Regulatory Policy Manager

Regulatory Policy Manager

Overview

It is an exciting time to join the Legal Services Board as we work in collaboration with the legal services sector to deliver our ambitious 10-year strategy. The strategy’s golden thread is the need to reshape legal services to better meet society’s needs. We have identified some big challenges facing the sector that we are working to tackle to ensure fairer outcomes, stronger confidence and better services for the public.

We are recruiting a Regulatory Policy Manager to lead, in the first instance, a new high-profile and exciting policy project focused on improving consumer protection. The legal services market is changing in ways that increases the risk of harm to consumers, and it is important for regulators to assess whether existing regulatory frameworks provide consumers sufficient protection whilst allowing new, innovative services to flourish to help reduce unmet legal need and improve access to justice.

Our portfolio of regulatory policy work focuses on themes including professional ethics, access to justice, equalities and diversity, consumer protection, technology and innovation and disciplinary and enforcement.

We are looking for an experienced policy manager who can demonstrate strategic awareness, the ability to work collaboratively to deliver results, confidence in the use of evidence and data, and broad experience of end-to-end policy development from design to implementation. A background in regulation or competition policy, economics or law and/or the legal services market is desirable but not essential.

Why does our work matter?

Legal services are of central importance for consumers, our economy and wider society:

Between 2019 and 2023 66% of adults based in England and Wales had at least one legal issue Those experiencing a contentious legal issue experienced stress (53%), lost money (29%) or suffered ill health or injury (16%) 3 out of 10 small businesses face a legal problem every year and 16% rate the seriousness of their problem at least 8 out of 10 The sector contributed £34.2bn to the economy and employed 311k people in 2022

As the oversight regulator for legal services, we are responsible for ensuring that the legal services market is working well for consumers and the public more widely. We are responsible for setting the regulatory framework for the frontline sector regulators to implement. We hold them to account for their performance on an ongoing basis.

What do Policy Managers do?

We have a dynamic, focused team of around 15 Policy Managers and Associates who are responsible for leading our policy and regulatory work. This involves:

• Leading our long-term policy projects on issues like ensuring regulators’ enforcement and disciplinary approaches build public confidence, deliver fairness and uphold proper standards of conduct and competence, and improving transparency on price and quality indicators to help consumers to shop around
• Acting as relationship managers for any of the regulators, including assessing their performance against our regulatory performance framework
• Assessing applications from regulators wishing to change their regulatory arrangements and determining whether we should accept – either with or without modification – or refuse the proposed changes.

You can see our full work programme here: https://www.legalservicesboard.org.uk/our-work

The consumer protection project

Our vision is to ensure the LSB’s regulatory oversight approach manages risks to consumer protection that have emerged from recent market developments whilst enabling innovative services which provide access to justice to develop and grow. This will include examining the risks posed to consumers from large firm failures, the injection of third-party litigation funding into certain areas of the market and poor practice in areas such as bulk litigation as well as the risks and opportunities provided by online, AI powered and/or unregulated legal support. We will aim to establish a consistent understanding of the range of consumer risk and how this manifests across the sector and in different parts of the market. Our aim is for consumers to be empowered to make informed choices and to make sure that services that benefit consumers are able to flourish and innovate.

Core responsibilities

The right candidate will be able to:

• Work closely and collaboratively with internal and external stakeholders
• Develop robust and well-evidenced policy options
• Manage projects effectively
• Have excellent drafting skills and produce high quality reports and documents Influence others through written and oral communications
• Provide support, specialist knowledge and constructive challenge as part of a team
• Lead teams – either as a line manager or a project leader

Experience and qualities

For this role we are particularly looking for:

• The ability to take a complex project from inception to the identification of viable ideas through to robust and evidenced policy proposals
• The ability to work confidently with ambiguity and complexity and make finely balanced decisions
• Highly developed interpersonal skills to build and maintain complex, sensitive and influential relationships across a wide group of regulators and stakeholders

• The ability to drive intellectually complex issues to a firm, practical conclusion A strong and demonstrable commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion as a colleague and a regulator Excellent collaboration skills both within the organisation and across organisational boundaries Strong organisational, delivery and project management skills

Benefits

The hours are 35 hours per week, a defined contribution pension scheme with an employer’s contribution of 12-13% of salary, benefits allowance of 10%, which can be taken as salary and an annual leave entitlement of 25 days in addition to statutory bank holidays.

Salary: £50,000-60,000 per year depending on experience.

Further information

The LSB has a flexible working policy that enables colleagues to choose whether they want to work from home, the office or a hybrid of both.  You can be based anywhere in the UK but will be required to attend the London office when there is a business need. 

The LSB prides itself on its flexible working policies and we welcome applicants who would like to work full-time or part-time or as part of a job share.

The LSB is committed to reducing inequality, valuing diversity and enabling inclusion. We welcome applications from people from all parts of the community.

How to apply

Please write a cover letter outlining why you want the job and the skills and experience you will bring (based on the person specification) and with your CV send it by an email to recruitment@legalservicesboard.org.uk.

You must be eligible to work in the UK.

Please send your covering letter and CV as one word document (not a separate cover letter and CV) as we anonymise the applications before they go to the shortlisting panel.

Please note that applications that do not have a cover letter or CV will not be considered.