Address
SalaryAssistant Head of Legal Services
Fixed term contract: up to two years
£91,697 - £100,461 + £12,000 additional allowance (and London allowance of £3,566 where relevant)
Generous Civil Service defined benefit pension
Bristol or London
About us
The Office for Students (OfS) was established by the Higher Education and Research Act in 2017 and became fully operational in April 2018. OfS’s primary aim is to ensure that English higher education is delivering positive outcomes for students – past, present, and future. Our objectives are to ensure that students, from all backgrounds (particularly those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds):
- Are supported to access, succeed in, and progress from, higher education
- Receive high quality academic experience and their interests are protected while they study or in the event of provider, campus or course closure
- Are able to progress into employment or further study, and their qualifications hold their value over time
- Receive value for money
The Resources & Finance Directorate provides critical services to the OfS to enable the organisation to deliver its strategy. The Directorate ensures that the OfS complies with statutory and other public sector requirements, identifies and manages risks and opportunities and co-ordinates efforts across the organisation to be efficient and effective.
About the role
The aim of the role ‘Assistant Head of Legal Services’ is to lead on provision of Legal advice and support for a broad range of Legal matters relevant to the OfS’s functions. Key responsibilities include; supporting the Head of Legal Services (and, where relevant, Deputy Head of Legal Services) in leading the legal function within the OfS, as well as ongoing management of multiple major portfolios of work within the legal team (which may change over time and could also include oversight of OfS’s Knowledge and Information Management team). The role may also include acting as/providing cover for the Head of Legal Services or Deputy Head of Legal Services in their absence.
This role requires significant engagement with internal stakeholders to ensure that all employees are appropriately trained, and external stakeholders to ensure the team is supported.
The key person attributes required to fulfil this role include: significant legal experience dealing with many legal practice areas and leading large legal teams, acting as an advisor to boards and senior executives; ability to analyse and advise on complex legal issues; sensitivity to politics, understanding the needs of, and willing to work collaboratively with external stakeholders; adopts a creative and innovative approach to legal issues; excellent verbal, written communication and presentation skills; and an ability to influence and negotiate.
Responsibilities:
Act as a senior lawyer within the OfS on a wide range of Legal matters running in parallel:
Leads on providing advice and support on the following legal areas and topics:
- Legislation applying to the higher education sector including the Higher Education and Research Act 2017;
- Managing the conduct of litigation activities, such as judicial review proceedings and statutory appeals;
- Legal topics relevant to decision making and supporting processes, such as public law principles, statutory duties and considerations, the delegation of functions and equalities legislation;
- Human rights law;
- Managing the conduct of litigation activities, such as judicial review proceedings and statutory appeals;
- Consumer protection law;
- The use of the OfS’s enforcement and information gathering powers;
- The regulatory framework and registration conditions that apply to higher education providers;
- Legal issues relating to knowledge and information management, including data protection and fredom of information law.
Support the Head of Legal Services in operating the legal function within the OfS:
- Contracts are negotiated and relationships with providers of Legal research tools are managed, such as Lexis/Nexis;
- Leads on commissioning external legal support (including Counsel) and managing their delivery of tasks;
- Leads on the procurement of panels of external legal providers;
- Fees are negotiated with external legal and other support service providers and Barristers’ clerks in order to ensure value for money;
- Leads on the production of internal guidance documents on key legal and regulatory issues to a high standard;
- Training for the legal team is organised in line with professional CPD requirements;
- Leads with the delivery of training to colleagues within the OfS to establish and maintain a culture of working closely and effectively with the legal team and develop their knowledge on key legal/regulatory issues;
- Leads on the operation and periodic development of case management systems to track the timeliness of Legal support and identify trends in the topics raised with the legal team.
External and internal stakeholder management:
- Working closely with the Head of Legal Services, leads on the oversight of the relationship, budget and performance of a legal panel of external legal providers;
- An understanding of senior leadership team objectives, concerns and aspirations is developed;
- Leads on engagement with internal and external stakeholders.
Knowledge development:
- An expert knowledge and understanding of the 2017 Higher Education and Research Act is developed;
- A thorough knowledge and understanding of the work and operations of the OfS is established.
Delivering and working in a team:
- In the areas for which the post holder is responsible, the outcomes and objectives in the OfS’s business plan are delivered efficiently and effectively;
- The following are delivered: the OfS’s behaviours and values; flexible, agile and collaborative working, including with staff and teams in other directorates.
