting of statutory guidance materials and the creation of operational processes and guidance to HMCTS staff 
• Support the planning and implementation of Magistrates’ Courts and civil tribunals legislative and procedural change, monitoring performance and legal compliance to ensure the changes are effective in meeting requirements.
• Responsible for creating, designing and building legal business solutions for effective performance in the Magistrates’ Courts and advising on best practice and compliance
• Support feedback loops on sentencing guidelines, researching and using legal knowledge and expertise to contribute to accurate and effective implementation of these.
• Maintain a strong and effective working relationship with Judicial College and support in the critical read of magistrate and legal adviser materials. Provide legal advice to HMCTS legal and administrative teams as queries arise and providing legal guidance to support implementation of legislative change.
• Support the creation, and continuous improvement, of operational processes in the Magistrates courts to ensure legal compliance.
• Research and provide specialist advice to, and support the drafting of legal guidance materials for, Magistrates’ & Family court legal teams
• Assist the ministerial correspondence team to draft replies and answers to written parliamentary questions by providing specialist and professional advice and guidance to inform the content of the correspondence.  Complete Freedom of Information Act replies as required, researching and collating data to provide responses in line with the requirements for compliance.
• Support impact evaluations of new legislation on Magistrates’ and Crown Courts.
• Identify and work alongside regional Single Points of Contact (SPOCs) to support HMCTS and Justice Partners’ project work and pilots by ensuring project delivery, managing communications and obtaining feedback.
• Support business planning, setting and adjusting priorities to meet business and operational needs, identifying and initiating corrective actions to address problems that arise.
• Identifying implications of Departmental and political priorities and flagging to the Legal and Professional Services Lead to ensure plans and activities reflect these.

Knowledge, Skills and experience required;

• Role holder will need to be a professionally qualified (solicitor, barrister, or CILEx) and have extensive experience as a magistrates’ courts legal adviser
• Extensive up to date knowledge of law affecting Magistrates’ Courts jurisdictions including legislation, rules practice directions and case law
• Extensive knowledge of Magistrates’ court operational processes, legal procedures and administrative functions.
• Eye for detail including ability to read and interpret complex legislation with precision.
• Ability to draft legal guidance accurately and succinctly in a manner to enable ease of understanding by legal and administrative staff.
• Ability to plan ahead and create plans to manage multiple projects across varying timescales to ensure effective prioritisation to ensure business objectives are met
• Ability to manage own time and workload independently

Desirable 

• Recent experience of family jurisdiction 

Problem Solving and Decision Making

The role holder will

• Build effective working relationships within HMCTS and with Justice Partners and Judicial Office to identify solutions to operational problems as required or to signpost others to ensure their business objectives can be met. 
• Regularly face, and be expected to investigate and propose solutions to, issues impacting on the provision of legal services. They will need to consider the practical detail of proposed legislative and procedural changes on legal service delivery, identifying the implications and risks and developing options that will deliver the intended changes.
• Be able and expected to use creativity and discretion to decide appropriate manner for project work, to build working groups an ensure effective consultation, communication and implementation.
• Provide clear decisive legal advice in drafting legal guidance and in answering queries from HMCTS colleagues or other justice partner agencies.

Management of Resources

The role holder will be expected to proactively manage legal and professional services’ projects by building links with other teams and ensuring, through effective communication and encouraging and supporting cross-team working, that the necessary work is undertaken in timely manner to deliver the desired outcomes.

The role holder will manage knowledge products for authorised officers in Magistrates’ Courts, and where necessary they will communicate business outcomes in a legal operations context.

The role holder will be responsible for provision of legal advice to authorised officers. This will require effective horizon scanning, recognition of risk and management of mitigation and timely drafting and dissemination of legal guidance. 

Although there is no budgetary or line management responsibilities, this is a visible leadership role within legal operations.

Autonomy

The role holder will work with the Head of Legal & Professional Services and the Legal and Professional Services Lead, to set aims and objectives for their work area, keeping them updated on key performance indicators and milestones as appropriate, but will be expected to take exercise independent judgement in interpreting how to deliver against these.

The role holder acts as a national subject matter expert, and has autonomy in exercising judicial independence as set out in the Lord Chief Justices’ Standards for Authorised Officers when developing national guidance for provision of legal advice, subject only to the direction of the Deputy Director Legal Operations and the Head of Legal and Professional Services. 

The role holder will identify and act to update national guidance on provision of excellence in legal advice for HMCTS across Magistrates’ Courts, whilst prioritising workload to meet business priorities and objectives.

The role holder will be expected to identify and clarify priorities in order to manage and coordinate the input into national change projects in their business area and will be able to respond to changing requirements and act autonomously to ensure effective progress against agreed project goals and timelines.

Key relationships and contacts

The role holder holds a visible profile within HMCTS legal operations and will be an influential player in the provision of legal and professional services, speaking with authority as subject matter expert on a daily basis.  Effective communication will be needed to advise on interpretation of a variety of existing and proposed legal instruments, to negotiate agreement across the organisation on their impact and implementation and to report on progress against objectives whilst ensuring adherence to policies

The role will create and maintain formal and informal networks, both internal and external, and work to build mutual understanding and cooperation to reach agreements on tasks, initiatives and prioritisation.  These contacts will include:

•     Senior Judiciary / Judicial Office – to engage over legislative changes that could impact judiciary and magistrates’ court.

•     HMCTS change and operations teams – providing legal input and cooperation with implementation of change initiatives alongside the associated technology.

•     Heads of Legal Operations (in particular CFT HoLO) – providing advice, information and training on legislative and procedural changes

•     Regional and National Services leadership teams on the effective use of resources in court and smooth case progression.

•     Professional court users – provide information, advice and guidance on all aspects of law, practice and procedure including regarding decisions of listing and scheduling practices

•     HMCTS and MoJ Comms teams – to provide information, advice and guidance on all aspects of law, practice and procedure to help court users and the general public understand how the judicial system works.

•           JCS Committees – Provide secretariat support to the JCS committees, including the provision of effective leadership support and guidance to committee chairs / members.

Base

This is a Full time, National (location flexible) with travel to London and other locations occasionally required. 

This post can accommodate an applicant's current location by providing workspace within HM Courts and Tribunals Service locations nationwide and supporting some home working. This will be in line with the Directorate’s expectation of office attendance. 

Working Hours

The success full candidate will be contracted to work 37 hours excluding lunch breaks.

Place of work and mobility

You will be allocated to your work base location that has been agreed between yourself and line manager as part of the recruitment process. This will also be confirmed in the formal contract that you receive.