Legal Performance Manager

Legal Performance Manager

Manchester Hybrid working 3 days pw onsite Full-time £45,000 - £53,000

A management role where managing people is actually the day job.

We are looking for an experienced people manager to join Clear Law at an important point in our growth.

Over the last year, we have been changing the way we run our business. We have built a central Operations function, improved the way we use data and management information, and started moving work away from our legal teams where it makes more sense for it to be managed centrally.

The next step is equally important. We want our legal specialists to spend more of their time doing what they do best. And we want our colleagues to have managers whose job it is to make sure they have clear expectations, regular feedback, appropriate challenge and the support and development they need to perform at their best.

That's where you come in.

What will you be responsible for?

You'll initially manage a team of around 15 colleagues across our Paralegal and high-volume case-handling functions, with the potential for that team to grow as the business develops.

This isn't a role where people management is something squeezed in around another job. People management is the job.

You'll take ownership of the day-to-day performance of your teams, making sure that colleagues understand what is expected of them and have the tools, support and accountability they need to deliver it.

That means you'll be looking at performance from several angles. You'll care about the quality of the work we deliver and the experience our clients receive. But you'll also understand that a successful legal business needs cases to progress efficiently, work to flow through teams effectively and billing to happen consistently.

You'll use data to understand what is happening — and conversations, curiosity and judgement to understand why.

On a typical week, that might mean:

• holding purposeful 1:1s and performance conversations
• coaching a colleague who could be achieving more
• recognising a strong performer and working with them on what comes next
• looking at case progression or billing data and identifying where something isn't moving as it should
• working with Operations to understand whether the issue is people, process, capacity or something else
• moving resource between areas as priorities and workloads change
• planning ahead for recruitment and future capacity rather than waiting until there is a problem
• supporting recruitment, onboarding and probation
• managing absence, conduct, capability or other employee matters with support from People & Culture
• contributing to improvement projects, from relatively small changes to processes and ways of working through to larger pieces of organisational change
• taking ownership of project workstreams and helping turn agreed changes into something that works in practice
• making sure that our values aren't simply words on a page, but are reflected in how people work and how they treat one another

Some weeks will involve more coaching and development. Others will involve difficult conversations, project work and decisions. We need someone comfortable with all of those things.

Who are we looking for?

First and foremost, we are looking for a really good manager. Someone who enjoys managing people and understands that good management is a combination of support, clarity, challenge and accountability.

You will be comfortable managing performance through data, but you won't manage people from a spreadsheet. You'll want to understand the story behind the numbers and know when to coach, when to challenge and when something in the wider operation needs to change.

You'll be commercially aware and understand the connection between individual performance and business performance. You don't need to be a lawyer, but you do need to be interested in understanding how our business functions financially and the part your teams play in that.

You'll also need to be someone who can have a difficult conversation when one is needed. It’s not about confrontation for its own sake, and we don't believe good management means being hard on people. We do expect our managers to deal with issues clearly, fairly and promptly rather than allowing problems to drift.

You'll be comfortable with change. You won't need to arrive with a project management qualification or a career spent running major transformation programmes, but you should have experience of contributing meaningfully to projects or owning a workstream. You'll be able to take an idea or agreed change, work through what it means in practice and help people make the transition from "this is what we've decided" to "this is how we now work."

What experience do you need?

You'll need demonstrable experience of:

• directly managing and developing teams;
• setting clear expectations and holding people accountable for delivery;
• managing individual and team performance, including underperformance;
• using KPIs, data or management information to improve results;
• planning and deploying resource effectively;
• managing competing operational priorities;
• coaching and developing colleagues at different stages of their careers;
• contributing to projects, improvement activity or organisational change, ideally including ownership of a defined workstream; and
• working collaboratively with other functions to solve problems and deliver change.

Experience within legal services or another professional-services environment would be useful and may help you get up to speed more quickly, but it isn't essential.

We would rather appoint an excellent people manager who can learn our industry than someone who understands legal services but cannot get the best from people.

Why this role, and why now?

This isn't a replacement for a traditional legal Team Leader. It's part of a deliberate change to how we manage the business.

We are separating technical legal leadership from people management so that both receive the attention they deserve.

Our legal specialists can concentrate on clients, cases, technical development and generating income. Our Operations team can concentrate on building efficient, reliable ways of working. Our People & Culture team can provide the frameworks, expertise and support that underpin good employment practice.

Your job is to bring those things together at team and individual level and make them work every day.

You'll be joining while that model is still developing, so this won't suit someone looking for a finished and polished model. There will be things we learn and change as we go. We want someone who is comfortable operating in that environment: curious enough to ask why, confident enough to challenge when something isn't working and pragmatic enough to get on with making it better.

If you like the idea of a role where the success of your team really is your success, we'd like to hear from you.

Pay: £45,000.00-£53,000.00 per year

Benefits:

• Casual dress
• Company events
• Company pension
• Flexitime
• Free fitness classes
• Health & wellbeing programme

Ability to commute/relocate:

• Manchester M15 4LD: reliably commute or plan to relocate before starting work (required)

Experience:

• people management : 4 years (required)

Work authorisation:

• United Kingdom (required)

Work Location: Hybrid remote in Manchester M15 4LD