Legal Services Supervisor (Halifax) (TERM)

About Us

The Legal Services Division (LSD) is the government's law firm, providing a full range of legal advice and services to support government operations and help government achieve its corporate priorities. With a staff of more than 160 lawyers, paralegals, researchers and administrative professionals, the Division is one of the largest law offices in the Province.

At LSD, we don't just accept difference - we want and celebrate a supportive culture of diversity, inclusion and belonging!

For more information on the Department of Justice Legal Services Division please visit our website.

About Our Opportunity

You’re a natural leader that strives for their team’s success. You are comfortable inspiring others with your communication skills, whether they be senior leaders, lawyers or legal support professionals. You see value in collaborating across roles and organizations, and you can create a path forward from uncertainty. You’re enthusiastic and committed to exploring new opportunities that help your team learn and grow.

You share our values of Respect, Integrity, Diversity, Accountability and the Public Good, have a passion for service excellence, and actively promote and encourage the importance of people, teams, diversity, and culture.

Primary Accountabilities

As the Legal Services Supervisor, you will:
 

• Be an integral part of a leadership team working to ensure effective and efficient provision of a range of legal services to support government operations.
• Build relationships and interact tactfully and diplomatically with various stakeholders.
• Demonstrate flexibility and creativity in problem solving, action management, team building, and staff motivation.
• Ensure the provision of effective paralegal support to the General Litigation team, which might include providing paralegal or administrative support to one or more lawyers.
• Have significant independence and accountability for the delivery of an extensive range of managerial responsibilities for a team of 7 legal support professionals, ensuring alignment with core human resources, financial, business, and administrative systems and processes, such as:
  • All HR responsibilities for the team (recruitment and selection, performance planning and development, performance management, attendance, and absence management).
  • Onboarding and training new users.
  • Setting standards and best practices for the team.
  • Decisive and effective prioritizing and delegating tasks, including ensuring deadlines are met by others with little margin for error.
  • Procuring required resources.
  • Contributing to continuous improvement by developing new and revised legal and business processes to support the smart deployment of resources.
  • Being the main point of contact for all legal administration and corporate services needs for the team.
  • Promoting a positive, healthy, safe, and secure work environment.

Qualifications and Experience

Genuinely share knowledge with others to build a strong, collaborative team.

Be a key partner in influencing the development of the Division’s overall mission, purpose and mandate, and be a critical part of ensuring the Division’s effective operation.

Have a continual awareness of legal and legislative changes and ensure these are communicated to staff in a timely and effective manner.

What You Bring To The Table

Your ability to:

• Successfully supervise a team to ensure success by allowing them to meet their fullest potential while ensuring service standards are upheld.
• Engage collaboratively across all roles in the organization.
• Creatively problem solve in restrictive timeframes.
• Balance demands and manage time with competing priorities over multiple projects, and in a fast-paced environment.
• Ability to work with new and evolving technologies.
• Work in complex legal environments.

Your experience in:

• Working in a law firm, corporate or government legal department;
• Supervising a team of legal support professionals; and
• Onboarding and training.

You have successfully completed a paralegal or legal assistant diploma or certificate from a recognized post secondary institution, plus several years of directly related experience supervising a team.

Equivalency

Applicants relying on education and experience equivalencies must demonstrate such equivalencies in their application.

We recognize that everyone brings different skills and experiences to the table and that not everyone “checks all the boxes”. We encourage you to apply anyway! Demonstrate any equivalencies you have in your application. Tell us why you’re the right fit for the job.

Benefits

Based on the employment status, the Government of Nova Scotia offers its employees a wide range of benefits such as a Defined Benefit Pension Plan, Health, Dental, Life Insurance, General illness, Short and Long Term Disability, Vacation and Employee and Family Assistance Programs. For information on all our Benefit program offerings, click here: Benefits for government employees.

Working Conditions

• May be required to work overtime on occasion.
• Pressure to meet deadlines and ensure accuracy of work.
• Work is most often completed in a comfortable office environment and flexible work arrangements are available.
• Need to concentrate on a variety of sensory inputs requiring due diligence and attention, to interpret effectively and accurately while under tight deadlines.

Additional Information

This is a term opportunity, with an anticipated end date of March 13, 2026,  based in the Halifax office.

We will assess the above qualifications and competencies using one or more of the following tools: written examination, standardized tests, oral presentations, interview(s), and reference checks.

What We Offer

• Career development where you have access to career guidance, tools, resources, and ongoing training for every stage of your career
• Engaging workplace: our employees feel valued, respected, connected, and tuned in, we have forward-thinking policies and strategies
• Countless career paths
• A dynamic, client-focused office environment where service excellence and teamwork are our focus