Legal Adviser

Overview

The Independent Football Regulator (IFR) protects and promotes the sustainability of English football. It improves financial sustainability of clubs, safeguards heritage, and ensures resilience across leagues. The IFR operates a licensing regime, sets corporate governance standards, monitors, protects and promotes financial resilience, and enforces compliance with financial regulation, club ownership, fan engagement and heritage protection.

Role

The IFR is looking for a lawyer with significant corporate law experience to join the Manchester office. The role will complement existing expertise within the IFR’s legal function, which currently comprises senior lawyers with public, regulatory, commercial and litigation skills.

Responsibilities

• Advise on the IFR’s powers and obligations and on current and future consultation exercises.
• Identify and assess legal risks attached to regulatory strategies and approaches.
• Support regulatory investigations, enforcement actions, litigation and appeals.
• Provide advice on decision‑making obligations, corporate governance and wider public law matters.
• Contribution to the development and delivery of IFR policy and practice standards.

Essential Requirements

• Post‑qualification experience advising on corporate law matters, including complex ownership structures, mergers & acquisitions/investments (including multi‑jurisdictional), corporate governance and decision‑making processes, and general corporate advisory work such as the Companies Act 2006.
• Ability to work effectively in a team, building trusted relationships with colleagues, clients and others.
• Track record of picking up new and complex areas of legal work quickly, providing context‑appropriate corporate advice in high‑profile and fast‑moving situations.
• Ability to manage legal risk, provide sound legal direction, lead and oversee quality outcomes.
• Creative thinking and excellent judgement to deliver authoritative and credible legal advice, at pace, to facilitate practical solutions.

Desirable Skills

• Experience in public law (ideally working for a regulator) and/or insolvency law.

Academic and Professional Qualifications

Applicants must have a recognised qualifying law degree or equivalent training. Candidates must be qualified to practice as a solicitor, barrister or chartered legal executive in England and Wales, or hold an overseas qualification that is equivalent. Where an overseas degree is applied, the applicant must demonstrate equivalent high‑level academic and/or professional achievement.

Applicants must have completed a training contract, pupillage, qualifying employment or have been exempted by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the Bar Standards Board or CILEx. Candidates are not permitted to apply more than 3 months before their qualification date.

Professional entry criteria for Chartered Legal Executives (Fellows) include a qualifying law degree, or completion of the Graduate Diploma in Law or CILEx Level 6 with satisfactory achievement across the required foundation subjects.

Benefits

• Pension – 12% contribution (5% employee, 7% employer)
• Flexible Benefit – 8% base salary investment into pension or as cash post‑tax
• Performance‑based reward programme
• 31.5 days annual leave
• Hybrid working – 40% office attendance
• Occupational sick pay
• 9 months paid maternity leave plus generous paternity and adoption leave
• Bespoke L&D programme with paid membership fees
• Cycle‑to‑work scheme