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Form of work
SalaryJob Introduction
Staffordshire County Council is a modern, progressive, and forward-thinking authority that is ambitious and empowers its employees to be courageous and innovative in their approach.
Staffordshire Legal Services is a large in-house corporate legal team, offering a significant breadth of experience and expertise. We support and retain our lawyers, trainees and support staff by offering a wide variety of work, an extensive benefits package and offering training and mentoring to aide their progression. We want everyone to enjoy their work, feel challenged and appreciated for what they do and to make a positive difference to the lives of the people of Staffordshire. People are often unaware that Legal Services support the Council to fulfil every function when delivering its agenda and priorities, in addition to the Staffordshire pension fund, and a wide range of external clients. This keeps the work interesting, challenging and often high value and high profile.
We genuinely recognise the benefit of achieving the right work life balance and our extensive package of benefits support this. Lots of organisations offer this however our staff survey reliably informs us that our work ethos truly delivers this. Our package includes a generous holiday entitlement, increasing significantly with service, and an additional annual leave purchase scheme. Flexible and term time only working, agile working, employee travel and entertainment discounts, a local government pension scheme, optional car lease scheme and a staff parking discount scheme. We also offer family friendly polices such as maternity, adoption, paternity, and parental leave.
Main Responsibility
This is an exciting opportunity for the right candidate to support in our fast-paced, Contentious Teams, with extremely varied and interesting work. The post holder will generally support senior colleagues to carry out their duties in Insurance, Education, Debt Recovery and Litigation by carrying out administrative tasks including the following:
- Education – undertaking various legal and case related tasks, assisting with the delivery of the school’s advice service and undertaking research when required,
- Insurance – reviewing and progressing general correspondence, monitoring, and extracting data from the client’s internal systems, collating disclosure, reviewing medical records and processing payment requests,
- Litigation/Debt Recovery - general administrative work including file opening/closing, preparation of bundles, undertaking initial review of debts, drafting legal documentation in straight forward claims, liaising with court, client and debtors to recover debts, identifying and briefing counsel and supporting with enforcement and prosecutions.
- Ensuring strict adherence to the Staffordshire Legal Service’ quality standards (Lexcel)
- Handling confidential data sensitively and securely in accordance with policy.
The Ideal Candidate
We are looking for a Paralegal/Legal Officer with:
- A basic understanding of law relating to the above contentious areas,
- An understanding of the work done by this public sector service,
- Strong organisational skills,
- An ability to clearly, confidently and effectively communicate,
- Meticulous attention to detail and an ability to use own initiative,
- Effective time management, prioritisation skills and an ability to work under the demands of competing pressures.
If you are unsure if your skills and experience are suitable for this role or for an informal chat please contact Sam Gibson, Deputy Legal Services Manager on 01785 276396 or at sam.gibson@staffordshire.gov.uk.
About Staffordshire County Council
We are no ordinary county council:
Our Values:
The core of who we are as an organisation. Just like we all have personal values that shape our thoughts and behaviour, organisational values drive how we think and act collectively.
Our values were created and shaped by colleague feedback and national best practice and they sit at the heart of People Strategy:
We have a real sense of community spirit that brings our people together. This feeling of belonging means we are all connected to what we do and take pride in the difference we make every day for Staffordshire people. We are ambitious and our sights are set firmly on a better future.
We look forward and race ahead - that goes for your career too.
Our benefits:
We recognise that it is our employees that are central to everything we do. We aim to create a supportive working environment where employees can achieve their full potential and achieve a healthy work-life balance.
In addition to your salary, as a member of staff, you will have access to a range of benefits.
Our recruitment process:
As an Authority we are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people/vulnerable adults and expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.
Staffordshire County Council is an equal opportunities organisation and Disability Confident employer. We encourage applications from all background and communities
As part of our commitment as a Disability Confident employer, a Silver Award Armed Forces employer and our commitment to supporting care leavers - we offer a guaranteed interview as long as your application meets the minimum criteria for the post.
