Senior Lawyer (Civil Litigation)

Care Quality Commission; Leeds; Hybrid; GBP 59,000; Full time

Job summary

A UK health and care regulator is seeking a Senior Lawyer to provide expert legal guidance and manage a team within civil litigation. You will lead the legal team, oversee high-quality advocacy, and ensure lawful actions are taken to protect health service users. The ideal candidate will have at least five years' experience in legal practice, particularly in regulatory matters. This role offers a hybrid working model with a competitive salary.

Benefits

27 days annual leave, rising to 32.5

Training and development opportunities

NHS pension scheme with 14% employer contribution

Gym discounts and wellbeing initiatives

Qualifications

• At least 5 years’ experience in legal practice, preferable in Judicial Review claims.
• Proven experience in leading legal teams and managing caseloads.
• Ability to communicate legal issues effectively and develop practical solutions.

Responsibilities

• Lead and support a legal team delivering high-quality advice and advocacy.
• Provide expert legal guidance on enforcement and regulatory matters.
• Monitor legal trends to improve service delivery.

Skills

Legal expertise and advocacy

Leadership and coaching

Clear communication and problem solving

Education

Qualified solicitor, barrister, or legal executive

Job description

Senior Lawyer (Civil Litigation)

Job available in these locations:
Home-based - Flexible, United Kingdom
Newcastle, United Kingdom
Leeds, United Kingdom
United Kingdom

Grade A – £52,737 (National) or £58,409 (London) – plus a £581 homeworking allowance and a £2,500 recruitment & retention allowance.

Contracted Hours: Full‑time, 37 hours per week.

Contract Type: Permanent.

Location: Home or office‑based (flexible location). Hybrid working (2 days a week from home). CQC’s offices are in London, Newcastle and Leeds.

Closing date: Monday 1 December 2025 at 11.59 pm.

Make a difference

Every role at CQC contributes to our mission. If you’re looking for a new role in Legal Services that gives a true sense of meaning and purpose, you’ve found it! As a Senior Lawyer, you’ll help ensure our decisions are legally sound, supporting our work to protect people who use health and care services.

Picture this

Imagine leading a team of legal professionals who provide expert advice on everything from criminal prosecutions to inquests, helping CQC take fair and lawful action to improve care across England.

The role

You’ll be key in helping us deliver our work. In this role, you’ll:

• Lead and support a legal team: Manage, coach and develop legal professionals to deliver high‑quality advice and advocacy.
• Provide expert legal guidance: Advise on a wide range of legal matters, including enforcement and regulatory activity, and lead on civil litigation and public law proceedings.
• Monitor legal trends: Identify recurring legal issues and use insights to improve how we deliver legal services across CQC.

Show us

We will be looking for specific skills, knowledge and experience in your application form:

• Legal expertise and advocacy: You’ll need to be a qualified solicitor, barrister or legal executive with at least 5 years’ experience, including experience of Judicial Review claims (preferable) or transferable skills to demonstrate the ability to acquire it rapidly.
• Leadership and coaching: Show us how you’ve led legal teams, supported colleagues’ development, and managed complex caseloads.
• Clear communication and problem solving: Evidence your ability to explain legal issues clearly, develop practical solutions, and build trusted relationships with stakeholders.

The team

As part of the Legal Services Directorate, you will work with colleagues across the whole directorate. You will manage and lead a small team of lawyers and paralegals within the fast‑paced civil litigation team, and work alongside fellow Senior Lawyers to support the whole of the civil litigation team. The team has a varied remit and predominantly deals with appeals to the First‑Tier Tribunal (varying between 60 – 100 live appeals at any one time), Upper Tribunal appeals, private law claims, litigated public law challenges and employment law.

A thorough knowledge (or the ability to acquire it) of the following areas of law, practice and procedure is desirable: administrative and public law, civil litigation, regulatory law, employment law and data protection.

Compliance

To progress your application you’ll need to provide evidence of your right to work in the UK. Without a valid right to work you won’t be eligible for the role. We are unable to offer sponsorship for this role and some roles may also be subject to a satisfactory DBS check.

Next steps

If you apply you’ll need to create a profile and complete an online application form. Your application will be completely anonymous. Please see our information for applicants for more details on the process. We contact every applicant to let them know the outcome of their application, so you will hear from us whether or not you are shortlisted.

You can read the full details of the role in the Job Description.

If you’d like an informal chat about the role, contact Sarah Potter, Legal Manager, Civil Litigation at [e-mail]. For general enquiries, please email [e-mail].

The Benefits

• Annual leave starting at 27 days per year, rising to 32.5 days with service, plus bank holidays (usually 8 days per year).
• Training and development opportunities.
• Wellbeing initiatives, such as gym discounts and meditation.
• NHS pension scheme, with around 14% employer contribution.
• Discount schemes (including eligibility for a Blue Light card, at a cost of £4.99 and valid for 2 years), reward vouchers, car leasing and more!

Please see our benefits page for the full list.

Equity for all

We know job descriptions can feel intimidating. Research shows they can cause some people to doubt whether they’re a good fit. This happens more often to people from under‑represented groups (e.g. ethnic minority backgrounds). If this role interests you, we encourage you to apply. Your unique perspective, skills, and experience could be exactly what we need. We want every candidate to feel supported and able to do their best. If you need adjustments to our process, we’ll work with you to remove any barriers. Visit our accessibility page for more on this. If you’d like to chat, please contact [e-mail]. Please note, if you have previously informed us of adjustments for interview or within your role, these are not carried over and must be discussed for each application you make.

We promote a workplace where fairness, respect and inclusion are a priority. Diverse teams make our work better, help us deliver our mission and make our culture stronger. See our ED&I page for more about this.

We welcome applications from everyone, and colleagues can find support and community among our many employee networks. This includes people of any:
- Age
- Sex
- Gender identity or expression
- Sexual orientation
- Religion or belief
- Ethnicity
- Disability

Values and vision

We are guided by our core values, which shape our work and our culture.
Excellence – being a high‑performing organisation.
Caring – treating everyone with dignity and respect.
Integrity – doing the right thing.
Teamwork – learning from each other to be the best we can.

We are a disability‑confident employer and a carer‑confident employer.

A Note on AI

AI tools can be great for research and refining ideas, but we want to learn about you. If you use AI or chat‑bots to help you with your application, keep these points in mind:

• AI can support research, structuring and refining your writing, but your application must reflect your real skills and experience.
• Spell‑checking and condensing word counts are great ways to use AI effectively.
• Do not copy and paste AI‑generated answers. These will not help you stand out; we want to hear about your skills and experience.
• Providing false and insincere examples goes against our core values of honesty and integrity and may lead to your application being withdrawn or termination of your employment.