Legal Officer

About the role:

The Legal Officer works closely with the Legal Team (Legal Director and Legal and Parliamentary Officer) to support our policy and advocacy work and with the Senior Legal Projects Manager in a key role to coordinate strategic legal advice and litigation. The Legal Officer also works closely with the rest of the ILPA Secretariat, including the Chief Executive, Content and Digital Channels Manager, Training Officer, and with Trustees, ILPA and SLAC members, the SLAC Steering Committee  and co-convenors of ILPA’s Working Groups.

You will regularly analyse information, including legal and practice updates, and disseminate information orally and in writing to the public and to ILPA members. You will assist with answering ILPA members’ legal, policy and practice-based queries, raising systemic issues with government departments as appropriate, and provide flexible, tailored, technical and practical support for practitioners and non-practitioners, who include public bodies, professional organisations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). You will assist in the preparation of legal policy and parliamentary briefings, and ILPA’s responses to consultations, calls for evidence, other official submissions and correspondence with government bodies. You will also help represent ILPA in meetings and work collaboratively with colleagues across the sector in pursuit of ILPA’s influencing aims. 

Additionally, you will support the organisation and running of ILPA’s thematic Working Groups, which provide a valuable forum for ILPA members to share best practice and discuss issues of current importance, assisting with agenda-setting, presenting updates, following-up on action points, and preparing meeting summaries. The overall aim of these activities is to improve immigration, asylum and nationality law, policy and practice. You are not expected to have policy experience, as you will gain knowledge and exposure to policy work through this role and we hope to see you grow in the role and take on greater policy responsibility during your time at ILPA, accompanied by corresponding salary increments where deemed appropriate as part of our salary review process. 

You will work with the Senior Legal Projects Manager to develop partnerships with NGOs and legal professionals around the UK. You will coordinate the general and regional Strategic Legal Advice Committee (SLAC) meetings. These meetings will be held online, across the UK. Each SLAC group will hold four meetings per year as well as emergency meetings where necessary. You will be responsible for the minute taking of all SLAC meetings. You will work with the Senior Legal Projects Manager to set member-led meeting agendas, identify member training needs, facilitate training, update the SLAC website, and feed in to monitoring and evaluation of the project. You will be responsible for coordinating SLAC Steering Committee meetings.  

About you:

The position would suit a self-motivated individual who is passionate about the sector and is looking to further their career in immigration policy or advocacy, including by making the transition from immigration practice to work on immigration policy and strategic legal advice and litigation coordination. 

You may be keen to be working at the heart of the systemic changes following Brexit, recent significant legislation, including the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, Illegal Migration Act 2023, Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024, attempts to remove people seeking asylum in the UK to Rwanda, government initiatives to “reduce net migration” such as the increased Minimum Income Requirement for family visas, and the recently introduced Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill. 

You will have an interest in strategic litigation and how it can be used to protect and promote the rights of those discriminated against on the basis of their migration status. You will be passionate about being involved in the coordination of a unique and exciting project that brings the third and legal sector together in developing strategic litigation. 

Given the complexity of immigration, asylum and nationality law, we do not expect applicants to have expertise in every area, but an understanding of the law and excellent critical analysis skills are key. Any successful applicant will be able to attend ILPA training to further their knowledge.

Main responsibilities

1. To liaise, work with, and gather evidence from members to support ILPA’s influencing work and to assist with knowledge-sharing in the sector;
2. To assist the Legal Team to influence law and policies through written and oral advocacy;
3. To coordinate and contribute to internal and external meetings, which may have a range of attendees including ILPA members, SLAC members, government officials, parliamentarians, experts, lawyers, and other external organisations and individuals;
4. To provide support to ILPA’s thematic working groups, and SLAC meetings, including by attending evening meetings, agenda-setting, participating, drafting minutes/meeting summaries, and working with the Secretariat, working group co-convenors, and SLAC Steering Committee to take forward agreed actions;
5. To handle queries related to the Legal Team, and SLAC work sent by members and others where appropriate, such as by forwarding these on to relevant individuals and drafting responses;
6. To monitor, identify, store, organise, interrogate, retrieve and disseminate information, including legal and policy developments, relevant to ILPA’s work;
7. To assist with facilitating SLAC training events,  communicating with SLAC members and feed into the monitoring and evaluation of SLAC; and 
8. To support internal and external communications and updates. 

