Legal Solicitor

What you’ll be responsible for

Reporting to the Senior Solicitor (Operations), the Solicitor (Operations) provides legal advice and support across Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water, to assist the organisation to deliver its strategic and operational objectives in a lawful, ethical and commercially sound manner. 

The post holder will support governance, regulatory compliance and continuous improvement in legal service delivery within their area of responsibility.  

    Key Responsibilities of the role
1    Providing pragmatic, commercial and user-friendly legal advice on a variety of contentious and non-contentious matters.
2.    Support regulatory enforcement and prosecution activity (as prosecutor and defence).
3.    Conduct commercial, customer and property disputes/ litigation and enforcement matters under appropriate supervision. 
4.    Instruction of external legal advisers.
5.    Preparing cases to support the organisation in the exercise of its statutory rights and powers in relation to land and assets. 
6.    Occasional Court attendance in support of warrant applications.
7.    Supervise and mentor junior legal professionals, supporting capability development and effective workload management.
8.    Support with horizon scanning for legal and regulatory change and assessing the impact on the organisation.
9.    Supporting with the preparations of responses to complaints from customers and third parties that require legal interpretation. 
10.    Legal research and interpretation.
11.    Non-contentious legal drafting. 
12.    Maintain and enhance precedents, guidance notes, FAQs, and know how libraries to improve legal processes and controls.

13.     Support the management of matter intake for the Legal team - from instruction to completion, tracking deadlines, dependencies, and stakeholder inputs.

About you

The following are essential requirements for the recruitment of the role:

Qualifications

• Qualified solicitor with a current practicing certificate

Experience

• 3 years PQE (PQE is a guide and other relevant skills, and experience will be considered).
• Working in a city or regionally based firm, or an in-house legal team.
• Some experience relevant to PQE of the key responsibilities listed below. 
• Experience of taking responsibility for own performance (including managing a busy workload).
• Demonstrable experience of delivering practical and solution-orientated advice and legal services. 

Knowledge & Skills

• Strong applied knowledge in at least one of either contentious property, general litigation, non-contentious property, prosecutions or environmental law. 
• Excellent drafting and negotiation skills; able to produce clear, concise advice with minimal supervision. 
• Advanced legal research and analysis; sound judgment on when/how to escalate. 
• Ability to frame legal risks in business terms and propose pragmatic, proportionate solutions. 
• Confident communicator; credible, calm, and solutions oriented. 
• Strong organisation: manages competing deadlines, prioritises effectively, and maintains accurate records/matter hygiene. 
• Water industry (or other regulated industry/utility) knowledge (desirable but not essential) .
• Understands the legislative competence of Senedd Cymru

Benefits

As well as a market competitive salary, 33 days  annual leave (pro rata, including public holidays), we offer a range of employee benefits and rewards including:

• Variable pay schemes (your salary will always stay the same, but depending on the performance of the company you could receive a yearly bonus)
• Enhanced employer pension contributions – Up to 11% employer contributions
• Enhanced family friendly policies
• Progression opportunities, including the ability to apply for funded training and coaching and mentoring programmes
• Reduction on gym memberships and high street shopping
• Cycle to work scheme
• Car-leasing scheme
• Health CashBack scheme
• An employee assistance programme for employees and their immediate family
• Whilst also working for a not-for profit company that truly cares about earning the trust of customers everyday, and about looking after our beautiful environment.

Who we are

Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water keep 3 million people healthy each day with safe, reliable water, and take away wastewater to clean, before returning it safely to our beautiful rivers and seas.

To be able to deliver high quality, essential services which help to protect the health of our customers, colleagues and our environment, we need the right people to deliver on our vision.  This is achieved by living our core values and demonstrating the core behaviours that underpin them.  The security of our people, assets and information is key to us, so we are looking for people who understand and comply with the company’s required security objectives.

We know that the most successful teams are the most diverse teams. Equality, diversity and inclusion provide the very foundation to our culture at Welsh Water. We want every individual to feel confident, proud and able to bring their whole selves to work. 

To ensure an improved representation in our workforce, applications are particularly welcome from minority groups including Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people, Females, LGBT+, Non-binary and people with disabilities. Together we continue to build a workplace that not only celebrates the diverse voices of our colleagues but also represents each customer we serve.

In essence, ours is a company based on trust, openness, respect, commitment and honesty. A company that our colleagues are proud to work for.