Joint Head of Legal Services - Legal Aid

Working closely with your co head, you will provide shared leadership to a dynamic social justice team, supporting excellent casework, nurturing staff development, and building strong, values led partnerships. Your remit will include strengthening and growing our legal aid services, securing sustainable funding to support community focused work, and influencing policy and practice to improve access to legal aid for the communities we serve.

Please Note: We do not expect the appointee to generate legal aid income at a multiple of their salary (although we do want to build this area of income initially to at least £25,000 to £30,000 per annum across the team). The role is focused on developing legal aid practice and income across the team, as part of a mixed-income organisational model.

• Support Strategic Development: Contribute to developing the direction and priorities of Release s legal services, including expanding legal aid work and strengthening access to justice.
• Provide Practice Leadership: Support a multidisciplinary team of solicitors, legal advisers and volunteers to deliver excellent, trauma-informed legal support.
• Ensure Quality and Compliance: Help ensure consistent regulatory compliance and quality assurance across legal casework, including legal aid requirements.
• Strengthen and Grow Services: Help develop and improve legal service delivery models, including responding to emerging needs and client priorities.
• Contribute to Systemic Change: Support Release s wider mission by helping connect legal services with policy, research, and advocacy work.

This role is ideal for someone with strong legal aid expertise and management potential, who wants to take a meaningful step into senior leadership whilst continuing to centre client care, justice and harm reduction.

• Minimum 6 years+ post qualified solicitor with a current practising certificate
• Minimum 4 years+ substantial experience in legal aid casework, supervision and/or compliance
• Minimum 2 years+ experience of supervising others and/or management experience
• Substantial experience in public law, housing law, and/or community care law within legal aid practice
• Strong commitment to social justice, harm reduction, and trauma-informed practice

• Experience working in a charity or non profit organisation
• Experience supporting, contributing to, or developing test case work, policy linked casework, or other legal work aimed at achieving wider systemic or community impact, including through indirect, collaborative, or emerging roles
• Understanding of the impact of drug policy and criminalisation on marginalised communities
• Experience in developing new services, partnerships, or funding linked delivery models

We are committed to building a legal services team that reflects the communities we work alongside and embeds equity, inclusion, and accessibility at every level of our organisation. We aim to support people to grow into leadership roles with confidence, recognising that talent and potential are developed through opportunity as much as experience. If you are motivated by community impact, collaboration, and strengthening access to justice through legal aid, we encourage applicants who meet the core requirements to apply, even if their experience does not align with every element of the person specification.

We particularly welcome applications from people with lived experience of marginalisation and from groups currently under represented in senior legal leadership.