Assistant Legal Directors - £70,315 to £77,300 per annum

Legal Advisers - £52,736 to £59,868 per annum

Location: London or Edinburgh

Contract: Permanent

Hours: Full time, Part time, Flexible

Lawyers at the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) enjoy a diverse and highly stimulating place to work, where they can apply their legal skills across high profile, varied and complex cases that directly benefit the lives of everyone in the UK. If you are looking for an opportunity to stretch and develop yourself working alongside like-minded professionals, whilst also benefiting from an excellent work/life balance, we would encourage you to explore our Legal Adviser and Assistant Legal Director posts.

Both Legal Advisers and Assistant Legal Directors are embedded in project teams working across the CMA’s entire portfolio as follows:

• Competition law enforcement (e.g. the paroxetine and the phenytoin cases).
• Consumer law enforcement (e.g. tackling misleading online reviews and endorsements, unfair promotions by gambling firms and concerns with secondary ticket sales).
• Merger control: (e.g. the Phase 2 investigation into the Sainsbury’s/Asda merger and the ICE/Trayport litigation).
• Markets work: (e.g. the current investigation into online platforms and digital advertising and the funerals market investigation).
• Regulatory work: ensuring fair conduct in the appeals and references to the CMA in regulated sectors – often concerning key price controls.
• State Aid: supporting decisions by the CMA in relation to the approval process and enforcement functions concerning State Aid.

Either as a Legal Adviser or an Assistant Legal Director,  your focus will be to deliver high-quality legal analysis from the outset of a project, shape the legal framework, assess evidence and ensure that we produce legally robust decisions – as well as defending those decisions in court. At any one time, you may focus primarily on one or more cases spanning our portfolio.  We therefore welcome applications from lawyers with an interest in any of these practice areas and the desire to work across a number of cases over time. 

To find out more about these opportunities  and to view a short video about life in the CMA Legal Service, please go to: https://drive.google.com/open?id=143PQSyF2yf26IUgYt-sUmd1ZMzY15ZcG

To apply for the opportunities, please click on the APPLY button where you will be taken to our Civil Service jobs page. From here you will be able to explore all our legal opportunities.  

Please note: if you would like to be considered for the roles of Assistant Legal Director and Legal Adviser, you will need to submit a separate application for each role

Candidates are advised to evidence the below role criteria in their applications:

• Degree educated (2:2 or above) or evidence of an equivalent high level academic or professional achievement.

• Significant knowledge of and practical post-qualification experience in one or more of UK and EU competition or consumer law, State Aid or regulatory law casework, together with knowledge and appreciation of applicable public law.
• Fully qualified lawyer entitled to practise in the UK or willingness to sit and pass the QLTT on appointment.
• Excellent communication skills, experience of dealing with internal and external stakeholders, working with project delivery teams.
• Significant experience delivering high quality analysis, providing case advice, report writing and contributing to policy.

Candidates applying to the Assistant Legal Director vacancy will additionally need to evidence significant experience in managing, coaching and motivating staff including managing performance, development and overseeing delivery of work.

Closing date for applications: 21 September 2020.

All CMA staff enjoy generous benefits, including:

• An excellent pension scheme
• 25 days leave (increasing to 30 days over five years)
• Favourable consideration of flexible working
• Generous maternity/paternity leave provision
• Interest-free season ticket loans
• Cycle to work scheme and our employee assistance programme

The CMA is an accredited Disability Confident Employer and are Stonewall Diversity Champions. As an equal opportunities employer, we welcome suitably qualified applicants from all backgrounds and recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles.