Description:
We’re searching for an In-House Legal Counsel to join our friendly and hard-working Governance & Compliance division at A2Dominion. This role is for a competent housing management lawyer able to work without supervision, and with a love of the law and zest for ensuring that our client’s properties are fit for purpose and inhabited by those entitled to be doing so. To be successful in this role you will be a qualified lawyer with a right to practice in England and Wales.
Key Responsibilities
Professional
- To act in a way that upholds the rule of law and the proper administration of justice
- To maintain high standards of professional and personal conduct in a way that upholds public trust and confidence in you, the legal profession and in legal services provided by authorised persons
- To act with independence, honesty and integrity, and ensure that your independence is not compromised
- To treat everyone fairly and without prejudice, and to act in a way that encourages equality, diversity and inclusion
- To act competently and in the best interests of your client and respect client confidentiality
Departmental
- Provide specialist legal advice and carry out legal work on behalf of our in house client
- Manage own files from inception to completion
- Take client instructions, and provide legal advice both orally and in writing, and client care/case management generally
- Contribute to the drafting of policy, process and technical guidance on legal issues
- Prepare and deliver in house training in your area of expertise
- Be a trusted business partner, be entrepreneurial, facilitative, commercial and solutions focused. This means staying abreast of legal developments in your area of expertise (and where you’d like to develop) and sharing your knowledge
- Deliver an excellent service to our customers, stakeholders and team members by building strong relationships with colleagues and clients across all business areas, and providing technical expertise and guidance to all including to junior team members
- Manage any work sent out to our external legal framework provider and comply with the process of engaging such work/incurring such costs
- Forecast and capture expenditure accurately, comply with policy before incurring liability for disbursements, and recover such costs whenever possible
Litigation sub-team
- Conduct cross tenure legal work and advocacy (as necessary) on all aspects of housing and property management (and in particular housing management), with the primary aim of providing early cost-effective solutions without recourse to litigation where possible. This includes taking client instructions, and providing legal advice both orally and in writing, and client care generally
- Draft full suite of legal documentation as necessary, including (but not limited to) court applications, pleadings, statements of case/defences, witness statements, settlement agreements, instructions and briefs to counsel, instructions to experts, other legal documents and correspondence and all follow up as required
- Act on client instructions and in particular, negotiate settlements in accordance with their requirements
- Prepare cases for taking to courts and tribunals and ADR, diarising key dates in accordance with departmental requirements, and comply with all deadlines set by the relevant forum
More About You
For this role, we’re looking for someone with the following:
- Educated to degree level or equivalent with relevant post graduate qualification to enable practice at solicitor/CILEx fellow level
- A qualified lawyer (solicitor or CILEx fellow equivalent) with experience in practice – in house and/or private practice
- A strong property background with good working knowledge of all legal tenures, in particular those relating to social housing, Landlord and Tenant, and the work of the Group
- Clear analytical skills, with the ability to process large amounts of information into effective legal proceedings
- Excellent oral and written communication skills, a confident negotiator, with an ability to influence at all levels and explain and put complex legal and technical terms into practical workable solutions