• Full time ongoing Senior Executive Band 2 role
• Preference for candidates located in Regional NSW locations
• Lead legal strategy, manage risk, and drive compliance

Lead a multidisciplinary legal team, designing innovative solutions, managing legal risks, and ensuring compliance to deliver strategic support for government priorities.

About the role

As General Counsel for the NSW Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, you will lead the Department’s legal functions, ensuring alignment with government priorities and providing strategic legal advice on complex matters. This role involves designing and implementing legal frameworks, offering high-level counsel on risk mitigation, and ensuring compliance with all legal obligations across the Department.

You will oversee in-house legal services, manage high-risk legal matters, and provide authoritative advice to senior leaders within the Department. As a trusted advisor, you'll guide decision-making, manage complex litigation, and lead the development of legal policies and frameworks. You will also build strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders to ensure best practice legal services.

This role offers the opportunity to tackle dynamic and high-pressure legal challenges, balancing evolving government priorities with legal compliance. You will develop innovative legal strategies while managing competing demands, navigating political and public scrutiny, and ensuring the Department’s legal services support its strategic objectives.

To be successful in this role, you will have:

• Proven experience in managing complex legal matters, providing strategic advice on high-risk issues, and developing legal frameworks to ensure compliance.
• Strong leadership skills to direct a multidisciplinary legal team, set performance standards, and align legal services with departmental goals and government directives.
• Exceptional communication skills to advise senior leaders, Ministers, and external partners, fostering confidence in legal services and ensuring robust decision-making.
• Ability to provide innovative, practical legal solutions to complex challenges and anticipate emerging legal issues and risks.
• Expertise in identifying and mitigating legal risks, ensuring compliance with all obligations while balancing operational priorities.
• Experience shaping legal policies, supporting legislative proposals, and contributing to governance processes at both strategic and operational levels.

For further information about the role, please contact Lucy Weeding, A/Manager Talent Advisory at lucy.weeding@regional.nsw.gov.au or 0409 505 588. Alternatively, view the role description for specific details.

Why us?

The Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) is the department dedicated to growing primary industries and supporting regional economic development to deliver long term benefits to the state. Our focus is to protect, support and develop our primary industries, mining sector, and regions. DPIRD brings together Agriculture and Biosecurity; Fisheries and Forestry; Local Land Services; NSW Resources; Regional Development and Delivery; the Regional Growth NSW Development Corporation; NSW Public Works and Soil Conservation Service.

We have nearly 5,000 employees, with almost 80 per cent of us living and working in regional NSW.

Sounds interesting?

If you have the legal expertise, strategic vision, and leadership skills, we invite you to apply. Please submit your curriculum vitae and a cover letter addressing your suitability for this position.

Applications Closing Date: Sunday, 19 January 2025 at 11:55pm

Please note that DPIRD will be closed during the period 23 December 2024 to 05 January 2025 (inclusive). Recruitment process will recommence in January 2025. 

If you require adjustments in completing your application, interviewing, completing any pre- employment testing, or otherwise participating in the recruitment process, please let us know so we can assist. Send an email to talent.advisory@dpird.nsw.gov.au and a member of the team will contact you for a confidential discussion.

Additional Information:

A talent pool may be created from this recruitment action for ongoing and temporary roles of the same standard that may become available for filling over the next eighteen months. The successful applicant in this role may be required to undergo a police check, health assessment and other assessments as required.

Diversity and inclusion are core values of the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development. The Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development is a workplace where everyone is able to contribute and participate to their full potential, and we are proud to have a team that reflects the richness and complexity of the regional NSW communities we serve.