Practice Leader

Practice Leader | Superannuation & Disability Insurance | Melbourne

Slater and Gordon Lawyers are a leading personal injury and class actions law firm where every member of our team has a shared passion for our clients: we are people caring for people.

Our commitment to our people includes offering genuine work-life balance, with a hybrid work environment allowing them to split their time between home and the office. We recognise and reward high performance and have outstanding employee benefits including an extra week of annual leave, 26 weeks paid parental leave, extra-long service leave together with various ongoing learning and professional development opportunities.

**_ Acknowledgement of Country_**_ _**Slater and Gordon acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all First Nations peoples today.

**What are we looking for?**

An exciting opportunity is now available for a Practice Leader to join our well-established National Superannuation and Disability Insurance team in Melbourne. We are now seeking a specialised Personal Injury Lawyer with 10+ post admission experience on a full-time permanent basis.

The role of Practice Leader at Slater and Gordon is responsible for supporting their Head of Practice to jointly achieve business-unit strategy and deliver their group's operational, financial, client and people targets. Together with responsibility for consistently and effectively supervising and managing a team and/or office group, supporting the growth of their practice group through the pursuit of sustainable business development opportunities and managing a complex file-load.

The primary focus of the role is supporting strategic thinking, delivering strong financial and operational performance, leading and building a high performing team, including by ensuring compliance with Slater and Gordon's Supervision Model and driving employee engagement, and assisting with complex files and client management issues. This includes developing in others strong leadership capability, legal expertise, case management skills and client conversion and other learning and development initiatives as required.

As a senior leader you will be responsible for the following:
**Overview**
- Role model, promote and ensure team behaviours align with firm values
- An active contributor of your practice group and support to your Head of Practice through highly effective and engaging people management and playing a key role to develop legal expertise and client care within your team; whilst effectively managing a file load of client matters, including achieving consistently high client conversion results, strong velocity/case progression and high financial and operational targets.

**People Leadership**
- _ Role model_:

- enterprise leadership and be an active contributor in practice group forums and initiatives
- positive and effective leadership with your direct reports
- Mentor, coach and support managers and others in the practice group to develop leadership and technical capability and manage underperformance
- Provide clear leadership on initiatives, actions and activities within your practice group with key focus on retention, developmental growth and improved engagement
- Monitoring and ensuring wellbeing and safety of staff (including managing leave entitlements)
- _ Support to Head of Practice_:

- With local engagement initiatives and contribute to a high performing, effective and collegiate working environment
- Active support in driving the successful delivery of the performance cycle (set, grow, review) including identifying developments needs within your remit
- Develop active involvement in recruitment, including building external networks.

**Mastering Legal Expertise, Client Experience & Supervision**
- Demonstrate a high level of expert and specialist knowledge within your defined practice area
- Support your practice group to provide high quality legal advice and ensure consistent delivery of quality client outcomes and care
- Ensure understanding across your practice group and work with your Head of Practice around understanding and compliance of working methods, firm governance and national practice standards

**Running our Business**
- In alignment with your Head of Practice, effectively manage the operation of your practice group, including budget delivery, revenue forecasts, file management strategies,
- Oversee labour costs and effective workforce planning
- Reporting on and forecast ongoing staff performance with your Head of Practice
- Work collaboratively with others to identify process efficiencies and practice management improvements
- Support Head of Practice with change management initiatives when required

**Growing our Business**
- Support ongoing business development plans and growth of your practice group
- Demonstrate strong cli