In-House Head of Legal - Litigation

An excellent opportunity for a Head of Legal to join a major purpose led organisation in the Midlands, taking strategic responsibility for its legal services function. This is a genuine opportunity to create and develop the team, leading solicitors and a pre litigation function while acting as a trusted adviser to senior leadership.

Client Details

Our client is a substantial and well established organisation within the housing sector, operating in a highly regulated and increasingly complex environment.

The organisation has a strong focus on delivering excellent outcomes for its customers while continuing to invest in its people, services and communities. Legal Services plays an important strategic role across the business, and this appointment will have significant scope to influence how the function develops, how legal risk is managed and how the wider organisation uses legal insight to make better decisions.

This is an excellent opportunity to join an organisation offering both the scale and complexity of a large commercial environment alongside a clear social purpose.

Description

The Head of Legal will be:

• Providing strategic leadership across Legal Services, ensuring advice is legally robust, commercially sound and aligned with wider organisational priorities
• Leading, developing and shaping a team of solicitors and pre litigation specialists, creating a collaborative and high performing legal function
• Overseeing complex contentious and operational legal matters, including housing litigation, disrepair, tenancy matters, anti social behaviour and commercial disputes
• Managing the organisation's legal risk profile through effective horizon scanning, escalation, mitigation and reporting, while providing strategic advice and constructive challenge to Boards and senior leaders
• Driving continuous improvement across Legal Services, including external counsel management, legal spend, performance measures, technology, processes and the use of data to demonstrate value

Profile

The Head of Legal should be:

• A solicitor or equivalent with at least 6 years PQE and substantial experience operating at a senior level
• An experienced legal leader with a strong track record of managing and developing legal teams and improving the delivery of legal services
• Experienced across litigation, commercial contracts and wider operational legal matters, with social housing or public sector experience advantageous but not essential
• Comfortable providing strategic legal advice and constructive challenge to Boards, Executive Teams and senior stakeholders
• Knowledgeable around regulatory compliance, governance, professional obligations, legal risk and the effective management of external legal advisers
• Commercially minded and able to use case data, costs, outcomes and trends to improve decision making and demonstrate the value delivered by Legal Services
• A strong people manager with the ability to influence, challenge and build relationships across a complex organisation
• Proactive around innovation, technology and process improvement, with the ability to translate legal and regulatory developments into practical business solutions

Job Offer

This is significantly more than a traditional Head of Legal position. You will have the opportunity to shape the future direction of Legal Services, develop the existing team and build a function that has genuine strategic influence across the organisation.

The package includes:

• Salary of £80,000 to £90,000
• Hybrid working
• 27 increasing to 30 days annual leave, plus bank holidays
• Option to purchase up to 5 additional days annual leave each year
• Matched pension contributions of up to 8%
• Life assurance of 4 times annual salary
• Occupational sick pay
• Birthday leave each year
• 24 hour employee assistance programme
• Medicash health cash plan
• Enhanced paid family leave
• Discounted shopping and benefits scheme

For someone looking for genuine ownership and influence, this offers the chance to lead a broad legal function, develop a talented team and play a key role in how a major organisation manages legal and regulatory risk.

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