Lawyer (or Legal Officer- up to 1 years PQE) - Bristol BS2 0EL

Lawyer (or Legal Officer- up to 1 years PQE) - Bristol BS2 0EL About the job
Job summary
Discover a career in your hands at HMRC. Whether you're seeking purpose, growth, or a workplace that gives you a true sense of belonging, hear from some of our employees as they share their story about what it's really like to work at HMRC.
Visit our YouTube channel to watch the full series and come and discover your potential.
At HMRC we are committed to creating a great place to work for all our colleagues; an inclusive and respectful environment that reflects the diversity of the society we serve.
We want to maximise the potential of everyone who chooses to work for us and we offer a range of flexible working patterns and support to make a fulfilling career at HMRC accessible to you.
Diverse perspectives and experiences are critical to our success and we welcome applications from all people from all backgrounds with the experience and skills needed to perform this role.
HMRC Solicitor's Office and Legal Service (SOLS) gives legal advice on issues arising from HMRC's work and conducts HMRC's litigation. Our work impacts the lives of millions, as we help to collect the money that pays for the UK's public services and provide targeted financial support to families and individuals. We have around 1572 people including lawyers, tax professionals, advocates, paralegals and administrators. Our strength is in our diverse people and the inclusive working culture that brings us together.
We work in supportive, specialist teams, that handle a broad range of different areas of law including general public law (human rights, administrative law, freedom of information) tax law, commercial law, insolvency law, information law and criminal law, employer's liability for personal injury, focusing on either policy and operational advisory work or litigation.
Job description
Why HMRC?
Things at HMRC probably don't work the way you'd think.
Tired of constant 60-hour plus weeks and the corporate grind?
Would you like to work on complex legal issues that make a positive difference to the nation's finances? If you're nodding your head reading this, you've come to the right place.
We offer hybrid working, with a 60% average office attendance (and court time is counted as office hours), actual flexitime and genuine work-life balance alongside fascinating technical work.
Advisory Lawyers
Our advisory lawyers give advice on the interpretation and application of legislation. This includes advising HMRC and Treasury ministers on a wide variety of taxes, including business tax, personal tax, customs, excise, environmental taxes and VAT law. We also advise on other issues, such as welfare, insolvency, information law and international law and treaties. Our advice encompasses areas of public and administrative law. We implement policy through primary and secondary legislation, including through the annual Finance Bill. We support policy colleagues at all stages of the parliamentary process as well as drafting a high volume of statutory instruments.
Our commercial lawyers give advice on high value and complex public procurement and contractual commercial legal issues within government. This includes providing legal support to HMRC's largest transformation programmes including IT and Estates. We support HMRC's day to day banking and general commercial operations, including all aspects of commercial contracts, intellectual property rights, public procurement and state aid, contract and supplier management, and dispute resolution.
Our criminal lawyers give advice and support to investigators and policy makers, supporting HMRC's tax enforcement activity in investigating serious complex fraud and other criminal non-compliance.
Litigation Lawyers
Our litigation lawyers conduct litigation across the full range of HMRC work. We litigate some of the most challenging and important high value, complex Government litigation. These include big money tax cases and cases ranging from resisting judicial review challenges to litigating civil cases against those who benefit from the proceeds of crime. Our cases will often involve novel and challenging points of law and contribute to developing the interpretation of the law. We regularly litigate through the higher courts to the Supreme Court.
Who are we looking for?
We are recruiting qualified lawyers and we would like you to apply whatever level of experience you have.
We have vacancies for lawyers in both our advisory and litigation work. You do not need any existing knowledge of our work or tax experience. We will give you training and support to develop your knowledge and expertise and you can expect to move teams within our diverse practice every few years to build up your skills and experience.
If you have already developed a specialism in any of our work areas, we'd be keen to know about that, so please tell us about it in your application form. Please bear in mind that you will be offered a role in order of merit and not necessarily within your specialism.
Diversity, inclusion and equality
