Senior Lawyer – Employment (BBC)

Join the BBC’s Employment Law team as a Senior Lawyer to provide expert UK legal advice across the organisation.

Job details

Band: E
Contract: Permanent, Full-time.
Department: Employment Law, BBC Legal.
Location: London, Hybrid – office Tuesdays/Wednesdays and home as appropriate.
Salary range: £85,900 – £95,000pa plus London weighting (£5,441pa) depending on experience.

Flexible working available. A four‑day week may be possible with flexibility on the fifth day where required.

Purpose of the role

As a senior employment lawyer you will advise senior managers, HR colleagues and other stakeholders on complex employment matters, including litigation, dispute resolution and policy development.

Key responsibilities

• Provide accurate, timely and practical expert legal advice and guidance on complex areas of UK employment law to senior management, HR colleagues and other stakeholders.
• Analyse, synthesise and present complex legal matters and risks to key stakeholders including senior management.
• Collaborate with colleagues in the team and across the BBC, including senior stakeholders, to develop and implement strategic legal solutions.
• Advise on a wide range of complex employment issues, including grievances and disciplinaries processes, contractual disputes, ill‑health, bullying, harassment and discrimination, TUPE and contentious work including Employment Tribunal litigation.
• Work unsupervised, able to act and make difficult judgements calmly and consistently when stretched, facing change or under pressure and referring upwards as required.
• Possess excellent communication, leadership and interpersonal skills, with interest and commitment in providing support and developing and overseeing the work of more junior members of the legal team and others in the team, overseeing complex matters as required.

Essential criteria

• A UK‑qualified lawyer with a current practising certificate, good academics and a good track record in and knowledge of employment law.
• Experienced in advising and/or working autonomously on a range of varied, challenging and high quality employment legal matters, including experience in handling employment tribunal cases from start to finish and advising on TUPE.
• A track record of providing proactive, expert, timely and authoritative day‑to‑day employment law legal advice and support to senior leaders and key decision‑makers at the highest levels, with the ability to analyse and clarify complex issues and concepts for non‑lawyers at all levels of an organisation.
• Team player, able to work supportively as a team member and to build and manage relationships at all levels.
• Highly organised, able to manage diverse workstreams, documents, and apply complex analytical and problem‑solving skills under pressure.

Desired (but not required)

• 5 years Post Qualified Experience plus.
• Ideally, experience in public law and judicial review work.
• Previous experience in the Media industry.
• Previous in‑house experience.

Benefits and other information

Before your start date you may need to disclose any unspent convictions or police charges in line with our Contracts of Employment policy. BBC will conduct screening checks including reference, eligibility to work and safeguarding checks.

Please contact bbchr@bbc.co.uk with general queries.