Legal Advisor (UK applicants only)

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What will you be doing?

Who are we?

Mast Cell Action is a rare disease charity established at the end of 2015. Our aim is to provide support to patients and their families through lobbying for better recognition of the condition, tests and treatment on the NHS, fundraising to support the activities of the charity, and towards studies to demonstrate the need for greater resources for this disease.

The disease is called Mast Cell Activation Syndrome and produces a wide range of unusual symptoms. It was first recognised in 1990 and a set of diagnostic criteria were agreed by a panel of international doctors in 2011. There are very few UK doctors who understand or can treat this disease, and most patients in the UK are in a medical limbo.

What will you be doing?

We periodically encounter legal issues, usually to do with ensuring that the charity doesn’t consciously or unconsciously transgress any legal binding laws. Your role would be to provide legal guidance on issues such as freedom of speech, equality & diversity, employment law, social media terms and possible breaches such that we as a charity do not transgress or show bias in our actions. For example,

There has been some issues with moderation and management of the (Facebook) support groups. Moderators have had to deal with disruptive individuals who claim their rights are being infringed when the individual's behaviour may impact other patient members on social media negatively and the charity wants to know tits own rights if we have to exclude members but there in lies the dilemma of freedom of speech. The trustees would thus like an informed view and currently, pro-bono legal support cannot support the charity for such issues.

Going forward however, we would like access to an experienced legal resource that can give us appropriate advice as and when legal issues come up in any aspect of the charity’s activities. Ideally we are seeking a practising or retired lawyer, an academic or possibly a paralegal who may need to provide input from time to time but not a predefined number of hours during a given year..

Beyond that, we are always looking for competent volunteers able to help the charity develop its activities, both in volunteer support and medical advocacy. Hence if anybody wished for a more general contribution to a young charity looking to grow, we would be pleased to discuss that with you.

Potentially a practising or retired lawyer, an academic or possibly a paralegal.

We need somebody who is comfortable operating in the environment of a small, volunteer run charity, rather than a large corporate or established organisation, and is able to interface with trustees and volunteers on a reasonably informal basis.

Vital skills: legal background and experience, preferably in charity sector or in organisations such as "Liberty". To work independently and liaise with other experts and come up with legal advice.

Nice to Have: self starter, pragmatic approach.

To provide a legal framework to address any legal issues to make the charity more robust. Additionally to provide the confidence to the moderators whilst providing support to the patient community but also face challenges that are disruptive and may run into legal implications.