Paralegal

Parkdean Resorts is the UK’s largest holiday park operator.  We have 66 holiday parks around England, Scotland, and Wales.  We offer a mix of holiday accommodation including static caravans, lodges, and glamping. Our parks have a variety of facilities including retail, sports, and entertainment venues, bars and restaurants and swimming pools.

Our Legal team plays a key part in helping the business to achieve its objectives.  We provide legal advice and assistance to our holiday parks and other teams including IT, Procurement, Marketing and Customer Service which are mainly based at our central office in Gosforth.  The work is fast paced, hugely varied and technically challenging. 

The team is headed by the General Counsel and has six solicitors and a trainee.   

This is a fantastic opportunity for someone looking for their first legal job after completing their studies or who is already working as a paralegal and is looking to broaden their experience.

We deal with an incredible variety of work, and no two days are the same.  Work will include dealing with customer or supplier disputes, reviewing contracts, conducting legal research, and maintaining the legal team’s databases.

Responsibilities:

• The Legal team deals with a very wide range of work, and you will gain high quality experience of dealing with these with training, support, and supervision from the solicitors in the team including:

• Commercial contracts
• Supplier disputes
• Real estate transactions and disputes
• Data protection,
• Consumer protection
• Marketing and advertising
• Travel law.

• You will monitor our legal inbox and respond to as many queries as you can with help and support from other members of the team
• You will manage your own cases under the supervision of one of our solicitors and assist on larger cases
• You will draft and review contracts
• You will help with management of our public and employee liability claims, providing instructions to our external lawyers who deal with these claims where needed
• You will take responsibility for/assist with other projects or work that you might be asked to help other members of the team with.

Qualifications:

You must have at least one of the following:

• A qualifying law degree; or
• A non-law degree and PGDL; or
• ACILEx or above.

We would prefer it if you had successfully completed the LPC, but this is not essential. 

Skills:

• You must be prepared to take the initiative and progress tasks/matters assigned to you independently
• We are not expecting you to have experience or knowledge of all the areas you may work in, but you must want to learn about them
• We are looking for a self-starter who enjoys researching the law and working out the answer to the wide range of issues that the business refers to us
• You must have excellent organisational skills, be able to prioritise tasks, and ensure that work is completed at the appropriate time.  You must have the flexibility to adapt as new work becomes necessary
• The role involves lots of communication with stakeholders at all levels.  You may need to use email but, since our people working on park do not work on a computer all day, we prefer to communicate via Teams/telephone or even face-to-face if the park is nearby.  It’s really important that you have the confidence and the interpersonal skills to get your message across in this way
• You must know how to perform effective legal research and have a genuine desire to keep developing your legal knowledge
• You must have a good working knowledge of LexisLibrary, Practical Law, and Microsoft Office. 

It is your responsibility to report any weakness or breach that you identify within the Company’s information systems or services (even if only suspected).

You have a duty to take care of your own health and safety and that of your colleagues, guests, and visitors.

Safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility, and you also have a duty to report all concerns and co-operate with management to enable it to comply with its health and safety and safeguarding accountabilities.