We want everyone to feel valued, supported and comfortable being their true self at work. We are proud to be a diverse and inclusive employer, supporting social mobility and giving opportunities to people no matter what their background. That's why we have several staff diversity networks including race, disability, LGBTQ, gender and carers. You'll be able join any of these networks (and more as part of HMRC) when you join us and getting involved is easy.
When you join us, you join a friendly and helpful community. We'll give you the support you need to grow in confidence, help you enjoy your time inside and outside the workplace ensuring you have a good work-life balance. We believe that we are a great place to work.
For more information on our diversity networks see page 7 of the "Your Little Extras and Big Benefits" booklet.
Disability Confident Scheme
We run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria. If you consider yourself to have a disability as defined by the Equality Act 2010, you can apply under that scheme.
We'll invite you to attend an interview if you:
• Meet all aspects of the eligibility criteria.
• Meet the standard set in the online tests and against any job specific criteria.
Person specification
You must ensure that you meet all the eligibility criteria listed below. Our application form will ask you to show this.
Academic
You need to have a minimum of a 2:1 degree in your first degree (in any subject). If you hold an overseas degree qualification this should be equivalent to a 2.1 degree.
If you have a lower degree classification (or do not hold a degree), we may consider your application but only if you can provide satisfactory evidence of an equivalent high level academic and/or professional achievement.
For example, if you can tell us that you have:
• Significant relevant experience
• A commendation or distinction in the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL)/CPE or the Legal Practice Course (LPC)
• An LLM or other postgraduate degree
• Very competent on the Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC) or
• An overall average score of 65% or above across exams passed in the seven foundation subjects in law (where studied at CILEx level 6): contract law, criminal law, equity and trusts law, European Union Law, land law, public law and law of tort
We won't be able to provide you with a supervisor for CILEX training.
Professional Qualifications
You need to be qualified as a Solicitor or Barrister or Chartered Legal Executive in England and Wales (or that you will be qualified within 3 months from the date that the advert closes).
Solicitors, Barristers or Chartered Legal Executives must have completed a training contract/pupillage/qualifying employment or have been exempted from this by the Law Society, the Bar Council or CILEx. Chartered Legal Executives must have a Qualifying Law Degree or have completed the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL)/CPE or have passed exams (i.e. a score of 50% or above achieved) at CILEx Level 6, in all the seven foundation subjects in law: contract law, criminal law, equity and trusts law, European Union Law, land law, public law and law of tort.
If you are a qualified lawyer in a jurisdiction outside England and Wales, we need you to become qualified in England and Wales within 2 years of starting employment with us, and your employment will be conditional upon you successfully becoming qualified within this time. This may cause you some cost. Further information on qualification is available from the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and the Bar Standards Board (BSB).
As noted above, you only need to be in an office location on average for 60% of your time. However, HMRC welcomes applications from those who need to work a more flexible arrangement and will agree to requests where possible, taking into account our operational and customer service needs. We can't guarantee that we can meet all requests to work flexibly, as agreement will be subject to business ability to accommodate, and any request to work a more flexible arrangement should be made prior to your acceptance of the provisional offer.
We may offer you a post in any of the locations you select, please only list those places where you would be prepared to work.
Your office location is contractual so if you are successful, there is an expectation that you will attend that office location as required by the business. You need to consider how you will meet this requirement before you apply and discuss any concerns with the vacancy holder before accepting any role.
For some roles there may be an occasional need to travel in the UK or abroad, including overnight stays.
Essential Criteria:
You need to be qualified as a Solicitor or Barrister or Chartered Legal Executive in England and Wales (or that you will be qualified within 3 months from the date that the advert closes).
Qualifications
You need to be qualified as a Solicitor or Barrister or Chartered Legal Executive in England and Wales (or that you will be qualified within 3 months from the date that the advert closes).
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Working Together
• Communicating and Influencing
• Managing a Quality Service

