Paralegal - Employment
Department: Employment, Pensions and Immigration - North
Employment Type: Permanent
Location: Leeds
Description
The Leeds Employment team acts for a range of market leading clients across the financial services, healthcare and commercial sectors. The team has a strong and growing reputation in the Leeds market and is recognised as Band/Tier 1 in both the latest Chambers & Partners and Legal 500 UK rankings.
The team has a strong reputation in the Leeds market, acting for a stable of significant financial services clients and household name corporates as well as being a market leader in the public and independent health sectors.
Key Responsibilities
- Undertaking a wide range of document management activities, with a particular focus on more complex and document-heavy exercises.
- This includes the full range of disclosure tasks in litigated cases and also conducting the first level review of data subject access requests (DSARs) under data protection legislation, with a view to taking greater responsibility and ownership for DSAR review exercises over time.
- Both may involve formulating and applying search terms to electronically held data provided by the client, sifting and reviewing raw data for relevance (whether through e-discovery platforms or other electronic means), identifying non-relevant/privileged/business confidential material, collation, redaction and indexing ready for production, and working collaboratively with clients' IT / discovery management personnel.
- Considering evidence to establish relevant witnesses and checking availability.
- Drafting agendas and lists of issues for case management discussions.
- Assisting with the drafting of COT3 settlements.
- Drafting briefs to counsel and liaising with barristers and clerks.
- Drafting applications to Employment Tribunals and liaising with Tribunals.
- Drafting costs applications and preparing schedules of loss/costs.
- Regular liaison with other paralegals, trainees and lawyers to ensure the efficient management of caseloads and deadlines.
Skills, Knowledge and Expertise
- A good academic record with a 2.1 in Law or a related subject.
- Previous experience of working as a paralegal within an employment team.
- Preferably with practical experience of handling larger scale disclosure and/or employee DSARs under data protection legislation, including the core steps as set out in the section above.
- Familiarity with e-disclosure tools and platforms would also be preferable, but not essential.
- A confident communicator.
- Able to deal effectively with internal and external contacts with strong verbal and written communication.
- Close attention to detail and an eye for quality.