Contract Legal Specialist in Newark

Permanent, Full Time (35 hours per week) (0.8 FTE could be considered). This role is predominantly home-based with regular travel to locations across the UK. Office facilities are available at our Newark office (Tuesdays to Thursdays) for those within easy travelling distance.

Closing date for applications: 14th June 2026

First interview: 30th June / 1st July (Online Interview)

Second interview: 6th July (Online Interview)

About Us

The Wildlife Trusts are a grassroots movement of people from a wide range of backgrounds and all walks of life, who believe that we need nature and nature needs us. We have more than 945,000 members, over 33,000 volunteers, 4,100 staff and 600 trustees. There are 46 individual Wildlife Trusts, each of which is a place-based independent charity with its own legal identity, formed by groups of people getting together and working with others to make a positive difference to wildlife and future generations, starting where they live and work.

Every Wildlife Trust is part of The Wildlife Trusts federation and a corporate member of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, a registered charity in its own right founded in 1912 and one of the founding members of IUCN – the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Taken together this federation of 47 charities is known as The Wildlife Trusts.

The next few years will be critical in determining what kind of world we all live in. We need to urgently reverse the loss of wildlife and put nature into recovery at scale if we are to prevent climate and ecological disaster. We recognise that this will require big, bold changes in the way The Wildlife Trusts work, not least in how we mobilise others and support them to organise within their own communities.

About You

If you are an experienced and self-motivated contracts lawyer ready to apply your commercial and legal expertise with real purpose, we’d love to hear from you. This is a great opportunity to help safeguard the work and future impact of one of the UK’s best-loved conservation charities.

In this newly created role of contracts legal specialist, you’ll lead on all contractual legal matters across The Wildlife Trusts Federation, acting as the first point of contact, providing high quality legal advice for contract-related queries. Reporting to our Legal Director, you’ll build successful working relationships across the organisation supporting colleagues to identify, manage and mitigate legal risk while enabling the Charity’s work to thrive. You’ll play a key role in promoting legal compliance, contributing to the development of policies and guidance, and staying up to date with legislative changes and relevant case law. While your focus will be on contract law, you’ll also bring a broad awareness of related areas such as charity and employment law.

Using your legal expertise and excellent communication skills, you will design, organise and deliver training to colleagues, embedding best practice, building capacity and confidence, improving consistency and ensuring value for money on contracting activities. You’ll be organised, adaptable and comfortable juggling multiple priorities in an ever-changing environment.

As a pragmatic and commercially astute professional, you’ll balance risk awareness with opportunity, using your initiative to take on new challenges and quickly develop knowledge in unfamiliar areas to support the wider work of the legal team. While there is currently no line management responsibility, our ambition is to grow the legal function over time — creating future opportunities to gain line management experience and play a part in shaping the team.

The Wildlife Trusts value passion, respect, trust, integrity, pragmatic activism and strength in diversity. We are passionate in promoting our aims, and we pride ourselves on being inclusive. We particularly encourage applications from people who are underrepresented within our sector, including people from minority backgrounds and people with disabilities. We are committed to creating a movement that recognises and truly values individual differences and identities.

RSWT take our Safeguarding responsibilities extremely seriously. The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and adults at risk. For applicable roles, applicants must be willing to undergo checks with past employers and Disclosure and Barring Service checks at the eligible level.

RSWT are committed to increasing the diversity of its staff through its Levelling the Field recruitment pledge and, as a Disability Confident employer, we are committed to fostering an inclusive, equitable, and welcoming recruitment experience for all applicants. Applicants with disabilities and from ethnic minority backgrounds will be considered for the next stage of the selection process should they meet all the minimum criteria for the role outlined in the person specification detailed as essential criteria in the recruitment pack.

As part of our Disability Confident Scheme, RSWT offers an interview to a fair and proportionate number of applicants with disabilities and therefore not all applicants with disabilities would be entitled to an interview as they must still satisfy the minimum requirements for the job. This commitment is designed to help reduce barriers and promote equal opportunity. We actively work to remove barriers throughout the recruitment journey and are dedicated to creating an accessible and supportive recruitment experience by offering reasonable adjustments at every stage of the recruitment process, as well as within the workplace. If you would benefit from any adjustments to support you during your application or interview process, please let us know and we will be pleased to put the appropriate support in place.

At RSWT, we are committed to creating a safe environment where discrimination, bullying, and harassment are not tolerated. We expect everyone to uphold, respect, and support our zero-tolerance policy.

Who we are

We need nature and it needs us. We’re here to make the world wilder and make nature part of life, for everyone. We’re helping to make life better – for wildlife, for people, and for future generations.

The Wildlife Trusts are a grassroots movement of 870,000 members, 38,000 volunteers, and 2,800 staff across the UK. We are at an exciting moment in our 110-year history, with an ambitious new strategy in development setting out a vision of nature in recovery, with abundant, diverse wildlife and natural processes creating wilder landscapes where people and nature thrive. Each Wildlife Trust is an independent charity formed by people getting together to make a positive difference to wildlife and future generations, starting where they live.

The next 10 years will be critical in determining what kind of world we will all live in. We need to reverse the loss of wildlife and put nature into recovery at scale as a matter of urgency if we are to prevent climate and ecological disaster. This will require big, bold changes in the way we think and operate, and the development of a strong, collaborative culture. It will require key stakeholders and the public to take action for nature’s recovery. We want our people to be as diverse as society, so we particularly encourage applications from people who are underrepresented within our sector, including people from minority backgrounds and people with disabilities. We are committed to creating a movement that recognises and truly values individual differences and identities.

As a Disability Confident employer, we are committed to offering an interview to anyone with a disability that meets all the essential criteria for the post. Please let us know if you require any adjustments to make our recruitment process more accessible.