Senior Lawyer - Employment in City of London

CONTRACT TYPE: Permanent, Full‑time.

DEPARTMENT: Employment Law, BBC Legal.

LOCATION: London Broadcasting House – Hybrid. The team works a minimum of Tuesdays and Wednesdays from the office and then, subject to team needs and work permitting, the remaining time from home.

PROPOSED SALARY RANGE: £85,900 – £95,000 pa plus London Weighting (£5,441 pa), depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience. Flexible working is available.

PURPOSE OF THE ROLE: We are growing our team. Join our highly skilled Employment Law team, providing expert UK legal advice across the BBC. The BBC’s employment lawyers are responsible for providing a high quality legal advisory service for senior managers and HR professionals across the BBC and its commercial subsidiaries. The work is challenging and fast moving.

WHY JOIN THE TEAM: Working within the BBC’s legal division, reporting to the Legal Director, Employment Law, you will be providing advice on a variety of issues. This will include autonomously handling employment litigation cases, and advising on grievances and disciplinaries, redundancy, discrimination and equal pay, whistleblowing and TUPE. You will work with senior stakeholders, offering strategic advice on complex employment law challenges facing the BBC, including matters involving the highest editorial, financial, operational, regulatory and reputational risk. This role would suit a specialist employment lawyer from a leading employment firm or in‑house team. Whilst the BBC is open to considering applicants of any qualification, the role on offer would be suitable to a lawyer with a minimum of five years’ PQE.

YOUR KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND IMPACT:

• 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, to effectively drive and manage complex workplace investigations, disputes and advice on employment‑related policies and procedures.
• 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, whilst working in a high‑profile work environment.
• Work unsupervised, act and make difficult judgements calmly and consistently when stretched, facing change or under pressure and refer 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.

YOUR SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

ESSENTIAL CRITERIA:

• UK‑qualified lawyer with a current practising certificate, good academics and a good track record in and knowledge of employment law.
• You will be a solicitor specialising in employment law, with substantial experience with a leading law firm and/or specialist employment team.
• 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), with relevant experience in handling UK contentious employment disputes.
• 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.
• Strong communication skills, both written and verbal.
• 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.
• Experience in public law and judicial review work.
• Previous experience in the media industry.
• Previous experience in‑house.

Before your start date, you may need to disclose any unspent convictions or police charges, in line with our Contracts of Employment policy. This allows us to discuss any support you may need and assess any risks. Failure to disclose may result in the withdrawal of your offer.

Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging: We welcome applications from individuals, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio‑economic background, religion and/or belief. We want to attract the broadest range of talented people to join us. Our diversity, inclusion and belonging strategy is available below. We are a disability confident employer. If you need to discuss adjustments or access requirements for the interview process, or to carry out this role, please contact us via email: reasonable.adjustments@bbc.co.uk.