Legal Counsel (Health)

We are seeking an exceptional lawyer to join our team as Legal Counsel (Health). Working within a developing NHS in-house legal service, you will advise on complex, sensitive and often urgent legal issues arising from the delivery of healthcare. Alongside your own complex caseload, you will provide leadership and supervision to the Healthcare Legal Services team and help us continue to develop a proactive and high performing Legal Services function that best supports the Trusts we represent. As Legal Counsel you will: Provide expert, authoritative and pragmatic legal advice on complex healthcare matters, including urgent and highly sensitive issues affecting patients, clinicians and the organisation. Manage a portfolio of the most complex, high risk and high profile healthcare legal matters. Lead on difficult and contentious inquests, including preparing witnesses, developing case strategy, undertaking advocacy and making legal submissions on behalf of the Trusts Provide senior legal oversight of complex and high value clinical negligence claims, scrutinising evidence and advice and applying constructive challenge where appropriate. Advise senior clinicians, managers and executive colleagues on emerging legal and reputational risks. Advise across areas including mental capacity, mental health, deprivation of liberty, complex discharge and other healthcare law issues affecting adults and older children. Develop effective relationships with key external stakeholders including Coroners and Coroners' Officers, NHS Resolution, Counsel, external solicitors, the Official Solicitor, Police and local authorities. Provide professional leadership, supervision and line management to lawyers within the Healthcare Legal Services team. Support learning from claims, inquests and legal advice, ensuring themes and risks are identified and appropriately escalated. Assist with the delivery of legal training across the organisation. Deputise for General Counsel as required. Provision of legal advice on a wide range of queries affecting our NHS Trust clients and staff members, sometimes in urgent and time-critical situations, requiring high level of knowledge and analytical skills and ability to communicate contentious, complex and sensitive issues clearly. Management of a caseload of clinical negligence claims including high value birth injury (Obstetric) matters. Review and scrutinise expert reports and advice from panel solicitors, applying challenge and feedback as appropriate. Management of a caseload of the most complex, difficult and high risk inquest matters. To advise, prepare and support members of staff who are required to give evidence. Attend inquests as the Trust's representative, liaising with families or other IP legal representatives, conducting witness examination as required and making formal legal submissions to HM Coroner as appropriate. Review of commercial contracts, SLAs and agreements to identify areas of risk and advise Trust appropriately. Production of reports for, and attendance at, senior Trust meetings as required. Deputise for General Counsel in their absence across all matters. Oversees delivery within Healthcare Legal Services including planning and tracking of workloads and appropriate escalation to General Counsel. Line management, supervision and mentoring of the Legal Services team (Healthcare) including direct line management of other solicitors. Required qualifications Qualified Solicitor or Barrister with extensive post qualification experience in healthcare law (or equivalent experience gained pre-qualification) Current practising certificate or registration Desirable criteria Masters degree in Healthcare or Medical Law, Experience working as a senior lawyer at a large, complex and dynamic healthcare organisation Line management and supervision experience of more junior staff including other qualified solicitors, Extensive working knowledge of civil litigation (including but not limited to clinical negligence and personal injury) and Civil Procedure Rules, Coroners' Inquests and related legislation, other relevant law and precedent within the healthcare legal field including Mental Health Act, Mental Capacity Act, Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards etc. Good knowledge of legal precedent relating to Coronial inquests Experience in understanding and evaluating commercial contracts and situations and providing advice in respect of indemnity and contractual risk Risk management systems including Datix and InPhase, Proficient in use of Microsoft 365 applications Excellent communication (both written and verbal) and interpersonal skills with a wide range of staff, able to adjust communication style appropriately depending on audience Able to plan and manage workload to achieve deadlines, able to multi-task and juggle many competing priorities in a demanding environment Able to understand and assimilate very complicated medical and legal information and communicate this effectively to different stakeholders Able to persuade and negotiate Enhanced advocacy skills to include difficult and highly sensitive inquests where a client Trust is at risk of causative criticism and/or before a jury Excellent command of English language including excellent expression, spelling and grammar Ability to adjust and adapt depending on the evolving requirements of the role, willingness to learn to