Training Contract - April 2025 - Justice First Fellowship/Just For Kids Law

Application deadline 29 November 2024

Organisation Description:

Set up in 2006, Just for Kids Law (JfKL) works with and for children and young people to hold those with power to account and fight for wider reform, ensuring their voices are heard and valued. We provide trauma informed specialist legal representation to the most at risk and vulnerable young people in contact with the criminal justice system, secure their legal community care rights and fight for systemic change. We protect and promote children’s rights, ensuring the UK Government is held to account on its child rights obligations and that children’s rights are embedded in government policy making and legislation.

In 2023, JfKL refocussed its aims to build on its expertise and unique position in youth justice developed from eighteen years in the children’s legal sector. We focus on the most vulnerable children who are so often let down by the very systems set up to keep them safe and to support them to flourish. A system where children are criminalised rather than recognised as victims of criminal exploitation. Among the most vulnerable young people are those from Black and minoritised communities who are over-represented at every stage of the criminal justice system. They are more likely to grow up in care, tend to experience worse outcomes and are disproportionately represented among those leaving care between 16 and 18.

Just for Kids Law hosts the Children’s Rights Alliance for Children (CRAE) through which we convene a network of over 100 members all working to promote and protect children’s rights and giving us a wide range of partnerships, contacts and policy levers. We believe that human rights are a powerful tool for making life better for children.

We may be a relatively small charity but through our expertise and experience we have secured substantial change at every level of the legal system from youth courts, through to crown courts, appeal courts and the Supreme Court e.g. securing a landmark Supreme Court judgment on the disclosure of youth reprimands and cautions; winning an Appeal Court ruling on the overnight detention of tens of thousands of children in police cells despite clear guidance that they are inappropriate for children.

Our policy and campaigning work has delivered numerous changes in how the police and other institutions work with children. Our work through CRAE has held the government to account and placed them in the spotlight for their failings in relation to children’s rights. Our record on fighting for the rights of children ensured that, together with Save the Children, we were the only children’s charities which secured core participation status for Module 2 of the Covid Inquiry focussing on the core political and administrative governance and decision-making in the pandemic. We are also part of a cohort of Children's Rights Charities which have secured core participant status in Module 8 of the Covid Inquiry scheduled to take place in 2025.

Training Location: EC1 Offices
338 City Road, London, EC1V 2PY

Job Description:

Reporting to Legal Team

Role context

The Legal Team is a small but busy and responsive team comprised of 4 lawyers and a paralegal working in the fields of Youth Justice (Crime), Community Care, Public Law and the Covid-19 Inquiry.

Role purpose

This role is for a trainee solicitor to undertake a training contract. The trainee solicitor will, under the supervision of qualified solicitors, undertake tasks in Case and Transaction Management; Client Care and Practice Support; Communication; Dispute Resolution; Drafting; Interviewing and Advising; Legal Research; Negotiations, as required by Solicitors Regulation Authority, in agreed areas of law. The trainee will undertake ‘seats’ in at least three of the legal areas that the charity undertakes, in line with the SRA requirements.

Key accountabilities Key Activities/Tasks

• Working with clients
• Ensuring that all advice, assistance and representation complies with the requirements of Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), Specialist Quality Mark(SQM) and Legal Aid Agency (LAA).
• Interviewing clients, obtaining instructions, providing them with updates. This will sometimes be outside the office.
• Legal case work
• Undertaking legal research
• Emailing and calling courts, opponents and counsel to update, chase matters and generally progress the case.
• Drafting legal documents such as representations, witness statements, pre-action protocol letters and other case papers
• Attending various external meetings, with clients, counsel or other interested parties and taking notes.
• Admin and billing
• Recording all casework within multiple case management systems.
• Promptly billing files where necessary and undertaking and obtaining payment for work undertaken.
• Making applications to the LAA.
• Reporting on work conducted to Management on a regular basis and to assist with preparing and gathering information for reports to funders and other bodies including government agencies, where necessary.
• Case preparation, including making bundles and attending court to issue proceedings.
• Professional development
• Undertaking all training necessary to qualify as a solicitor within two years
• Attending training relevant to the areas of law covered during the training contract, and any other training relevant to their training contract
• Keeping up to date with the changes in relevant legislation
• Reading the relevant law journals
• Updating and maintaining a training record
• Regularly discussing with the Training Principal and the line managers your job performance and personal career development
• Fully engaging in the appraisal process to further personal development and maximise your contribution to Just for Kids Law
• Undertaking such training as is necessary as to gain and maintain the standards required by the LAA, the SRA, t and he Law Society.

General responsibilities

• Representing and promoting the organisation’s work positively.
• Carrying out all work with due regard to JFKL’s policies and procedures.•Promoting Diversity, Equality and Inclusion principles in all aspects of work.
• Attending and participating in internal, external and adhoc meetings as required including meetings outside of normal working hours where necessary
• Being a positive, cooperative, and constructive team member, upholding the values of JFKL
• Complying with JFKL’s monitoring and recording requirements both internally for SMT/Board and externally for Funders, Stakeholders and the Legal Aid Agency.

Other duties

You will be expected to carry out any other duties which fall reasonably within this role, including:

• Supporting volunteers as and when required.

Updating this role description

This is a description of the job as it is presently constituted. It is the practice of Just for Kids Law to periodically review role descriptions and to update them. This process will be conducted in consultation with you. It is the aim of the organisation to reach agreement on any changes but if agreement cannot be reached, the organisation reserves the right to insist on such changes to your job description, after consultation with you.

Trainee Areas of Law: Children's rights;Community Care;Criminal law;Human Rights;Public and administrative law

Person Specification:

Essentials

Knowledge

• A knowledge and awareness of the requirements of public funding and regulatory requirements

Experience

• Experience in using Microsoft Office, email and the internet, case management and legal research programs

Qualifications and training

•A degree (and any relevant conversion course)

Skills and abilities

•The ability to maintain a high level of client care and representation

•The ability to recognise and assist with the difficulties inherent in providing legal services to children and young adults.

•The ability to work on your own initiative and also co- operatively with colleagues.

•The ability to prioritise workloads and to ensure that all deadlines are met.

•The ability to analyse and assess detailed information, and to grasp complex issues rapidly.

•Good communication skills, including the ability to communicate effectively with people from a wide range of backgrounds, many of whom do not speak or read English and who may have experienced abuse ,discrimination or other traumas.

Qualities

• A demonstrable interest and commitment to the Just for Kids Law ethos and the areas of law provided

Other requirements

• Be entitled to work in the UK

• Be able to travel occasionally outside London.

• Be able to occasionally work outside the usual office hours when urgent cases arise

Desirables

Knowledge

• Knowledge of the areas of law that Just for Kids Law undertakes

Experience

• Paralegal or other case work experience

•Experience of working directly with children or young adults.

Qualifications and training

• LPC (we will consider applicants who wish to undertake LPC at the same time as the training contract)

Organisational Benefits:

Pension

30 days Holiday plus Bank Holidays (3 days deducted from Christmas Shutdown)

Starting Salary: £27,419

Contact for Enquiries: Aika Stephenson

Contact Email: aikastephenson@justforkidslaw.org

Organisation Website: https://www.justforkidslaw.org

Interview Dates: Tuesday 21st January 2025 and Tuesday 4th February 2025