Trainee solicitor jobs

1 post available

Location: Rochdale - linked to Manchester Hub

This can be a hybrid role based on service demands

Salary: Solicitor - Grade 5 - £38,724 or Grade 6 - £44,323 depending on experience or Paralegal Grade 3 - £32,585 per annum

Hours: Full time - 35 per week

Contract: Permanent 

Closing date: Sunday 31st May 2026 at 11.30 pm

Join Shelter as a Housing Solicitor or Paralegal, in our mission to drive systemic change and fight for Justice.

If you are a dedicated legal professional with a strong commitment to addressing the housing crisis, we welcome you to apply for this role.

At a time when the housing emergency continues to deepen, your experience could help transform lives and challenge the systems that perpetuate injustice. Come and play a central role in our mission to defend the right to a safe, and secure home.

Working with Shelter means being part of a passionate team that believes a safe home is a fundamental right. Here, your legal skills don’t just change lives - they shape a fairer housing system.

About the roles

Based with our partnering organisations, you will ensure you deliver high quality legal services through casework, the Housing Loss Prevention Advice Scheme and ensuring Legal Aid contract requirements and performance targets are met.

Solicitor

You will challenge unfair housing practices and systemic causes of homelessness through strategic casework and litigation. Working closely with our Greater Manchester team and the Managing Solicitor to strengthen housing rights awareness across the region, you will support Legal Advisers, ensuring high professional standards and compliance.

Paralegal

You will help our solicitors to maintain an active caseload, enabling our clients to enforce their housing rights. Your role will be varied and will include taking instructions and witness statements, drafting letters, making applications, providing court representation and making sure time recording and income targets are met. Please note this role is being advertised as a Paralegal but on appointment the job title will be Legal Adviser.

About You

For the Solicitor role, we are open to newly qualified candidates with a demonstrable interest in social justice, as well as those who have 3+ years PQE and a strong track record in housing law and Legal Aid work. You will have experience or a demonstrable interest in legal practice in the private or not for profit sector with experience of working on a wide range of housing cases, knowledge of legal aid, housing, homelessness and welfare law. You have the ability to research, write reports, time record and meet financial targets, as well as meeting or be willing to develop to meet the Housing Supervisor Requirements (September 2023).

For the Paralegal role you will need a good understanding of litigation work, be able to carry out legal research and provide a good standard of professional service and client care. You will have excellent communication skills, both in writing/drafting and face-to-face along with proficiency using case management systems and time recording, as well as the ability to manage your time and workload. If you have housing law experience and knowledge of Legal Aid/ CCMS this would be an advantage. You enjoy collaborating as part of a team, respond quickly and positively to change and are not afraid to challenge the status quo and introduce new ideas when appropriate.

Benefits

We offer a wide range of benefits, including 30 days of annual leave, enhanced family friendly policies, pension and interest free travel loans. Our employees also have access to a tenancy deposit loan, payroll giving, cycle to work scheme and an employee assistance programme.

About The Team

Our legal Teams (Managing Solicitors, Solicitors, Legal Advisors and Trainees) are based throughout our England hubs. We are currently based in London, Plymouth, Bristol, Norwich, Birmingham, Manchester, Merseyside, Lancashire, Sheffield and Newcastle.

We are enthusiastic, driven and champions for fighting housing injustice. Whilst generating an income, we also address the housing crisis.

You will be part of an existing multi-disciplinary team that offers housing and homelessness advice and support across Greater Manchester. It consists of a solicitor led legal team providing advice and representation, and an advice service providing advice, support and guided self-help to people with housing, debt or welfare benefit issues. There is also a committed and skilled team of volunteers that offer peer support, mentoring and more general volunteering, adding significant value to our core service offer.

About Shelter

Home is a human right. It’s our foundation and where we thrive. Yet everyday millions of people are being devastated by the housing emergency.

We exist to defend the right to a safe home. Because home is everything.

We need ambitious, passionate people to join us. This is your chance to play a part in the fundamental change we are striving to achieve.

Our enemy is the social injustice at the core of the escalating housing emergency. To win this fight, we must be representative of the people we are here to help and those who support our movement. In all our people decisions, we take pride in being inclusive, equitable and transparent. We are committed to combating racism both within and outside Shelter. We welcome you on our journey to becoming truly anti-racist.

How to Apply

Please submit your CV with a supporting statement with responses to the 'About You' points 1-7 outlined in the job description of no more than 1000 words. Please provide specific examples following the STAR format and ensure you demonstrate how you address the behaviour below throughout your responses:

• We prioritise diversity and have an inclusive and open mindset

Safeguarding Statement

Safeguarding is everyone's business. Shelter is committed to protecting the health, wellbeing and human rights of those we support, and enabling them to live free from harm, abuse and neglect. All our staff will be expected to observe professional standards of behaviour and conduct their work in line with our Safeguarding Policies.

Recruitment Agencies

Shelter does not accept unsolicited CVs from external recruitment agencies nor accept the fees associated with them.

This is a new position within CWJ, and will involve working with our CEO, Harriet Wistrich, on potential miscarriages of justice relating to women who have offended in response to male violence. Cases will range from convictions arising from coerced offending, counter allegations, victims of trafficking and grooming gangs, to advising on appeals by those convicted of murder or manslaughter at the CACD and CCRC.

We would consider the role at 30 hours per week.

