Director and Solicitor to the Advocate General for Scotland

Job summary

This position can be based at any of the following locations: Dover House, London, SW1A 2AU. Office of the Secretary of State for Scotland, Edinburgh, EH8 8FT.

Job description

The role

This role offers an exceptional opportunity to serve as the most senior official in the Office of the Advocate General, leading a dedicated, highly specialised, and compact department. This is a highly autonomous role with strategic influence across UK Government departments and Scotland, and direct partnership with UK Government Law Officers and Ministers.

You will sit at the very heart of public law and government decision making. You will have unique opportunities to collaborate across UK Government departments and Scotland to influence, shape, and deliver on the most pressing legal and constitutional issues of the day.

The primary purpose of the Director of OAG is to provide direct legal and operational support to the AGS, serving as the legal head of the department and senior operational leader responsible for delivering the AGS's legal priorities, overarching strategy, performance, and governance.

This role holds overall management and legal accountability for delivering services to the UK Government on Scottish matters, safeguarding the devolution settlement, and driving excellence in support of the Law Officer.

This is primarily a senior leadership role. While you will be the ultimate legal authority within OAG, your core focus will be leading, inspiring, and empowering the workforce across the four divisions (Legal Secretariat, Advisory and Legislation, HMRC, and Litigation).

You will foster an inclusive culture, manage a high-performing senior leadership team, drive continuous improvement reflecting the Future Civil Service and ensure the department delivers effective and efficient legal advice.

Key Responsibilities

1. Senior leadership:

Provide visible, strategic leadership to a team of 50 FTEs. Direct line management of 4 SCS1 Division Heads.

Take corporate responsibility for the collective leadership of the department, building an inclusive culture, fostering high engagement, and maintaining strong organisational capability.

2. Support to the Law Officer and statutory functions:

Maintain overall accountability for supporting the Advocate General in exercising Law Officer functions under the Scotland Act 1998 and delivering on ministerial objectives.

Ensure seamless departmental alignment with the AGS, providing high-integrity, rapid, and authoritative legal advice on sensitive constitutional and policy matters.

3. Strategic delivery and governance: Translate overarching organisational strategy into actionable business plans. Manage operational performance, risk, and continuous improvement across a complex directorate.

4. Financial accountability:

Oversee departmental financial management and resource allocation. While the Principal Accounting Officer is the Director of the Scotland Office (SCS2), this role maintains direct budget responsibility and financial management accountability for the Office of the Advocate General, ensuring value for money and sound risk management at the senior executive level.

5. Overarching strategic advisory and devolution leadership:

Lead the strategic provision of legal advice on Scots Law across all UK Government departments concerning policy and legislation impacting Scotland. Provide visible and strategic legal leadership on key areas of devolution.

6. Litigation Oversight:

Maintain overarching responsibility and strategic oversight for any legal action raised by or against a UK government department in Scotland.

Ensure reputational and legal risks to the UK Government are effectively managed.

7. Corporate leadership and UKG presence:

Maintain strong connections with Government Legal Service for Scotland (GLSS) as member of the management board. In addition, with the Government Legal Profession (GLP) and Directors of the Offices of the Nations (OfNs) providing visible leadership across the UK Government to champion and embed Scots law elements across wider government priorities.

Person Specification

Throughout the selection process, you should provide clear evidence and examples that demonstrate how you meet the essential criteria for the role.

Essential skills and experience:

• Proven senior leadership experience (in public or private sector context), with a track record of setting strategic direction in a complex environment, leading and developing specialist and/or multidisciplinary teams, and building an inclusive, high-performing culture, including through ambiguity and change.
• Significant leadership experience within a specialist legal environment, with responsibility for people and resources, and a track record of exercising sound judgement in managing complex, sensitive or high-profile legal and reputational risks.
• Exceptional influencing and stakeholder-management skills, with the credibility and judgement to advise, challenge and build trusted relationships with senior decision-makers, such as CEOs / Board level, General Counsel, Ministers, or equivalent, including on sensitive or contested issues.
• A strong understanding of, or interest in, devolution and Scotland's legal, political and constitutional landscape, with the ability to apply sophisticated legal judgement in complex and politically sensitive environments.

Essential qualifications:

• The successful candidate will need to be qualified to practise as a Solicitor or Advocate in Scotland or must be willing to obtain such qualification (see below).
• We welcome lawyers who meet the essential criteria and are currently outside central government and/or those who are not Scots-Law qualified, including England and Wales and overseas qualified candidates.
• If the successful candidate is not Scots-Law qualified they must dual qualify following appointment. Costs will be covered for this training. During this period the title of the role would be “Director of the Office of the Advocate General”.

Person specification

Please view our candidate information pack for full details about the role, key responsibilities, person specification, and the criteria you will be assessed against throughout the recruitment process.

We encourage applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that represents the wider society that we serve. We pride ourselves on being an employer of choice. We champion diversity, inclusion and wellbeing and aim to create a workplace where everyone feels valued and a sense of belonging. To find out more about how we do this visit: [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice/about/equality-and-diversity.

Diversity & Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain, and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy
References

Visible links
1. https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice/about/equality-and-diversity

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £105,000, Ministry of Justice contributes £30,418 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

• Access to learning and development
• A working environment that supports a range of flexible working options to enhance your work life balance
• A working culture which encourages inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%
• Annual Leave
• Public Holidays
• Season Ticket Advance

For more information about the recruitment process, benefits and allowances and answers to general queries, please click the below link which will direct you to our Candidate Information Page.

Link: https://justicejobs.tal.net/vx/candidate/cms/About%20the%20MOJ

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

For full details of the Selection Process and Recruitment Timeline, please view the Candidate Information pack.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.This role has a minimum assignment duration of 3 years. An assignment duration is the period of time a Senior Civil Servant is expected to remain in the same post to enable them to deliver on the agreed key business outcomes. The assignment duration also supports your career through building your depth of expertise.

As part of accepting this role you will be agreeing to the expected assignment duration set out above. This will not result in a contractual change to your terms and conditions. Please note this is an expectation only, it is not something which is written into your terms and conditions or indeed which the employing organisation or you are bound by. It will depend on your personal circumstances at a particular time and business needs, for example, would not preclude any absence like family friendly leave. It is nonetheless an important expectation, which is why we ask you to confirm you agree to the assignment duration set out above.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a basic (or equivalent) criminal record check.Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see theCivil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Apply and further information

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

• Name : SCS Recruitment Team
• Email : scsrecruitment@justice.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : scsrecruitment@justice.gov.uk

Further information

Appointment to the Civil Service is governed by the Civil Service Commission’s Recruitment Principles. If you feel a department has breached the requirement of the Recruitment Principles and would like to raise this, please contact SSCL (Moj-recruitment-vetting-enquiries@gov.sscl.com) in the first instance. If the role has been advertised externally (outside of the Civil Service) and you are not satisfied with the response, you may bring your complaint to the Commission. For further information on bringing a complaint to the Civil Service Commission please visit their web pages: http://civilservicecommission.independent.gov.uk/civil-service-recruitm…

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Attachments

OAG Director (SCS2) Candidate Information pack Opens in new window (docx, 4149kB)