Professional Support Lawyer

Please note that this role will close at 00:01 on Tuesday 29 September, and therefore we advise getting your application in by no later than midnight on Monday 28 September.

Salary: £93,000 - £109,000 depending on experience, with an excellent benefits package.

As the UK’s communications regulator, we’re delivering vital work that helps keep the UK connected.

Our work covers everything from phones and broadband, through to TV, radio, the postal service, and wireless devices. We’re also taking on the challenge of making the online world a safer place. And we need people of all backgrounds, skill sets, and experiences to help us achieve our goal of making communications work for everyone.

The Legal team is part of Ofcom’s Legal & Enforcement Group. We are a friendly, diverse team of around 100 qualified lawyers predominantly based in our London, Manchester and Edinburgh offices. We bring together a range of backgrounds and specialisms to provide first‑class, proactive legal advice and support across the whole organisation.

Working closely with colleagues from multiple professions – including policy specialists, economists and technologists – we help to create, implement and enforce communications regulation and provide legal advice on Ofcom’s key decisions.

The team comprises Ofcom’s general counsel, legal directors, legal principals, senior associates, associates, plus a paralegal, apprentices and a small number of non-legal administrative assistants.

We have seen rapid expansion as a team over recent years. The majority of our lawyers are based in Ofcom’s London head office, but we have growing teams in our Manchester and Edinburgh offices. Our Manchester office is 4 years old and now home to a team of 17 lawyers. They are part of our wider Manchester office community of over 170 colleagues who work across a range of Ofcom’s specialisms including online safety and technology.

We also have a team of 11 lawyers in Edinburgh who work closely with colleagues locally, on policy areas including online safety, infrastructure and competition, and across Ofcom’s wider offices.

Legal work at Ofcom spans regulatory and competition matters, consumer issues, communications, media, technology, online safety, data protection, litigation, and public law. These matters are often the subject of political and public interest and debate and have the potential to raise new and significant points of law.

As our remit and team expand, we are looking for someone to establish a professional support function for the first time. You will be an integral part of the legal team, providing professional support to lawyers working on matters across the full spectrum of Ofcom’s work and across our offices. We are open to the role being carried out on either a full time or part time basis.

This is an exciting opportunity to use your existing skills and experience to design and build a professional support function. While there is scope to make the role your own, key responsibilities include:

• Leading the training programme for the legal team, including identifying training needs, co‑ordinating training delivery, budget management and liaising with Ofcom’s central learning and development function and external training providers. Our lawyers also provide some training to the wider organisation, and the role would also include managing this programme.
• Establishing systems and processes to co‑ordinate the collection and sharing of legal know how across the team, for both new and existing lawyers.
• Supporting colleagues’ professional development, including their awareness of legal developments relevant to our remit.
• Identifying ways of…