/ Legal Practice Unit
Job description: Head of Education Law
Department / Legal Practice Unit
Reporting to / Director of Legal Practice
Direct Reports / All caseworkers undertaking education law work
Location / CCLC’s London office with some travel required to CCLC’s Colchester office
Job Purpose / To lead, manage and develop a successful education law department including the Civil Legal Advice (CLA) function within the department.
To provide legal advice and assistance to young people, parents, carers and other client groups through education law casework and family law casework.
Responsibilities /
  1. To take a leadership approach and as such to line manage and supervise fee-earning staff in the education law department.
  1. To appraise performance of the department as a whole and individual team members in accordance with the Centre’s human resourcing practices.
  1. To monitor and review fee-earning and chargeable hours performance periodically and design and implement individual performance plans as necessary to address underperformance.
  1. To negotiate and manage legal aid contracting requirements concerning the CLA contract for education law and discrimination work, including liaison with the Legal Aid contract manager.
  1. To take responsibility (with support from other staff within the Centre) for the effective operation of the CLA contract, including compliance with the Contract’s Standard Terms and Specification.
  1. To proactively support staff within the education law department to develop their experience and expertise through the giving of supervision, training and information sharing.
  1. To promote and develop the work of the education law department and to take a particular focus on increasing privately paying education law work for the department.
  1. To undertake some marketing and business development initiatives for the benefit of the department, the LPU and the Centre as may be necessary.
  1. To allocate new casework to fee-earners within the department appropriately and taking into account the type of funding, the level of required expertise and individual fee-earning targets.
  1. To train and induct new fee-earners into the department, including training on education law, procedure and legal aid casework/advice requirements.
  1. To actively assist as necessary in recruitment campaigns for the department.
  1. To conduct own education law caseload under supervision and in compliance with the LPU’s procedures.
  1. To record both chargeable and non-chargeable time and to achieve a monthly chargeable hours target.
  1. To meet an annual fee income target, to be monitored on a monthly basis.
  1. To attend and participate in management meetings as requested.