Senior Lawyer, Employment

JOB BAND: E

CONTRACT TYPE: Permanent, Full-time.

DEPARTMENT: Employment Law, BBC Legal.

LOCATION: London Broadcasting House – Hybrid - the Employment Law Team works a minimum of Tuesdays and Wednesdays from the office and then, subject to team needs and work permitting, the remaining time from home.

PROPOSED SALARY RANGE: £85,900 - £95,000pa plus London Weighting (£5,441pa), depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience. The expected salary range for this role reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights.

We're happy to discuss flexible working. If you'd like to, please indicate your preference in the application – though there's no obligation to do so now. Flexible working will be part of the discussion at offer stage.

There is potential for this role to be offered on a four day week basis, with flexibility on the fifth day, subject to Tribunal or key meetings.

PURPOSE OF THE ROLE

Join our highly skilled Employment Law team, providing expert UK legal advice on employment law across the BBC. The BBC’s employment lawyers are responsible for providing a high quality legal advisory service for senior managers and HR professionals across the BBC and its commercial subsidiaries. The work is challenging and fast moving.

The BBC is seeking a skilled and experienced Senior Employment Lawyer to join our team of employment lawyers to complement the experience of the existing team and provide expert UK legal advice on employment law.

WHY JOIN THE TEAM

Working within the BBC’s legal division, reporting to the Legal Director, Employment Law, you will be providing advice on a variety of issues. This will include autonomously handling employment litigation cases, and advising on grievances and disciplinaries, redundancy, discrimination and equal pay, whistleblowing and TUPE.

You will work with senior stakeholders, offering strategic advice on complex employment law challenges facing the BBC, including matters involving the highest editorial, financial, operational, regulatory and reputational risk.

This role would suit a specialist employment lawyer from a leading employment firm or in-house team. Whilst the BBC is open to considering applicants of any qualification, the role on offer would suit a lawyer with a minimum of five years' PQE.

YOUR KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND IMPACT:

As Senior Lawyer , you will:

• Provide accurate, timely and practical expert legal advice and guidance on complex areas of UK employment law to senior management, HR colleagues and other stakeholders, to effectively drive and manage complex workplace investigations, disputes and advice on employment-related policies and procedures.
• Analyse, synthesise and present complex legal matters and risks to key stakeholders including senior management.
• Collaborate with colleagues in the team and across the BBC, including senior stakeholders, to develop and implement strategic legal solutions.
• Advise on a wide range of complex employment issues, including grievances and disciplinaries processes, contractual disputes, ill-health, bullying, harassment and discrimination, TUPE and contentious work including Employment Tribunal litigation, whilst working in a high profile work environment.
• Work unsupervised, able to act and make difficult judgements calmly and consistently when stretched, facing change or under pressure and referring upwards as required.
• Possess excellent communication, leadership and interpersonal skills, with interest and commitment in providing support and developing and overseeing the work of more junior members of the legal team and others in the team, overseeing complex matters as required.

YOUR SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

ESSENTIAL CRITERIA:

• A UK- qualified lawyer with a current practising certificate, good academics and a good track record in and knowledge of employment law. You will be a solicitor specialising in employment law, with substantial experience with a leading law firm and/or specialist employment team.
• Experienced in advising and/or working autonomously on a range of varied, challenging and high quality employment legal matters (including experience in handling employment tribunal cases from start to finish, and advising on TUPE), with relevant experience in handling UK contentious employment disputes.
• A track record of providing proactive, expert, timely and authoritative day-to-day employment law legal advice and support to senior leaders and key decision-makers at the highest levels, with the ability to analyse and clarify complex issues and concepts for non-lawyers at all levels of an organisation. This will be supported by strong communication skills, both written and verbal.
• You’ll be a team player, able to work supportively as a team member and to build and manage relationships at all levels
• Highly organised you will be able to manage diverse workstreams, documents, and apply complex analytical and problem solving skills under pressure.

DESIRED BUT NOT REQUIRED:

• This role would suit 5 years’ Post Qualified Experience plus
• Ideally, experience in public law and judicial review work.
• Previous experience in the Media industry.
• Previous experience in-house

If you can bring some of these skills and experience, along with transferable strengths, we’d love to hear from you and encourage you to apply.

Before your start date, you may need to disclose any unspent convictions or police charges, in line with our Contracts of Employment policy. This allows us to discuss any support you may need and assess any risks. Failure to disclose may result in the withdrawal of your offer.

CS25

Disclaimer

This is a written statement of the essential characteristics of the job, with its principal accountabilities, incorporating a note of the skills, knowledge and experience required for a satisfactory level of performance. This is not intended to be a complete, detailed account of all aspects of the duties involved.

Please note: If you were to be offered this role, the BBC will conduct Employment screening checks which include Reference checks; Eligibility to work checks; and if applicable to the role, Safeguarding and Adverse media/Social media checks. Any offer made is conditional on these checks being satisfactory.

For any general queries, please contact: [email protected]

Redeployment

The BBC is committed to redeploying employees seeking suitable alternative employment within the BBC and they will be given priority consideration ahead of other applicants. Priority consideration means for those employees seeking redeployment their application will be considered alongside anyone else at risk of redundancy, prior to any individuals being considered who are not at risk.