Person Specification

Essential knowledge, experience, skills, and qualities:

1. A law degree, postgraduate qualification in law, or other relevant qualification in law; 
2. Experience of working in or with immigration, asylum and nationality law in the UK;
3. Experience of building and managing effective professional relationships with a range of people, with demonstrable ability to communicate effectively in challenging situations;
4. Good legal knowledge, skills and judgment, including:
   a) an ability to navigate and understand the Immigration Rules and Government guidance,
   b) a general understanding of UKVI processes, and  
   c) an ability to clearly communicate legal and technical information orally and in writing;
5. Excellent attention to detail;
6. Excellent planning, coordination, organisational, time management, strategic problem-solving and independent working skills, including:
   a) an ability to take a proactive approach to independent working,
   b) managing workstreams effectively, 
   c) confidently taking responsibility for tasks and decisions, 
   d) meeting tight deadlines, and
   e) taking a calm and diligent approach to problem solving;
7. Commitment to the principles of a non-racist, non-sexist, just, and equitable system of immigration, asylum and nationality law; 
8. Commitment to the principles of equality, diversity, and inclusion, and taking a proactive approach to espousing these principles; and
9. Commitment to be a champion of ILPA by positively encouraging your team, identifying and encouraging opportunities for growth, and celebrating success.

About the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association

The Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association (ILPA) is a charity and a professional association the majority of whose members are barristers, solicitors, advocates and IAA (previously OISC) regulated advisers practising in all aspects of immigration, asylum and nationality law. Academics, non-governmental organisations and individuals with a substantial interest in the law are also members.

Founded in 1984 by leading practitioners in the field, ILPA exists to promote and improve advice and representation in immigration, asylum and nationality law, through an extensive programme of training and disseminating information and by providing research and opinion that draw on the experiences of members. ILPA is represented on numerous government, official and non-governmental advisory groups and regularly provides evidence to parliamentary and official inquiries.

The Secretariat does not give advice to members of the public on individual cases but works closely with members to ensure that they are enabled to do their best for their clients. It runs ILPA’s busy training programme and produces a wide range of information for members and non-members.

The objectives of ILPA are:

• To promote the advising and representation of immigrants;
• To provide information to members and others on domestic and European immigration, asylum and nationality law; and
• To secure a non-racist, non-sexist, just and equitable system of immigration, asylum and nationality law practice.

ILPA is an equal opportunities employer. We acknowledge that the legal and charitable sector can be less accessible to people from minoritised or racialised communities and people from less privileged socio-economic backgrounds. We are committed to unsettling the status quo. In this role you will wear many hats and we recognise that the successful candidate may not have all the skills and experience listed in the personal specification. We welcome an application from you if you can see yourself in this role and have an appetite to gain new skills, knowledge, and experience. We encourage applications from individuals who have lived experience of the UK immigration or asylum systems, or the hostile environment.

We also encourage applications from people who have previously unsuccessfully applied for roles at ILPA. We will consider each application afresh. We appreciate that individuals are always learning, growing, and adding to their knowledge and experience.

About the ILPA Team 

You would be joining a small team, of around 10 team members. Under our current hybrid work policy, we have one anchor day (currently a Tuesday), in which you will be expected to work from an office setting in London, together with Team members living in England. The rest of the time you will ordinarily work remotely or wherever conferences or meetings might take place.

Reports to: Legal and Parliamentary Officer and Senior Legal Projects Manager

Annual leave: 25 days per annum, plus bank holidays and the week between Christmas and New Year off 

Working Hours: 35 hours per week, plus 1 hour lunch break (NB. evening working is required to attend any scheduled evening meetings, which ordinarily finish no later than 7pm). Very occasional travel within the UK will be required to attend meetings.

Start date: As soon as possible

Application deadline: 9:00am on Monday, 24 February 2025

Interviews will be held on 10 and 11 March 2025. Shortlisted candidates will be notified by Monday, 3 March 2025.

Applications from individuals only – no agencies.