Energy Solicitor - Community Energy & Innovation in Sheffield

Salary: 56k - 62.5k per annum (depending on experience)

Contract: 1-year fixed term (to be continued if funding allows)

Location/flexible working: Sheffield, East Suffolk, Flexible, Remote

Full/Part time: 80-100% FTE

Reporting to: Head of Carbon and Nature

About Pure Leapfrog

Pure Leapfrog is an established sustainability and decarbonisation charity working nationally across Carbon, Energy, Buildings & Retrofit, People & Place, Sustainable Finance and Natural Capital. We are committed to supporting a Just Transition to a net-zero and nature-rich society. We bring together expertise in energy systems, project development, policy and regulation, financial and energy modelling, technology, social impact and sustainable finance to develop practical solutions to environmental and social challenges. Pure Leapfrog has worked with the community energy sector for over twenty years, helping communities develop, finance and deliver community-owned energy projects. We have developed and supported the use of legal templates across the sector and have practical experience of the legal, financial and commercial challenges involved in developing community energy projects.

Role Purpose & Key Responsibilities

We are looking for an experienced, curious and commercially-minded solicitor to help us explore and develop a new approach to legal support for the UK community energy sector, while working alongside Pure Leapfrog's wider community energy practitioners to understand and respond to legal issues arising in real project development. Community energy organisations develop projects ranging from rooftop solar and community-owned generation to heat, retrofit, flexibility and emerging energy-system models. While the sector has developed significant technical and project-development expertise, access to affordable specialist legal support remains a challenge. Organisations frequently procure similar legal services independently, meaning knowledge and solutions developed for one project do not necessarily benefit the wider sector.

A significant initial focus of this role will therefore be our Community Energy Legal Services project. The project will investigate whether legal expertise can be better coordinated and embedded within the sector, reducing duplication and cost, improving access to specialist expertise and allowing legal knowledge to be retained and shared. You will act as the project's principal legal subject-matter expert and lead much of its legal research and analysis, working alongside colleagues and specialist external advisers where appropriate. You will help us understand the sector's legal needs, explore the regulatory framework within which a future service could operate, and work collaboratively with community energy organisations, lawyers and other stakeholders to design and test potential solutions. The project will ultimately produce an implementation-ready business plan for a sustainable sector-embedded legal capability.

This is not, however, a conventional in-house legal role. We are looking for someone interested in research, innovation and service design as well as legal practice: someone who enjoys asking questions, making sense of complex systems and using their legal expertise to help create practical solutions. Subject to the findings of the feasibility work and future funding, our intention is to move into implementation and establish the resulting model. We hope that the successful candidate will continue with us into that phase, helping to build, launch and ultimately deliver the capability they have helped design.

Duties

• Lead legal research and analysis relating to community energy projects and the development of a potential sector-embedded legal service.
• Identify and analyse recurring legal needs and barriers experienced by community energy organisations throughout project development and operation.
• Explore the regulatory, governance and professional requirements associated with potential service models, including SRA requirements, conflicts, confidentiality, professional independence and information governance.
• Provide legal insight and support across relevant Pure Leapfrog community energy projects.
• Work with community energy organisations to understand how legal issues affect project development, risk, cost, investment and delivery.
• Engage constructively with law firms, specialist legal providers, regulators, sector bodies and other relevant stakeholders.
• Explore opportunities to improve access to legal support through approaches such as standardised scopes of work, templates, shared knowledge resources, triage, coordinated procurement and managed panels or networks of specialist legal providers.
• Contribute legal expertise to the development and appraisal of potential governance, operating and business models.
• Identify legal and regulatory risks and support colleagues to understand and manage their implications.
• Monitor relevant developments in energy law, policy and regulation and assess their potential implications for community energy.
• Translate complex legal and regulatory issues into clear, practical information for colleagues, communities and other non-legal audiences.
• Conduct stakeholder interviews, workshops and other research and engagement activities.
• Develop reports, guidance, recommendations, implementation plans and other project outputs.
• Draft and review legal documents, templates, guidance and other legal resources where appropriate.
• Help develop and retain legal knowledge and capability within Pure Leapfrog and, where appropriate, across the wider community energy sector.
• Contribute more broadly to Pure Leapfrog's work and thinking around community energy, renewable energy and the transition to net zero.

