26.121 EO Legal Administrative Assistant

Job summary

DBS has its own growing in-house legal team. This currently consists of 27 members of staff, including 13 qualified lawyers (solicitors and a barrister). The team supports DBS across all its key strategic outputs and delivers a full in-house legal service. This broad range of legal work includes the following:

• Barring appeals litigation in the Upper Tribunal
• Public law matters, including in-house advisory work and judicial review
• Civil litigation
• Operational and policy advice
• GDPR / Data Protection and Freedom of Information matters
• Commercial projects and disputes
• Corporate governance
• Employment matters

If you are ready for a new challenge, have an enthusiastic approach and enjoy working collaboratively with colleagues within the legal team and across the wider organisation, then we would be delighted to hear from you.

Job description

You will be joining the DBS Legal Services Team at an exciting time as it develops and grows. Our objective is to continue building and developing a Legal Team that is recognised and engaged as a crucial partner in the delivery of the DBS’ functions. You will work collaboratively and proactively with colleagues from various teams, building relationships and confidence in the Legal Services Team. This role will offer you varied, challenging, and rewarding work in a professional and fast-paced environment.

You will provide administrative support to the DBS Legal Services Team, including:

• Supporting the lawyers in the Team wherever possible
• Collating and reviewing documentation
• Drafting basic internal and external correspondence
• Assisting with the preparation of instructions to law firms/counsel
• Liaising with external advisers
• Engaging with DBS colleagues to ensure that advice queries are dealt with in a timely manner
• Maintaining and updating the Legal Case Management System, other data bases and spreadsheets
• Raising purchase orders and complying with financial processes for the provision of external legal services
• Checking invoices and ensuring payment is made in a timely manner
• Managing the data retention of files, and the process for the destruction of files
• Reviewing the Legal Services Team inbox and ensuring that matters are signposted to allocated lawyers

Work flexibly and undertake such other duties appropriate to the level of the post that may reasonably be required.

Resources

• The Job holder will have support from other members of the Legal Services Team

Accountability

• The Job holder will report directly to the Legal Support Officer and be supervised by individual lawyers in the Team

Other Information

The role is for a fixed term to cover maternity leave until the end of October 2027.

The role may require occasional travel between the Liverpool and Darlington DBS sites, with the possibility of overnight stays.

Person specification

ESSENTIAL CRITERIA

Ability

• Ability to communicate effectively and efficiently, with good client care skills
• Good written communication skills to the level required for the preparation of legal correspondence
• Excellent attention to detail and accuracy
• Ability to work flexibly
• Ability to prioritise and manage a varied workload
• Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced team
• Excellent organisational skills

Experience

• A background in providing support in a legal environment
• Experience of using all Microsoft Office packages, particularly Excel

DESIRABLE CRITERIA

Ability

• Ability to conduct legal research

Experience

• Experience of working with a legal case management system

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Managing a Quality Service
• Seeing the Big Picture
• Delivering at Pace

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £30,993, Disclosure & Barring Service contributes £8,978 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

The DBS offers a number of excellent benefits for its employees. These can include:

• Generous annual leave entitlement
• Excellent maternity, paternity and adoption schemes (after a qualifying period)
• Commitment to the health and wellbeing of our employees
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Flexible working opportunities
• Eyecare voucher scheme
• Occupational Health Service including referrals for counselling and physiotherapy
• 24/7 Counselling and Wellbeing Service
• A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

The DBS vision and purpose is to make people safer by being a visible, trusted and influential organisation, providing an outstanding quality of service to all our customers and partners, where our people understand the important safeguarding contributions they make and feel proud to work here. To do this, the DBS is committed to being an employer that is able to attract, develop, retain and engage diverse talent that is representative of the communities we serve, and to be an organisation providing outstanding service to all our existing and new customers, who are diverse and have a range of different needs. We want all our staff to be able to bring their ‘whole self’ to work.

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.

To apply for this role, please provide a CV along with a Personal Statement of no more than 500 words, outlining how your skills and experiences meet the requirements of the role. This should include all essential and desirable criteria and the key responsibilities. In addition, you will also be required to provide examples for the following behaviours, Managing a Quality Service, Seeing the Big Picture and Delivering at Pace.

For all candidates who are successful at the initial sifting stage, you will be invited to attend a behaviour based interview process. The interview will be conducted via MS Teams and will be separated into 2 parts:

Part 1: Practical exercise which you will be required to complete under timed supervision. This will be measured against the essential criteria. You will undertake this exercise