At a Glance
- Tasks: Lead and inspire a legal team while driving innovative legal solutions.
- Company: Join Cancer Research UK, a leading charity making a real impact.
- Benefits: Enjoy flexible working, generous leave, and career development opportunities.
- Other info: Work in a dynamic environment with a focus on purpose and impact.
- Why this job: Be part of a transformative legal team using cutting-edge technology.
- Qualifications: Qualified solicitor or barrister with strong legal service delivery experience.
The predicted salary is between 90000 - 98000 £ per year.
This role will provide parental leave cover for a senior leader within CRUK's Legal team, to provide expert strategic and legal leadership within both the team and across dedicated business partner areas, driving high-quality legal service delivery. This is a newly created role, and an exciting time to join to cover a period of transformation. You'll be joining a legal team with dedicated legal operations capabilities leading the organisation with our bold use of gen AI and AI for legal processes and legal work and enabling legal work via data-driven service insights.
This is a highly impactful role, and a particularly exciting time to join us as we continue to transform our Legal Service Delivery. We're looking for innovators, pathfinders, and changemakers who:
- Can act as a strategic partner, embedding legal into strategy and decision-making across the charity
- Thrive in complexity and challenge the status quo, whilst delivering pragmatic timely legal strategies and solutions to enable our work
- Are bold in their approach to legal service delivery and design and curious about how to best deploy legal tech and gen AI and AI capabilities for legal work
- Care deeply about purpose and impact
You will be doing more than just legal delivery, you will empower teams across the organisation, gaining broad exposure to the internal operations of the UK's leading cancer charity, deliver real impact, and get involved in shaping the future of Legal at CRUK.
Main Responsibilities
- Lead, develop and inspire the service delivery team, providing effective line management, coaching, performance management and professional development support, fostering a high-performing, collaborative and inclusive culture aligned with organisational values and strategic objectives.
- Effectively manage resourcing and work allocation for all transactional matters coming into legal, working with other legal leads, ensuring matters are seen through to timely completion.
- Lead strategic legal activity within the Lead area of focus, providing specialist oversight, direction, and quality assurance to the team on complex matters in this area, and identifying opportunities to develop and embed specialism-led capability across the team and organisation.
- Develop and present innovative, feasible solutions to complex legal challenges.
- Maintain strategic oversight of business partnering relationships across dedicated business partner areas including the CFO Directorate, and the Research & Innovation Operations team, delegating responsibilities appropriately within the team while retaining overall accountability for service quality, client satisfaction, and relationship depth.
- Support the design of and ensure delivery against team SLAs and KPIs to support operational excellence across the Legal team.
- Develop strong GenAI legal capability and contribute to training and knowledge-sharing on GenAI across the Legal team and the wider organisation.
Required Skills & Qualifications
- Qualified solicitor, barrister or equivalent with significant post-qualification experience in-house and/or private practice.
- Strong track record of delivering high-quality, efficient and client-focused legal services, balancing service demand, team capacity and organisational priorities.
- Demonstrable experience designing, improving or overseeing legal service delivery models, processes, triage systems and operational performance.
- Ability to develop innovative, pragmatic solutions to complex legal and organisational challenges.
- Strong business partnering skills, with the ability to build trusted relationships and influence senior stakeholders across the organisation.
- Experience managing external legal providers and ensuring cost-effective, high-quality delivery of legal services.
- Enthusiasm for legal technology, matter management systems, data-driven service delivery, GenAI and continuous improvement.
Benefits
- Substantial retirement plan
- Generous and flexible leave allowance
- Discounts on travel, technology, gym membership and more
- Flexible working culture
- Wide range of career and personal development opportunities
- High-quality tools, policies and processes to enable you to do your job well
Interim Legal Lead employer: Gofractional
Cancer Research UK is an exceptional employer, offering a dynamic and inclusive work culture that prioritises employee growth and innovation. With a flexible working environment and a commitment to professional development, you will have the opportunity to lead transformative legal initiatives while making a meaningful impact in the fight against cancer. Join us to be part of a forward-thinking team that embraces cutting-edge technology and values your contributions to our mission.