About you
It is essential to have expert level knowledge in the following key skills:
1) Significant legal experience dealing with many legal practice areas and leading large legal teams, acting as an advisor to boards and senior executives, including as to:
- Public law matters
- Investigation and enforcement in a regulatory context
- Litigation cases involving judicial review and/or regulatory appeals
- UK consumer protection law
- The interpretation of regulatory rules such as licence conditions or equivalent
- The interpretation and application of sector specific legislation which relates to a regulatory body
2) Sensitivity to politics, understanding the needs of, and willingness to work collaboratively with external stakeholders
3) Ability to adopt a creative and innovative approach to legal issues
4) Excellent verbal, written communication and presentation skills
5) Ability to influence and negotiate
Professional qualifications required: Qualified solicitor or barrister with significant post qualification experience.
Application process:
The OfS currently uses a set of ‘enablers’ to evaluate candidate strengths. This is your opportunity to expand on what you have achieved in your career by describing what you’ve done and how you’ve done it. It is here you should use detailed examples to explain how you meet all the requirements of the job description. We are looking for how you made your own contribution to a scenario, why you made that contribution and what was the outcome. Assertions without evidence will, in contrast, make it difficult to evaluate your skills and how you apply them. The enablers for this role are:
Knowledge and Learning
- Leads the team to ensure learning, reflection, understanding and addressing root causes of problems as well as surface issues
- Values others’ contributions and builds their confidence
- Takes responsibility to obtain develop, organise and share knowledge and information that may be of use to others, ensuring that it is accurate and up to date
- Contributes time, knowledge and expertise to corporate activities responsibly, willingly and actively
Planning
- Plans, organises and marshals activities and resources effectively and collaboratively
- Identifies and mitigates risk to plans and delivery
- Manages own workload, resolving competing demands, and coping with changing priorities in a flexible and proactive way
- Demonstrates a readiness to make decisions, take the initiative and originate action, including in circumstances without complete or perfect information
- Contributes pro-actively and positively to thinking and discussions concerning longer term issues affecting one’s area of work and OfS
Communications
- Speech is clear, concise, of appropriate complexity and tailored to the audience. Content of speech is accurate
- Writing is clear, concise, of appropriate complexity and tailored to the audience(s). It follows house style and uses correct grammar. The content of writing is accurate
- Is approachable to others
- Provides actionable technical and professional feedback to individuals on legal matters
- Communicates authoritatively, clearly, fluently and in a compelling manner to individuals and large audiences, using appropriate style and language. Chairs meetings, events, leads and facilitates discussions effectively and with outstanding presentation skills
- Influences, convinces or impresses others in a way that results in acceptance, agreement or behaviour change, using evidenced arguments and clear rationale
Relationships
- Demonstrates a confident, assertive and co-operative style and deals effectively with people at all levels to build positive working relationships
- Maintains credibility with members of the OfS Board, Directors and senior government officials
- Maintains effective work behaviour in the face of setbacks or pressure and remains calm and professional in such circumstances
- Actively contributes to the leadership of the directorate
- Pro-actively seeks to build relationships, enabling others to work well
- Leads and contributes to relationships in ways which create a positive impression of the OfS.
- Uses a partnership approach where appropriate.
Working for us
The OfS regulates the higher education sector on behalf of all students. We value diversity and the wealth of perspectives, experience and ideas that it brings to our work, and we strive to embed equality of opportunity in everything we do.
We recruit based on fair and open competition and welcome applications from candidates regardless of age, disability, race and ethnicity, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation and socio-economic background.
We recruit based on fair and open competition and welcome applications from candidates regardless of age, disability, race and ethnicity, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation and socio-economic background.
Flexibility is important to the OfS, as we recognise that it can enable people to work more effectively. A set of organisation-wide principles shape our approach to flexible and hybrid working, which our teams then use as guidance on how they deliver their business goals. This would usually mean working from the office for two days in a typical week.
To attract the widest possible field of qualified applicants, flexible working, for example job share and part time working, apply to this role.
In addition, our Total Reward Framework offers a range of benefits to suit your way of life. These include comprehensive learning and development, annual leave starting at 25 days’ per year (plus public holidays), access to the highly regarded Civil Service pension scheme and a variety of health benefits.
Closing date for applications: Sunday 11 February
