Senior Billing Officer and Coordinator

Coram Academy Ltd; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 19,000 - 32,000; Part time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work possibility

Occasional travel

Job summary

Coram’s Legal Practice Unit in London seeks a part-time billing professional to coordinate and oversee its legal aid billing operations, ensuring accuracy and timely processing. The role works with the Managing Director of Legal Practice, department heads and the central finance team.

You will manage a mix of civil legal aid billing types, supervise a junior billing team, and help develop efficient data systems while occasionally traveling between offices.

Qualifications

• Experience of legal aid billing and management of multiple workstreams.
• Experience supervising staff and providing training.
• Aptitude for data processing and improving organisational systems.

Responsibilities

• Coordinate and oversee the Legal Practice Unit’s billing operations.
• Collaborate with the Managing Director of Legal Practice, Heads of Department and Coram’s central finance team.
• Support grant management and accounting functions via the central finance team.

Skills

Organisational skills

Attention to detail

Problem solving

Financial data handling

Tools

Excel

Job description

About Coram
Coram is the UK’s oldest children’s charity founded by Thomas Coram in London helping vulnerable children and young people since 1739. Today, the Coram group helps more than one million children, young people, families and professionals every year by providing access to the skills and opportunities they need to thrive.
Part of the Coram Group, Coram Children’s Legal Centre (CCLC) is the UK’s specialist centre for children’s rights in education, immigration, community care and family law, and provides significant international legal systems consultancy. The centre is located on the Coram Campus in central London with a base in Colchester. We champion access to justice through information and advice, legal practice and representation, policy and strategic litigation. Our Legal Practice Unit provides advice and representation primarily under legal aid contract. Our Policy and Practice Change team promotes practice change through training and capacity building to professionals and secures systems change through research, policy and advocacy.
About the role
This role will coordinate, oversee and supervise the Legal Practice Unit’s legal aid billing operations. Through systematic and efficient management, the post-holder will play an important role in CCLC’s financial and operational sustainability. Working with the Managing Director of Legal Practice, the Heads of Department and Coram’s central finance team, the key objective of the role is to help maximise the unit’s legal aid billing in controlled work, certificated work and inter partes costs. It will also oversee private fees billing. The post-holder will oversee the smooth running of legal aid billing. In this role, the post-holder will work very closely with legal, operations and administrative staff. The role will act as a key point of contact for a range of internal and external stakeholders including Coram’s central finance team who will support the role with grant fund management and overall accounting functions for CCLC. The post-holder will support the Managing Director of Legal Practice and Children’s Rights and department heads in the successful maintenance of our relationship with the Legal Aid Agency.
The role would suit a legal aid billing professional with significant direct hands on experience of a range of types of civil legal aid billing (including controlled and certificated work) and an understanding of the challenges of legal aid. The ideal candidate will have experience of supervising the work of others but support and training will be provided. We are looking for someone who is interested in developing into management, is a proactive problem solver, is highly organised and able to maintain oversight over different workstreams ensuring progress. In addition to legal aid experience, they will need an aptitude for processing large amounts of data, developing and managing spreadsheets and improving organisational systems. They will be well supported through training, an enthusiastic and competent junior billing team, the central finance team and an outsourced legal cashiering company, as well as a friendly and collaborative management team including the Managing Director and the Heads of practice areas.
This is a largely office-based role in order to fully provide support to the billing team. However, some remote / hybrid working may be possible depending the experience of the candidate after the initial settling in period and there will be flexibility over how the working hours days will be spread across the week (within working hours). The team are mostly based in the London office and with one billing team member in Colchester so the postholder may require some occasional travel.
For further information on CCLC please visit www.childrenslegalcentre.com.
Closing date: Rolling recruitment - We reserve the right to close this vacancy early upon successful appointment or at our discretion.
Test and Interview date: TBC
Coram is an equal opportunities employer and we believe a diverse workforce enables us to improve the services to the children and families we help. We are genuinely committed to encouraging candidates from all sections of the community we seek to support. This includes those from global majority ethnic backgrounds, those that identify as LGBQT+, those with disabilities, those with lived experience of care, those with neuro-diversity, and those from other groups who are underrepresented at Coram.
If applicants feel comfortable, we would encourage them to draw on lived experience as well as professional experience in their personal statement as part of their application.
We are committed to the safeguarding of children and where appropriate will require the successful applicant to undertake a check from the Disclosure and Barring Service.
Registered Charity No. 312278.

£30,000 to 40,000 FTE pro rata (£18,800 to £24,000 for 0.6 FTE and £24,000 to £32,000 for 0.8 FTE)

Part time 0.6 FTE (21 hours per week) or 0.8 FTE (28 hours per week) with some flexibility around working hours

Location:

London office - Coram Campus, 41 Brunswick Square, London WC1N 1AZ