Legal Team Manager/special Counsel

Avant Law is a National specialist law firm looking for a Legal Team Manager or Special Counsel to join our team in Melbourne, working closely with specialist Head of Practice, Caroline Tuohey and joining a team of purpose-driven lawyers (including senior lawyers Madhavi Ligam, Amy McGregor and Fraser Oakley) who are passionate about defending medical practitioners. If you are looking for a law firm without daily billable targets and instead focussed upon collaboration, mentoring, advocacy and making a difference for doctors we want to hear from you.
This is an opportunity for an experienced medical defence litigation lawyer to progress their career and lead Avant Law’s Civil Practice Team. We seek an applicant with experience in managing and/or supervising medical defendant lawyers and has a genuine interest in mentoring the next generation of lawyers in this specialised area of law.
This is a full-time permanent position based out of our Melbourne office with hybrid working arrangements.
**The key responsibilities include**:

- Conducting own civil file load and managing the civil litigation team in accordance with the KPI’s, ensuring billing targets are met and high quality legal services are provided by the civil team;
- Provision and supervision of lawyers with a range of PQE experience to deliver sustainable, timely and efficient legal services in order to achieve the best possible outcomes for both the membership and the member as well as reduction in cycle times, accurate reserve and reduction in external legal costs;
- Coordination of resourcing and workflows within the civil team and ensuring the management of claims in accordance with agreed protocols, standards and procedures of Avant Law and professional and ethical standards with documented standards and procedures consistently applied;
- Supervision, mentoring and development of the civil team (lawyers and paralegals) to enable career development for staff within the Avant Law team;
- Advising and supporting the Head of Practice, Legal and as appropriate the Head of Avant Law and General Manager Civil on State legal trends, issues, reforms, significant cases and other developments relevant to the Practice Group.

**To be successful in this role you will have**:

- 10+ years’ PQE ideal.
- Experience in leadership or strong interest in the development of people leadership skills.
- Defence medical negligence and insurance law experience ideal.
- Demonstrated health law knowledge.
- Proactive in developing relationships and understanding and balancing member, business and team requirements.
- Excellent communication skills.
- Strong time management and multi-tasking skills.

Why work for Avant Law?
- You would be working for Australia’s largest specialist medico-legal law firm.
- You are guaranteed a pipeline of work from your instructing client, Avant Insurance, who are co-located.
- You will work with event-based billing (goodbye to 6 minute units and daily billable targets)
- You will get to work on a great variety and breadth of cases but with a focus on medical indemnity claims.
- You will be working in an open and collaborative environment with access to the top specialist medico-legal solicitors in the country.
- Flexible working practices.

Avant is Australia’s leading medical defence organisation with a proud heritage of protecting Australian medical professionals for over 130 years.
Avant now represents 90,000 health practitioners and medical students across every state and territory, delivering market leading products and services to meet their professional, personal and practice needs. Building on this heritage, our vision is to be the most trusted professional partner in supporting doctors throughout their lives and careers.
As a mutual organisation, owned by members and run purely for their benefit, our members are at the centre of all we do. As well as providing products and services to our member, we play a broader community role by advocating for improvements in the healthcare system and in quality, safety and professionalism in medicine, through delivering education and research activities.
LI-LC1