Technical skills
We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• We will ask you to complete an online written exercise to test your Legal Skills by a deadline. We will give you all the necessary information, including about the relevant law, to enable you to complete this.
• We will ask you questions based on the same legal scenario but following the provision of additional information, at interview.

Benefits
Alongside your salary of £44,110, HM Revenue and Customs contributes £12,778 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.
HMRC operates both Flexible and Hybrid Working policies, allowing you to balance your work and personal commitments. We welcome applications from those who need to work a more flexible arrangement and will agree to requests where possible, considering our operational and customer service needs.
We offer a generous leave allowance, starting at 25 days and increasing by a day for every year of qualifying service up to a maximum of 30 days.

• Pension - We make contributions to our colleagues' Alpha pension equal to at least 28.97% of their salary.
• Family friendly policies.
• Personal support.
• Coaching and development.

To find out more about HMRC benefits and find out what it's really like to work for HMRC hear from our insiders or visit Thinking of joining the Civil Service.
Things you need to know
Selection process details
This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.
To check that you are eligible to apply for this role, please review the eligibility information before submitting your application.
We hope that you will apply and to do so you will need to register your interest and send your application. If you meet our minimum eligibility criteria, we will ask you to complete an online behaviour and cognitive assessment by a deadline.
If you meet the required standard, we'll ask you to complete an online written exercise to test your Legal Skills by a deadline. We will give you all the necessary information, including about the relevant law, to enable you to complete this. If you pass the written exercise, we'll invite you to interview by a video conference call. If you do not have access to video with audio availability, we may withdraw you from the process.
We reserve the right to raise the score required at any stage of the process in order to manage numbers.
To apply: Please click here
Interview
At interview, we'll assess Technical: Legal Skills, Behaviour: Communicating and Influencing, Behaviour: Working Together, Behaviour: Managing a Quality Service, Behaviour: Motivational Fit. We will also ask you about your motivation for the job. You will be asked questions at interview based on the legal scenario provided for the written exercise.
If you are successful, we'll appoint you to the most suitable vacancy available at the time of our offer. We may hold a reserve list if we have more successful candidates after interview than we have available vacancies.
Reserve List
A reserve list may be held for up to 12 months from which further appointments may be made for the same or similar roles.
Criminal Record Check
Applications received from candidates with a criminal record are considered fairly in accordance with the DBS Code of Practice and the Recruitment of ex-offenders Policy.
Merit List
After interview, a single merit list will be created, and you will only be considered for posts in locations you have expressed a preference for. Appointments will be made in strict merit order in line with the set number of roles in each location.
Reasonable Adjustments
We want to make sure no one is put at a disadvantage during our recruitment process. To assist you with this, we will reduce or remove any barriers where possible and provide additional support where appropriate.
If you need a change to be made so that you can make your application, you should:

• Contact email as soon as possible before the closing date to discuss your needs.

Complete the "Assistance required" section in the "Additional requirements" page of your application form to tell us what changes or help you might need further on in the recruitment process. For instance, you may need wheelchair access at interview, or if you're deaf, a Language Service Professional.
Diversity and Inclusion
Diverse perspectives and experiences are critical to our success at HMRC, and we welcome applications from all people, from all backgrounds, with the experience and skills needed to perform this role.
We're committed to creating a great place to work for all our colleagues, and we want everyone to feel valued and supported to achieve their potential.
Click here for more information on how we make this happen.
Important information for existing HMRC contractual homeworkers:
This role may be suitable for existing HMRC employees who are contractual homeworkers. Occasional attendance to the office will be required where there is a business need. Please consider the advertised office locations for this role when applying and only select locations from the 'location preferences' section that you can travel to.
Terms and Conditions
Customer facing roles in HMRC require the ability to converse at ease with members of the public and provide advice in accurate spoken English and/or Welsh where required. Where this is an essential requirement, this will be tested as part of the selection process.
HMRC has a presence in every region of the UK. For more information on where you might be working, review this information on our locations.
The Civil Service values honesty and integrity and expects all candidates to abide by these principles. The evidence you provide in your application must relate to your own experiences.
Any instances of plagiarism or other forms of cheating will be investigated and, if proven, the relevant application(s) will be withdrawn from the process.
Recording of interviews is prohibited unless explicit agreement is sought in line with the UK General Data Protection Regulations.
Questions relating to an individual application must be emailed as detailed later in this advert.
Applicants who are successful at interview will be, as part of pre-employment screening, subject to a check on the Internal Fraud Database (IFD). This check will provide information about employees who have been dismissed for fraud or dishonesty offences. This check also applies to employees who resign or otherwise leave before being dismissed for fraud or dishonesty had their employment continued. Any applicant's details held on the IFD will be refused employment.
A candidate is not eligible to apply for a role within the Civil Service if the application is made within a 5 year period following a dismissal for carrying out internal fraud against government.
New entrants will join on the minimum of the pay band.
If you experience accessibility problems with any attachments on this advert, please contact the email address in the 'Contact point for applicants' section.
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
Security
Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.
People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.
Nationality requirements
This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)
Working for the Civil Service
The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.
We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).
The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.
The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.
Diversity and Inclusion
The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

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