Childcare Legal Assistant

The Opportunity

West Sussex County Council are looking for a legal assistant to join our experienced and motivated team. As part of the role, you will have the opportunity to undertake an appropriate qualification process to qualify as a legal executive or solicitor (with both financial assistance towards the CILEX/CPQ/SQE or any other equivalent legal qualification, fees considered and study leave).

**Salary**: £27,254 to £35,412 per annum

**Working Pattern**: Full-time, 37 hours per week. Flexible working considered.

**Location**: Your office base will be County Hall, Chichester. This is a hybrid/remote working role with any working from home arrangements being at the discretion and agreement with your manager.

**Interview Date**:29 and 30 September 2025

As a Legal Assistant you will be working in the Childcare Team supporting and co working with a Childcare Lawyer who has case conduct of Care Proceedings, Public Law Outline and other Public Law cases. Your role will impact on the future wellbeing and circumstances of individual children and families in West Sussex. In this position you will play a key role in enabling Children Services of ensuring the safety and security of children across West Sussex.

Prior relevant legal experience of working in a Childcare team is required and a legal qualification preferable.

You will become part of our 40 strong Child Care legal team. You will work in an accommodating and dynamic environment supported by a senior management team including 1 Principal Solicitor and 4 Senior Solicitors. Legal assistants can achieve their full potential as we strive for a healthy work-life balance and ensure you are rewarded for the work you do. This is an excellent opportunity for an ambitious and developing legal assistant/legal executive to come on board and benefit from the team’s wide-ranging expertise.

Experience and skills

**Key Skills**:

- Ability to communicate effectively both verbally and in writing with a diverse range of colleagues, clients and external Third Parties e.g. The Judiciary, Court staff, external Solicitors, Barrister’s Chambers and experts. To have confident presentational skills.
- Analytical and judgemental skills to interpret complex information in order to effectively deal with arranging court cases and meetings, complete legal research tasks, and to handle case-related calls from clients, courts and external lawyers.
- To be a team player with an approachable, adaptable and positive attitude towards work with a willingness to provide cover in colleagues’ absence and to pick up work outside of own specialism if necessary.
- Ability to work under pressure, meet tight deadlines, adapt to change and to manage competing priorities.
- Ability to plan and prioritise work effectively to meet own objectives and those of the team.
- Good client care skills and a commitment to client focus and continuing service development.

**Qualifications and/or experience**:

- 3 A Level qualifications or equivalent including GSCE English and Maths (minimum grade C/4) experience demonstrating that level of numeracy and literacy.
- Already working towards a SQE or CILEX qualification or be willing towards the qualification.
- Experience of working in an office environment setting or equivalent legal experience.
- Experience of handling a varied workload, producing high quality and accurate documents, and working effectively as a member of a team.

Working for us

As well as adding real value to our service users and our communities, as an employer we recognise our employees are central in being able to achieve this. To recognise this we want to help support your development and provide a great place to work ensuring you can fulfil your full potential, achieve a healthy work-life balance and are rewarded for the work you do. Upon joining us you will have access to a range of benefits including:

- an excellent **local government pension scheme**:

- generous holiday entitlement of 25 - 27 days (plus opportunity to buy additional leave)
- a range of flexible working options, depending on your job role
- a strong supportive management team
- the possibility of up to 13 flexi days a year
- maternity, paternity, dependency and adoption leave (criteria to be met)
- volunteering opportunities
- training and development opportunities, including coaching and mentoring
- a range of discounts giving our staff access to hundreds of offers; groceries, travel, cinema tickets, days out, leisure activities, high street retailers and the opportunity to save over £1,000 a year through our West Sussex Choices benefits platform (see our **Staff discounts page** if you are a business looking to offer a discount)
- health and wellbeing benefits including access to our Employee Assistance Programme, Mental Health First Aiders and Voluntary Health Cash Plans

For a full list this can be found at our **Rewards and Benefits page.**

Further information

The reference number for this role is **