Head of Legal Learning

The Head of Legal Learning will be responsible for designing, leading and delivering Kennedys' global legal learning strategy for technical black-letter-law, with a strong emphasis on legal excellence, practice specific capability, and client relevant training.

This is a senior, hands on leadership role, combining strategic ownership of the firm's training framework for technical law with select delivery, including externally facing legal training for clients. The role will work closely with the HR Learning & Development team leading on professional skills training strategy, partners, practice leaders, Knowledge Lawyers and the wider Practice Innovation & Knowledge Solutions function to ensure learning is practice led, high quality and commercially aligned. Reporting into the Global Director of Practice Innovation & Knowledge Solutions.

Team

Practice Innovation and Knowledge Solutions Team is comprised of Knowledge Lawyers, Knowledge Managers, Knowledge Advisors, Information Services professionals, and Knowledge Assistants.

Key responsibilities

Technical law learning strategy

• Develop and own a coherent, firm wide technical legal learning and training strategy, aligned to Kennedys' practice priorities, sector focus and growth ambitions
• Define clear legal learning pathways across career stages (trainees, associates, senior associates, counsel and partners), with specific focus on technical legal capability.
• Ensure the strategy balances formal learning, practice embedded learning, and on the job development, reflecting how lawyers learn.

Technical law training & curriculum design

• Lead the design of high quality technical legal training programmes, working in close partnership with HR L&D, practice groups and Knowledge Lawyers.
• Ensure technical legal training content is current, jurisdiction aware and commercially grounded, rather than generic or compliance led.
• Oversee technical legal training linked to key “moments that matter” in a lawyer's career (eg qualification, progression to senior associate, transition to partner, and joining Kennedys).

Delivery (internal and external)

• Personally deliver selected high impact legal training, including flagship internal programmes and client facing training sessions.
• Collaborate with BD, client teams and HR to develop client relevant legal training propositions, positioning Kennedys as a thought leader.
• Support the development of SME capability to deliver effective learning.

Governance, quality and evaluation

• Establish clear quality standards for legal training design and delivery.
• Use feedback, engagement data and qualitative insight to continuously improve learning effectiveness.
• Ensure legal training supports regulatory and professional obligations while remaining focused on capability rather than compliance alone.

Required experience

• Qualified lawyer, 6 years PQE with proven experience in designing, delivering and leading technical legal training strategy, or senior legal learning professional with deep experience of technical legal training, in a leading law firm.
• Strong credibility with partners and senior lawyers; able to operate confidently at leadership level.
• Experience delivering high quality legal training, ideally including client facing programmes.
• Demonstrated ability to lead and develop a small, expert team.
• Experience in an international or top tier firm, desirable.
• Familiarity with sector led or client embedded training models, desirable.
• Experience integrating digital and blended learning approaches into legal training, desirable

Please let us know if you require any additional support or adjustments to be made in order to submit your application to Kennedys.

*where a level of experience is indicated, this is a guideline only and represents the amount of time we would usually expect a candidate to accumulate the requisite level of experience. This does not preclude applications from candidates with more or less experience.

About Kennedys

Kennedys is a global law firm with expertise in dispute resolution and advisory services. With over 3,000 people in 45 offices across 18 countries around the world we have some of the most respected legal minds in their field.

Our lawyers handle both contentious and non-contentious matters, and provide a range of specialist legal services, for many industry sectors but we have particular expertise in litigation and dispute resolution, especially in defending insurance and liability claims.

We're a fresh-thinking firm, and we're not afraid to bring challenging new perspectives to the table way beyond the traditional realm of legal services. We empower our clients with a diverse range of ideas, tools and technology to make their lives easier, as well as delivering exceptional results, every time.

What do we have to offer?

We welcome high-performing lawyers, business services professionals, secretaries, graduates and apprentices to join our rapidly expanding global firm. Whatever your role at Kennedys, you'll be involved in exciting and stimulating work, where your input will make a difference.

Our culture and values form a big part of who we are and we take them seriously. We make a difference by being approachable, straightforward, supportive, distinctive and ambitious. Our are at the core of who we are and what make us a great firm to work with and for.

The Firm recognises the value of investing in our people's development and believes our culture and values contribute to the quality of our work and of our client relationships. With a culture of on-the-job and experiential learning, peer to peer learning, mentoring, resources and tools that enable you to drive your career, we can support your development in your current and future roles. A variety of other opportunities are available including secondments to clients and our global offices.

We strive to celebrate empower our people and ensure everyone can bring their authentic selves to work. We've created a culture based on client service, professional excellence, hard work and trust, where diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) is a key priority. We recognise that many of our people want to work for an employer that is aligned to their values, which is why we are building an inclusive culture, decarbonising our operations and supporting our people to thrive at work. Our people are the key to driving this change and helping us to make a difference to our clients, our people and the communities in which we live and work.

Kennedys is an equal opportunities employer and is committed to ensuring our recruitment processes are as inclusive as possible. We expect all employees to be aware of and comply with all relevant policies and procedures within their jurisdiction, including those relating to Information Security, Data Protection and Quality Management, refer any breach promptly to Risk & Compliance and to complete all mandatory training when requested.

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