Role Purpose

To lead and supervise legal work challenging the criminalisation of women who have been prosecuted for offences that have arisen as a result of male violence, coercion or abuse. The role will provide expert oversight of complex criminal appeals and review cases, ensuring that women’s experiences are properly recognised within the legal process and that cases are progressed to the highest professional standard using a feminist, trauma‑informed approach.

Key Responsibilities

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead and supervise criminal appeals and reviews for women prosecuted in the context of male violence, coercion, or abuse.

• Manage a caseload of strategic criminal appeals, ensuring trauma-informed and feminist legal practice.

• Maintain Legal Aid Agency supervisor status and compliance.

• Supervise and support junior legal staff.

• Collaborate with partner organisations and contribute to CWJ’s litigation strategy.

• Engage in training, media, and sector-wide advocacy.

Essential Criteria:

• Qualified solicitor or barrister (England & Wales) with at least three years’ post-qualification experience.

• Meets Legal Aid Agency criteria for criminal appeals supervisor.

• Strong experience in criminal law, especially appeals and legal aid casework.

• Commitment to CWJ’s feminist values and anti-oppression approach.

• Excellent communication and self-management skills.

• Understanding of issues affecting disadvantaged and marginalised groups, especially violence against women and girls.

*Women-only: We deal directly with victims of sexual violence, therefore it is a genuine requirement that this is role is carried out by women only - Genuine Occupational Requirement (GOR), Schedule 9 (Work; Exceptions), Part 1 (Occupational Requirements), of the Equality Act (2010) applies

Job Title - Senior Billing Officer and Coordinator

Contract - Permanent

Hours - Part time 0.6 FTE (21 hours per week) or 0.8 FTE (28 hours per week) with some flexibility around working hours

Salary Range - £30,000 to 40,000 FTE (Pro rata £18,800 to £24,000 for 0.6FTE and £24,000 to £32,000 for 0.8FTE)

Location - London office - Coram Campus, 41 Brunswick Square, London WC1N 1AZ

About Coram

Coram is the UK’s oldest children’s charity founded by Thomas Coram in London helping vulnerable children and young people since 1739. Today, the Coram group helps more than one million children, young people, families and professionals every year by providing access to the skills and opportunities they need to thrive.

One of the nine members of the Coram group, Coram Children’s Legal Centre (CCLC) is the UK’s specialist centre for children’s rights in education, immigration, community care and family law, and provides significant international legal systems consultancy. The centre is located on the Coram Campus in central London with a base in Colchester. We champion access to justice through information and advice, legal practice and representation, policy and strategic litigation. Our Legal Practice Unit provides advice and representation primarily under legal aid contract. Our Policy and Practice Change team promotes practice change through training and capacity building to professionals and secures systems change through research, policy and advocacy.

About the role

This role will coordinate, oversee and supervise the Legal Practice Unit’s legal aid billing operations. Through systematic and efficient management, the post-holder will play an important role in CCLC’s financial and operational sustainability. Working with the Managing Director of Legal Practice, the Heads of Department and Coram’s central finance team, the key objective of the role is to help maximise the unit’s legal aid billing in controlled work, certificated work and inter partes costs. It will also oversee private fees billing. The post-holder will oversee the smooth running of legal aid billing. In this role, the post-holder will work very closely with legal, operations and administrative staff. The role will act as a key point of contact for a range of internal and external stakeholders including Coram’s central finance team who will support the role with grant fund management and overall accounting functions for CCLC. The post-holder will support the Managing Director of Legal Practice and Children’s Rights and department heads in the successful maintenance of our relationship with the Legal Aid Agency.

The role would suit a legal aid billing professional with significant direct hands on experience of a range of types of civil legal aid billing (including controlled and certificated work) and an understanding of the challenges of legal aid. The ideal candidate will have experience of supervising the work of others but support and training will be provided. We are looking for someone who is interested in developing into management, is a proactive problem solver, is highly organised and able to maintain oversight over different workstreams ensuring progress. In addition to legal aid experience, they will need an aptitude for processing large amounts of data, developing and managing spreadsheets and improving organisational systems. They will be well supported through training, an enthusiastic and competent junior billing team, the central finance team and an outsourced legal cashiering company, as well as a friendly and collaborative management team including the Managing Director and the Heads of practice areas.

This is a largely office-based role in order to fully provide support to the billing team. However, some remote / hybrid working may be possible depending the experience of the candidate after the initial settling in period and there will be flexibility over how the working hours days will be spread across the week (within working hours). The team are mostly based in the London office and with one billing team member in Colchester so the postholder may require some occasional travel.

For further information on CCLC please visit our website.

To apply for this role, please click on the 'apply now' button below to complete the application.

Closing date: Sunday 7th June 2026 at 23:55

Test and Interview date: Week commencing 15th June 2026

Coram is an equal opportunities employer and we believe a diverse workforce enables us to improve the services to the children and families we help. We are genuinely committed to encouraging candidates from all sections of the community we seek to support. This includes those from global majority ethnic backgrounds, those that identify as LGBQT+, those with disabilities, those with lived experience of care, those with neuro-diversity, and those from other groups who are underrepresented at Coram.

If applicants feel comfortable, we would encourage them to draw on lived experience as well as professional experience in their personal statement as part of their application.

We are committed to the safeguarding of children and where appropriate will require the successful applicant to undertake a check from the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Registered Charity No. 312278.