Join our People Team as a Childcare Legal Assistant 

North Northamptonshire Council is an ambitious, exciting, innovative and supportive place to work. The Council is committed to focused service delivery to improve the lives of our residents. 

Join our Legal Services People Team as a Childcare Legal Assistant and play a key role in supporting the delivery of vital public services across our local authority.

As a Childcare Legal Assistant within our in-house legal People team, you will work on a diverse and rewarding caseload, providing high-quality legal support to fee earners to ensure compliance with the law. 

As a member of the team, you will be supported at a senior level and by your peers in a growing and developing team of professionals. The team’s focus is on enabling service delivery, to achieve this we adopt a partnering model with our clients, supporting them to deliver an ambitious agenda for North Northamptonshire.     

Here at North Northamptonshire Council, we’re transforming for the better, using all our creativity and imagination to create the best life for our local people.

You’ll find that we have a wide range of careers that may be more surprising than you think!

Why choose us?

We offer a vibrant working environment with:

• a competitive salary
• a pension scheme, where we pay a significant contribution on top of your contribution. It provides life cover and ill-health protection.
• lots of opportunities to develop your skills, knowledge and potential in a large unitary council
• generous leave entitlement (28 days, rising to 33 days) and bank holidays, plus the option to buy up to an extra 10 days
• hybrid and flexible working arrangements, where practicable for service needs to help you with a healthy work-life balance.

We provide a range of great benefits such as an Employee Assistance Programme, an Employee Benefits Scheme, wellbeing support, travel rates at HMRC rates, as well as supporting a range of active Employee Network Groups.

We are looking for a Legal Assistant, specialising in childcare, to join our in-house legal team. The role will require you to support the provision of legal advice to Northamptonshire Children's Trust including:

• drafting routine pleadings;
• obtain and review reports, witness statements, working documents and other papers required for tribunal appeals and court hearings;
• prepare/draft and file legal documents e.g. case summaries, position statements;
• ensure that Tribunal/Court Bundles are complete, paginated and ready for proceedings and the courts and other relevant parties receive the relevant documentation;
• attend meetings, courts, tribunals or other forums to take notes or transcripts of proceedings.

If this sounds like a job for you, we would love to hear from you. The closing date for applications is 8th November 2026.   

Please refer to the attached Job description for full details of job responsibilities

You will:

• Hold CILEx, LLB Hons Law or be Level 3 qualified (or working towards CILEx level 3) or a similar qualification, or have relevant experience in Law.
• Effectively and appropriately support the provision of childcare legal advice commensurate to Northamptonshire Children's Trust, officers and other stakeholders.
• Good organisational skills with ability to use initiative and prioritise workloads.
• Ability to work on own initiative and as part of a team.
   

Please refer to the attached person specification for full details of Essential and Desirable skills, qualifications and experience required for this role.

Our Values and Behaviours

Our values define who we are and how we operate, by forming the foundation for how we interact with our customers, colleagues and provide our services. They are also at the forefront of our decision making and delivery and are:

Customer-focused
Respectful
Efficient
Supportive
Trustworthy

Our key commitments help ensure that the priorities we make, now and in the future, maintain the necessary breadth of focus in those areas that we believe matter most.

Disability Confident Employer

We are proud to be a recognised Disability Confident Employer and is committed to providing an inclusive recruitment process and will offer an interview to disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for the role.  

Our Employment and Disability Service provides bespoke support to individuals facing barriers to employment, helping them work towards their goals to start, stay and succeed in employment. For further information please click here The Employment and Disability Service (EADS) | North Northamptonshire Council

Armed Forces Community 

The council obtained the Gold status award for the Defence Employer Recognition Scheme (ERS).

Further information can be found at Jobs and careers | North Northamptonshire Council (northnorthants.gov.uk)