IT Case Developer

Shakespeare Martineau is a Top 55 law firm that combines creativity, commerciality and clarity. We work with blue-chip companies, leading organisations, high street brands and individuals across the country.

As enterprising and original thinkers, we’re driven to create exceptional experiences for our clients and our people. We handle personal and business-critical issues and game-changing deals across many dynamic sectors. It’s stimulating and rewarding.

We’re hardworking and deeply ambitious about creating opportunities for our employees; to move forward and achieve our ambition together. We provide an environment in which you’re supported to reach your potential.

Our people have a blend of excellent technical and business skills with the talent to do things differently.

Here you’ll find top quality work, cutting edge training, high profile clients, and supportive colleagues. We think it could be time you joined us.

The IT team is responsible for providing clients and staff with high quality relevant technology, customised systems and superior service and support to ensure our business needs are always met. Based in the Birmingham office but with a national presence, the team is around 40 strong and includes talented project managers, architects, developers, engineers, analysts, trainers and support people. This is an ever changing and exciting area to work in as we constantly look for new and innovative ways to provide the most effective solutions to the business and our legal professionals to provide market leading expertise to our clients.

The key business area supported by this role will be our Volume & Consumer Group which offers services to consumers under the Lime Solicitors brand and to high volume business clients under the Corclaim brand.

The Corclaim brand is dedicated to servicing clients with large scale and repeated legal needs. We currently deliver the following practice areas via Corclaim: debt recovery, asset finance, cost drafting and uninsured loss recovery.  Corclaim creates market differentiation through its processes, infrastructure and technology. This allows us to deal with the vast quantities of legal work our clients need to provide services to their customers at scale.

The Lime Solicitors brand is committed to fighting for the rights of those who have been let down. Our current practice areas include personal injury, medical negligence, inheritance disputes and professional negligence. Lime Solicitors have received significant praise for their work in reviews from legal listings, industry associations and clients, including achieving Feefo’s Gold Trusted Service award for the last 2 years. Often featured in both the national and legal press we campaign for our clients and seek to raise awareness to ensure that, where possible, lessons are learnt and future harm avoided.

We are proud of the varied background and expertise of the teams across all of our brands and how we all work as one team to deliver outstanding client service. We firmly believe in working hard and being ambitious. We look to recruit and develop talented people to achieve their potential - and who will contribute to achieving ours too.

The role:

We are looking for an experienced IT Case Developer to play a crucial role as an extension to the IT function, in supporting our Volume & Consumer Group in the transition, implantation and development of our new Case Management System (CMS).

The role requires the IT Case Developer to work closely with V&C business partners to understand operational demands, business requirements and opportunities for optimisation/ improvement to support the design and implement of strategic developments and solutions.

The successful candidate will be part of the existing IT function and will be seconded to the V&C Group, under a matrix management model, to maximise collaboration and leverage the broader IT expertise available to support Group operations and successful delivery of the new CMS.

We are looking for a highly motivated individual with strong analytical skills and a solid logic thought process, ideally (but not essentially) with a history of working in a law firm developing case management solutions. The ideal candidate will also have strong knowledge of business process workflow implementation, including automation, within case management solutions.

Your key duties will include:

• working as an ambassador for the IT function, in alignment with the IT Function governance and processes, to support operational and strategic change within the V&C Group
• having secondment to the V&C Group to:
  • understanding their business requirements and processes and support development and transition to our new case management solution, proposing innovation, automation and updated ways of working wherever possible
  • identifying opportunities and supporting IT and the V&C Group with developing reliable, innovative and scalable technology solutions to meet organisational needs and process improvements in relevant software
  • creating and maintaining application documentation including; Technical Specifications, Knowledge Base/ Know How Articles and other project artefacts as required
  • managing development items to closure within time, cost and quality constraints
  • providing regular and effective progress updates to ensure the management of any delivery risks or issues - aligned with IT standard governance and processes whilst also reporting to the V&C Group
  • supporting the translation of business requirements into detailed design specifications to deliver effective solutions in an agile environment – collaborating with the wider expertise across the IT function to optimise delivery
• working through the entire product lifecycle; from initial requirements gathering (discovery), workshops, design and construction, through to advanced configuration and business support training
• developing capabilities to become an expert in the new CMS and associated, supporting technologies and capabilities (including where possible Eclipse (Proclaim), iCor and Axxia PMS)
• feeling embedded and part of the Volume & Consumer Group whilst being part of the IT Function; developing strong relationships across the business and technical groups to become a trusted advisor/ partner
• ensuring the successful adoption of the case management system and practice management system through training and mentoring

Skills and experience you will have:

• a minimum of 2 years’ previous demonstrable experience in a similar role, ideally gained in a legal environment (but not mandatory)
• solid experience of understanding and translating business requirements in to technical specifications and coding as appropriate, with a proven track record in development to deliver effective solutions in an agile environment
• the desire and aptitude to research and learn new skills and technologies as they become available
• a full understanding of release management and experience working in a controlled project environment
• knowledge of software development lifecycle
• the ability to work on multiple development work streams concurrently
• excellent communication skills with end users and business stakeholders

Technical knowledge you will have:

• working knowledge of legal procedures and systems would be desirable
• experience in the development of software including (but not constrained to):
  • .NET (C#, VB, ASP)
  • SDK Workflow development
  • SQL
  • Web API’s
• familiarity of using Microsoft office products including Visio and MS Project
• SlicedBread (desirable)

Key competencies you will need:

• to be enthusiastic and adaptable in your approach to development and technology
• the drive and enthusiasm to be part of a bigger team working together to achieve team goals
• the ability to identify strengths, weaknesses and exposure to business processes
• the ability to anticipate problems, identify risk, evaluate impact and produce appropriate solutions, or escalate as necessary
• determination and resilience with an ability to produce high quality outcomes in a fast paced working environment
• the ability to react to change, prioritise accordingly and maintain strong organisational skills with minimal supervision
• to undertake a logical and rational approach to problem solving
• flexibility to travel to other site locations

Due to the nature of the work undertaken, confirmation of employment will be subject to a variety of checks which will be carried out once an offer of employment is accepted. Details of the checks can be found here.

Shakespeare Martineau is a committed equal opportunities employer. We seek to attract, develop and retain talented people from a diverse range of backgrounds and cultures. We value and respect individuality and encourage a culture within our business where people can be themselves and be valued for their strengths and experiences. Everyone who either applies to or works for the firm is treated equally, regardless of their gender, age, ethnic origin, nationality, marital status, sexual orientation or religious beliefs.