Legal Manager, Employment

Job Description Legal Manager, Employment Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds or London The Opportunity We are recruiting a Legal Manager within our Employment Tribunals Managed Legal Services (MLS) team. This role provides structured legal oversight, delivery responsibility and operational control across a portfolio of employment tribunal matters. The role is designed to support scalable delivery as volumes increase, particularly as we transition more work to repeatable MLS delivery. The Legal Manager acts as the single point of accountability for MLS delivery, complementing Employment team partner and client team responsibilities. The Employment Tribunals MLS team operates within a hybrid delivery model alongside Employment lawyers in the Employment team. Currently, elements of legal supervision, management and process ownership are shared across the Employment and the MLS teams. The Legal Manager role becomes increasingly critical as work transitions into a more fully managed, high-volume
MLS model, particularly where more portfolios of repeat tribunal work are brought into scope. What you'll do Overall responsibility for the MLS delivery of employment tribunal matters, acting as the single MLS team point of contact for the Employment team and for relevant client stakeholders Support and supervise delivery of high-volume 'bronze' and lower complexity 'silver' tribunal workstreams as they are transitioned into MLS Oversee end-to-end delivery of tribunal work including post-triage allocation, pleadings, disclosure, witness handling and hearing preparation Supervise MLS lawyers and relevant paralegals, ensuring consistent application of legal judgement, playbooks and client-specific approaches, using the available technologies for appropriate tasks Undertake fee-earning activity alongside managerial responsibilities, with own caseload Allocate work across the team based on complexity ('right resource, right task'), ensuring cost efficiency without compromising quality Act as
escalation point for complex or non-standard matters, coordinating with employment partners and teams as required Ensure delivery meets agreed KPIs, SLAs and quality standards, with clear reporting and performance visibility Embed structured workflows, playbooks and repeatable processes to enable scalable delivery Drive process optimisation and continuous improvement, including use of legal technology and data insights Manage utilisation, cost control, billing processes and overall financial performance of the MLS tribunal work Work alongside Employment client teams to ensure roles and responsibilities are clearly defined and complementary Support recruitment, onboarding and development of MLS team members as the service scales About you England & Wales qualified employment lawyer with 7+ years' PQE in tribunal litigation Strong, technical expertise in employment disputes and tribunal process Experience supervising junior lawyers and paralegals Ability to operate in a hybrid role combining