Job description

Why HMRC?

Things at HMRC probably don’t work the way you’d think.

Tired of constant 60-hour plus weeks and the corporate grind?

Would you like to work on complex legal issues that make a positive difference to the nation’s finances? If you’re nodding your head reading this, you’ve come to the right place.

We offer hybrid working, with a 40% average office attendance (and court time is counted as office hours), actual flexitime and genuine work-life balance alongside fascinating technical work.

Advisory Lawyers

Our advisory lawyers give advice on the interpretation and application of legislation. This includes advising HMRC and Treasury ministers on a wide variety of taxes, including business tax, personal tax, customs, excise, environmental taxes and VAT law. We also advise on other issues, such as benefits & credits, insolvency, information law and international law and treaties. Our advice encompasses areas of public and administrative law. We implement policy through primary and secondary legislation, including through the annual Finance Bill. We support policy colleagues at all stages of the parliamentary process as well as drafting a high volume of statutory instruments.

Our commercial lawyers give advice on high value and complex public procurement and contractual commercial legal issues within government. This includes providing legal support to HMRC's largest transformation programmes including IT and Estates. We support HMRC’s day to day banking and general commercial operations, including all aspects of commercial contracts, intellectual property rights, public procurement and state aid, contract and supplier management, and dispute resolution.

Our criminal lawyers give advice and support to investigators and policy makers, supporting HMRC's tax enforcement activity in investigating serious complex fraud and other criminal non-compliance.

Litigation Lawyers

Our litigation lawyers conduct litigation across the full range of HMRC work. We litigate some of the most challenging and important high value, complex Government litigation. These include big money tax cases and cases ranging from resisting judicial review challenges to litigating civil cases against those who benefit from the proceeds of crime. Our cases will often involve novel and challenging points of law and contribute to developing the interpretation of the law. We regularly litigate through the higher courts to the Supreme Court.

Who are we looking for?

We are recruiting qualified lawyers and we would like you to apply whatever level of experience you have.

We have vacancies for lawyers in both our advisory and litigation work. You do not need any existing knowledge of our work or tax experience. We will give you training and support to develop your knowledge and expertise and you can expect to move teams within our diverse practice every few years to build up your skills and experience.

If you have already developed a specialism in any of our work areas, we’d be keen to know about that, so please tell us about it in your application form. Please bear in mind that you will be offered a role in order of merit and not necessarily within your specialism.

Person specification

Eligibility Criteria

You must ensure that you meet all the eligibility criteria listed below. Our application form will ask you to show this.

Academic

You need to have a minimum of a 2:1 degree in your first degree (in any subject). If you hold an overseas degree qualification this should be equivalent to a 2.1 degree.

If you have a lower degree classification (or do not hold a degree), we may consider your application but only if you can provide satisfactory evidence of an equivalent high level academic and/or professional achievement.

For example, if you can tell us that you have:

• Significant relevant experience

• A commendation or distinction in the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL)/CPE or the Legal Practice Course (LPC)

• An LLM or other postgraduate degree

• Very competent on the Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC) or

• An overall average score of 65% or above across exams passed in the seven foundation subjects in law (where studied at CILEx level 6): contract law, criminal law, equity and trusts law, European Union Law, land law, public law and law of tort

We won’t be able to provide you with a supervisor for CILEX training.

Professional Qualifications

You need to be qualified as a Solicitor or Barrister or Chartered Legal Executive in England and Wales (or that you will be qualified within 3 months from the date of the application).

Solicitors Barristers or Chartered Legal Executives must have completed a training contract/pupillage/qualifying employment or have been exempted from this by the Law Society, the Bar Council or CILEx. Chartered Legal Executives must have a Qualifying Law Degree or have completed the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL)/CPE or have passed exams (i.e. a score of 50% or above achieved) at CILEx Level 6, in all the seven foundation subjects in law: contract law, criminal law, equity and trusts law, European Union Law, land law, public law and law of tort.