Job Description
The Education team support children, pupils and students throughout their academic journey, from primary school through to further and higher education. We cover matters such as school admission appeals, exclusions, complaints, Special Educational Needs, discrimination, academic misconduct, non-academic misconduct, issues regarding PhDs and Fitness to Practise.
Job Purpose
This role is to provide senior level assistance and support to the team leader (Consultant), and the team of solicitors in the Education team. At an operational level this role will be about working as a senior solicitor, with your own caseload, and supporting the current team of fee earners in managing the smooth running of their own case loads.
Principal Responsibilities
Provide a high-quality legal service to clients of the firm to include processing new and existing instructions, covering all aspects of education law work. The range of work is broad and will cover work from parents, in respect of their children at primary school, secondary school and independent school, through to young adults at university. You will work on matters related to:
- School admissions
- Discrimination
- Disputes with Independent Schools
- Safeguarding
- School complaints
- Special Educational Needs
- School Suspensions and Exclusions
- Transgender questioning
- Academic Misconduct
- Plagiarism
- Non Academic Misconduct
- Complaints to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator
- Degree Classification issues
- Fitness to Practise
- PhD issues
- International Students
Person Specification
Qualifications
- Educated to degree level (with a 2:1 or above) with a strong LPC pass or equivalent and hold a current unencumbered practising certificate from the SRA.
Skills and Experiences
- Indicatively, 4 + years post qualification experience in this area of legal work
- Good technical grounding in this area of law.
- Any following/ local connections (an advantage).
- A passion for this practice area.
- Flexible with the ability to work to tight deadlines whilst maintaining the highest quality standards and attention to details.
- IT literate and self-sufficient in using document management systems, MS Office and the internet as a business tool. The candidate must demonstrates a desire to embrace technology.
- Previous experience of managing and leading people within a team; supporting junior members of the team in developing and widening their own career progression and legal experience.
- A clear awareness of the need to develop business, with experience in marketing, demonstrating an ability to attract work and exploit opportunities.