The precise balance of responsibilities will develop as the project progresses and as we learn more about the legal needs of the sector.

Person Specification

We are looking for someone who combines strong legal judgement with intellectual curiosity, commercial awareness and an interest in creating something new and impactful. You will be a qualified solicitor in England & Wales with current practising status and at least two years' post-qualification practising experience. Beyond that minimum, we are more interested in your capability, aptitude, experience and motivation than seniority. You do not need to arrive with expertise in every aspect of community energy. We are interested in candidates with strong underlying legal skills and relevant transferable experience who are motivated to develop their knowledge alongside our existing community energy, energy-system, finance and project-development expertise.

It is essential that you:

• Have a sound grounding in commercial and contractual legal work, with relevant experience in one or more areas such as energy, projects, infrastructure, property, finance or regulation.
• Understand the professional obligations applying to practising solicitors, including confidentiality, conflicts of interest and professional independence.
• Be capable of researching and analysing complex and unfamiliar legal and regulatory issues independently and exercising sound professional judgement.
• Understand where the boundaries of your own expertise lie and be confident identifying when additional specialist advice is required.
• Have strong legal drafting and research skills.
• Have good commercial awareness and understand how legal considerations interact with project development, finance, risk and decision-making.
• Be comfortable working with ambiguity and helping develop solutions where there is not an established model or obvious answer.
• Be able to understand complex systems and identify the practical implications of legal and regulatory requirements.
• Communicate complex legal concepts clearly and accessibly to non-lawyers.
• Be a confident written and verbal communicator and comfortable presenting your work to a range of audiences.
• Be able to build constructive relationships with communities, colleagues, professional advisers and other stakeholders.
• Work well collaboratively within a multidisciplinary team while also being capable of managing your own work and priorities.
• Be motivated to use your professional skills to achieve positive environmental and social impact, and share Pure Leapfrog's commitment to community ownership, environmental sustainability and a fair transition to net zero.

It is desirable that:

• Experience or knowledge in any of the following would be valuable:
• Renewable energy or wider energy infrastructure projects.
• Community energy or other community-owned enterprises.
• UK energy markets, policy or regulation.
• Power Purchase Agreements or other energy supply/offtake arrangements.
• Commercial contracting within energy or infrastructure.
• Property arrangements associated with renewable energy projects, including leases and licences.
• Project finance, investment, due diligence or the development of investible projects.
• Cooperatives, community benefit societies, charities or social enterprises, their governance and where that may intersect with project development, ownership and operation.
• Working with regulators, government departments or industry bodies.
• Developing templates, guidance, training or other legal knowledge resources.
• Research, innovation or service design.
• Developing a new legal, professional or advisory service.

The Opportunity

This is an unusual opportunity to use your legal expertise not only to support individual projects, but to investigate a wider structural challenge facing community energy – and, if the model proves viable, to help build the solution. Rather than stepping into an established model, you will help determine what an effective sector-embedded legal capability should look like and how it should work. The resulting model could involve some legal support being provided directly, coordination and triage of legal needs, access to specialist advisers through panels or procurement frameworks, shared legal knowledge and resources, or a combination of these. The successful candidate will help us work out the right model rather than simply implement one we have already decided.

You will work alongside colleagues with expertise in community energy project development, sustainable finance, energy systems, engagement, innovation and project design. You'll also work directly with community energy organisations and national and regional sector bodies. We don't expect you to arrive knowing all the answers. We want someone who knows how to ask good questions, apply their expertise and work with others to find them.

Our Culture

Pure Leapfrog is committed to being a socially and environmentally impactful organisation. We value our team, the communities we support and the organisations we work with, and seek to treat people with respect. We value collaborative working, intellectual curiosity and people who are prepared to question assumptions and contribute their own thinking. We particularly welcome applications from people returning to work, changing direction within their legal career, seeking flexible working or a job share, or who may traditionally have felt excluded from opportunities within the energy and sustainability sectors.

Closing date: 14th October 2026 – We encourage early applications, as we reserve the right to close this vacancy before the advertised closing date if we receive sufficient suitable applications or appoint a suitable candidate.