Just for Kids Law exists to work with and for children and young people to hold those with power to account and fight for wider reform. We do this by providing legal representation and advice and through strategic litigation, policy influencing and campaigning.
Our Legal Team is a busy team of working in the fields of Youth Justice (Crime), Community Care and Public Law. In 2024 the Legal Team dealt with 306 matters. We work with our Policy & Campaigns Team to bring attention to the experiences and voices of the young people we support.
The Head of Civil Litigation will be based in JfKL’s Multi-Disciplinary Legal Team. As well as maintaining and managing a caseload the post holder is responsible for leadership and management of JfKL’s Civil Litigation Team, including developing and delivering case strategies, conducting strategic litigation, and ensuring all casework undertaken within the team is conducted to the highest possible standard and in compliance with professional rules and regulations and the Civil Legal Aid Contract. Supported by SLT they will be key in the development of Strategic Litigation and relevant external-facing activities
Role Summary
Contract term: Full Time, permanent
Location: Central London with a mix of office and homeworking
Hours: 1.0 FTE (35 hours per week)
Salary: £46,063 – £51,821 depending on experience in a directly equivalent role
Probation period: 6 months
Detailed responsibility and person specification can be found here.
Just for Kids Law believes in the value of a diverse workforce and encourages applications from people from all ethnic, cultural, religious, and social backgrounds: in particular, people from BAME, LGBTQI+ communities. We strive to create a diverse working environment where anyone, regardless of background, can thrive.
Responsibilities:
Leadership
- Providing and Supervising High Quality Advice and Representation for clients.
- Supervising and Co-ordinating delivery of the Civil Legal Aid Contract
- Supervising the delivery of our representation of JfKL as a Core Participant in the Covid Inquiry
- Ensuring team financial targets are met and matters are billed timely
- Coordinating reporting requirements for reporting on your strand of work
- Contributing to fundraising applications and the fundraising process
- Ensuring that there are effective systems within the Civil Litigation Team for identifying and meeting deadlines and key dates, maximizing Legal Aid income and managing, reporting and billing files efficiently
- Contributing to creating a culture of continuous learning
- Working with the Co-Lead and Director of CRAE in the achievement of the organisation’s policy objectives through Civil Litigation
Casework & Litigation
- Providing high quality advice and representation for individual clients with a high degree of professionalism, and conducting work in such a way as to meet relevant external standards (e.g. Specialist Quality Mark, SRA, Law Society etc)
- Conducting strategic, complex and sometimes high-profile litigation on behalf of clients and JFKL, using legal aid and other sources of funding
- Analysing complex factual and legal situations and advising as to the way forward
- Creating a culture of client care in terms of service delivery
- Maintaining a caseload of a reasonable size in order to meet team financial targets
- Ensuring that all time recording is entered onto the JFKL Case Management System to enable accurate reporting and maximize income
- Undertaking billing in a timely and appropriate way to ensure regular cash flow to JFKL
- Providing authoritative public law advice and information to organisations and others, including delivering training, public speaking and contributing to publications
Cross-organisational team working
- Acting as an active member of JfKL management, attending meetings and representing the Civil Litigation Team as required
- Developing and promoting Civil Litigation and, with SLT, contributing to strategic discussions and decisions about direction of Civil Litigation
- Leading on Civil Litigation’s contribution to cross organisational communications, campaign and other projects
- Advising other staff within the wider JFKL team on issues relating to their clients where these have a Civil Litigation component.
- Acting as external facing lead and ambassador for Civil Litigation work across the organisation including facilitating training both internally and externally in training events and conferences as required
- Work closely with the Policy and Campaigning Team to report trends arising from your work and contribute ideas. This may involve taking the lead in preparing draft written responses to particular issues on JfKL’s behalf, for approval by the relevant SLT members and representing JfKL at external meetings with government officials or parliamentarians where appropriate
General responsibilities
- Working with the Co-Leads in the preparation of funding applications and requirements
- Proactively generating new clients
- Attending and participating in internal, external meetings as required including meetings outside of normal working hours where necessary
- Being a positive, cooperative, and constructive team member, upholding the values of JfKL
- Complying with JFKL’s monitoring and recording requirements both internally for Co-Leads/Board and externally for Funders, Stakeholders and the Legal Aid Agency
- Ensuring compliance with the Solicitors Regulation Authority, BSB and OISC requirements where appropriate. Including maintaining a Personal Competence record of all objectives in terms of training and development needs and any courses or training undertaken to evidence compliance
- Representing and promoting the organisation’s work positively
- Carrying out all work with due regard to JfKL’s policies and procedures
- Promoting Equality and Diversity principles in all aspects of work
Requirements
- Understanding of the Legal System and Civil Litigation
- Good knowledge of domestic and international human rights and EU law and their application in practice, including judicial review.
- Good understanding and experience of the legal system for children and young people and strategic litigation.
- Knowledge, understanding and/or experience of strategic litigation.
- Experiencing of working in the voluntary sector and preferably in an organisation that does campaigning and influencing
- Experience of conducting civil litigation
- Experience of managing a litigation caseload
- Experience of management or supervision of a Legal Team.
- Experience of devising and implementing strategic litigation plans
- Experience, within the last 5 years, of litigation in the context of issues involving Public Law principles
- Experience of meeting case management standards
- Understanding of different costs regimes and maximising of costs
- Experience of training staff on legal and procedural issues
Qualifications and training
- Legal qualification (Barrister/Solicitor)
- Eligible to act as a Supervisory Lawyer according to SRA and LAA and any other requirements
How to Apply
To apply, return a completed application form and equal opportunities monitoring form to humanresources@justforkidslaw.org
Application Deadline: 11:59pm Monday 10th February 2025
Interview date: To be confirmed
If you have any questions about the roles or the recruitment process, please get in touch at humanresources@justforkidslaw.org