develop, Rights of Audience in Civil and Coronial Courts, You must have appropriate UK professional registration. NHS University Hospitals of Liverpool Group (UHL Group) was formed on 1 November 2024, born from a shared aim to improve the care we provide our communities. The Trust is committed to promoting a healthy work-life balance and achieve fair, equitable and consistent practice. We welcome flexible working requests and will consider a variety of flexible working arrangements from day one of your employment. Not all roles are suitable for every flexible working opportunity all of the time. Flexible working options may include reduced hours, compressed hours, fixed shifts, time back in lieu and home working. The Trust is committed to promoting equality and diversity; we value the contribution of individual talent, skills, knowledge and experience and aim for a workforce demography representative of the local community. We encourage applicants from the following groups that are currently under-represented in our workforce black, Asian and minority ethnic, lesbian, gay, bisexual and Transgender (LGBTQ+), disabled, male and age 16-24. Trust policy requires that the cost of submitting & processing the successful applicant/s DBS application be recovered via salary deduction following start in post. The amount of £25.70 (standard disclosure) or £46.70 (enhanced disclosure) will be deducted from salary, in manageable monthly instalments for up to 3 months following commencement of employment. Bank posts require upfront payment. From April 2017, Skilled visa applicants and their adult dependant(s) will be required to provide a criminal record certificate from each country they have lived in consecutively for 12 months or more in the past ten years. Applicants requiring sponsorship may wish to determine the likelihood of obtaining sponsorship for this position by assessing themselves against the criteria on the gov.uk website - This organisation has a zero-tolerance approach to the abuse of children, young people and vulnerable adults. All staff must ensure they adhere to the organisations safeguarding children and adults' policy and comply with the Local Safeguarding Children and Adult Board procedures. Staff should be mindful of their responsibility to safeguard children and adults in any activity performed on behalf of the organisation in line with the requirements of statutory guidance and legislation. All employees (and volunteers)are expected maintain their safeguarding knowledge and skills by completing mandatory safeguarding training which includes understanding and recognising the signs of abuse and neglect and taking appropriate action. As an organisation, we have adopted the Merseyside Domestic abuse workplace scheme which supports our staff who are experiencing Domestic Abuse /any forms of sexual violence. Our statement on modern slavery We have zero tolerance of slavery and human trafficking and are committed to maintaining and improving systems, processes and policies to avoid complicity in human rights violation and to prevent slavery and human trafficking in our supply chain. The Trust policies, procedures, governance and legal arrangements are robust, ensuring that proper checks and due diligence are applied in employment procedures to ensure compliance with this legislation. We also conform to the NHS employment check standards within our workforce recruitment and selection practices. This strategic approach incorporates analysis of the Trust's supply chains and its partners to assess risk exposure and management on modern slavery. Note: Under current Home Office Immigration Rules we are currently unable to offer right to work visa sponsorship for Band 2 and 3 roles with a salary of less than £25,000 pa as they do not meet the UK Visas & Immigration criteria. We are one of the largest employers in region, with over 18,900 colleagues who are dedicated to caring for our communities - from birth and beyond. For the 630,000 people across Merseyside, we are their local NHS. We provide general and emergency hospital care, alongside highly specialised regional services that extend to more than two million people in the North West. We operate from five hospital sites: Aintree University Hospital is the single receiving site for adult major trauma patients in Cheshire and Merseyside, and hosts a number of regional services including an award-winning stroke facility. Broadgreen Hospital is home to several elective surgical, diagnostic and treatment services, together with specialist patient rehabilitation. Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital provides specialist services in cardiothoracic surgery, cardiology and respiratory medicine, both in the hospital and out in the community. Liverpool Women's Hospital specialises in the health of women and babies, delivering over 7,200 babies in the UK's largest single site maternity hospital each year. The Royal Liverpool University Hospital is the largest hospital in the country to provide inpatients with 100% single en-suite bedrooms and mainly focuses on complex planned care and specialist services. The postholder will have access to vulnerable people in the course of their normal duties and as such this post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service to check for any previous criminal convictions. #J-18808-Ljbffr Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust