Education Project Support Officer

IPReg is the independent regulatory body for patent and trade mark attorneys. The Legal Services Act 2007 (LSA) requires those involved in the regulation of legal services to separate the representative activities of their professional bodies from their regulatory functions. IPReg regulates around 3,440 individual attorneys (of whom around 70% are patent attorneys, 24% are trade mark attorneys and 6% are on both registers). We also regulate around 250 firms.

Some of the matters that we are responsible for include:

1. Setting and enforcing our Core Regulatory Framework. You can find all the new regulatory arrangements and accompanying guidance on our dedicated webpage;
2. Setting the education and training requirements for qualification as a patent attorney and as a trade mark attorney;
3. Maintaining the registers of patent attorneys and trade mark attorneys;
4. Setting the requirements for continuing professional development in order that patent attorneys’ and trade mark attorneys’ knowledge, skills and expertise are maintained at a high level;
5. Investigating complaints of misconduct and, where appropriate, taking disciplinary or other action.

This is an exciting time to join the IPReg executive team. Our education review is an ambitious project that will launch in the spring of 2025. This follows a concerted period of scoping its purpose and areas of focus and planning how it will be progressed as a project. The review will form a substantial, phased project undertaken in strong collaboration with stakeholders.

The Education Project Support Officer will make a significant contribution to how the project is run and to the delivery of its intended outputs and outcomes. This role will contribute to how we take a robust, evidence-informed approach to key topics, including those to do with equality, diversity and inclusion; how we draw on best practice in professional education and assessment and ensure rigour in our project management and reporting processes; and how we secure and enable stakeholder input and feedback across the life of the project. This role will provide the opportunity to develop your career in a regulatory and legal services context and to work as part of a small, friendly and high-functioning executive team.

You should be keen to develop your career in project working in education. You should be looking to build on and apply the knowledge, skills and experience you have gained to date in project support within professional regulation or higher education. Ideally you will have experience of supporting project activity that is multi-stranded and/or multi-staged. You should be skilled in using project management templates, tools and processes. You should also be confident in supporting stakeholder communications and engagement activity and in producing minutes and action notes.

Some of the key responsibilities:

1. Schedule and set up meetings of IPReg’s Education Working Group (EWG) and project-specific groups in line with the project timeline and to support IPReg’s project governance and stakeholder engagement arrangements.
2. Distribute materials in support of the EWG’s and project-specific groups’ meetings and support the groups’ reporting arrangements.
3. Maintain and co-ordinate project materials and their storage, including to create a project archive and provide an audit trail of progress against the project’s defined timeline, gateways and milestones.
4. Contribute to producing project progress reports in support of the project governance arrangements.
5. Support the Education Policy Associate with stakeholder communications and engagement activities, including managing IPReg’s project-specific email account, producing regular updates, and liaising with stakeholder representatives to optimise arrangements for input to the project.
6. Provide administrative support for IPReg’s current education accreditation, re-accreditation and annual reporting activity.

Some of the essential competencies we are looking for:

1. Strong administrative skills, with experience of using these to support project management, governance, record-keeping and reporting.
2. Effective time management skills, including to undertake activity against defined schedules and to meet deadlines, paying close attention to detail.
3. An understanding of education policy and quality assurance processes and their implementation.
4. Strong written and verbal communication skills, including confidence in producing action notes/minutes from meetings and contributing to stakeholder communications and engagement.
5. A commitment to progressing equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) initiatives.
6. Working collaboratively within a small executive team.

Full details of the role and responsibilities required can be found in the link below. Please apply by visiting www.thewlisgraham.com/opportunities and following the instructions in the candidate brief quoting reference AC0302. The closing date is 16 April 4pm. Should you still require a confidential conversation with Sarah Thewlis or for any other information please email applications@thewlisgraham.com.