The posting
Company Description
Who we are
We are one of the largest international law firms in the world. With over 30 offices across the globe, we strive to exceed the expectations of our clients, providing them with the highest-quality advice and legal insight, which combines the firm’s global standards with in-depth local expertise.
Our firm, work and people span jurisdictions, cultures, and languages. We offer our clients a truly international perspective. We believe every career should be rewarding and stimulating – full of opportunities to learn, thrive, and grow. That’s why we’re so proud of our inclusive, friendly, and team-based approach to work.
Our one firm global strategy is focused on targeted growth led by the needs of our core clients, those who we can best support with the breadth and depth of Clifford Chance expertise, across the sectors and geographies, which matter most to them.
You’ll find our clients in commercial and industrial sectors, the financial investor community, governments, regulators, trade bodies, and not-for-profit organisations. But no matter who they are or why they’ve reached out to us, we provide a world-class service every step of the way. And that’s possible thanks to the entrepreneurial spirit and conscientious approach to work that you’ll find across all of our teams.
Whichever area of the business you join, you’ll become an integral part an innovative, diverse and ambitious team of people. Clifford Chance is a place where the brightest minds and the best of colleagues meet.
Job Description
The Role
The Strategy & Governance Office plays a central role in enabling effective strategic leadership, governance and operational oversight across the firm. This is a high-impact coordination and administrative role supporting the Global Head of Strategy & Governance Office. The role will provide the structure, coordination and operational support.
The role combines high-quality senior administrative support with broader office coordination responsibilities. The postholder will anticipate priorities, connect activity across the different functions and ensure that meetings, information, actions and deadlines are managed consistently across the office, enabling the Global Head and "office" to focus on strategic delivery, leadership and stakeholder engagement.
Key Relationships
- Global Head of Strategy & Governance (GHSG)
- Affiliated team members within the Strategy & Governance Office
- Senior leaders across Business Professional functions
- Executive Committee (ExCo) and Wider Leadership Group (WLG) (through GHSG)
- Executive Assistants and colleagues supporting senior leadership and governance forums
- External stakeholders, where required
What you will be responsible for
Senior administrative support to the Global Head
- Own complex diary management, using sound judgement to prioritise competing demands, protect strategic focus time and ensure the GHSG is fully prepared for each commitment.
- Provide proactive inbox management, triaging correspondence, identifying priorities, drafting responses and ensuring actions are progressed, followed up and closed.
- Anticipate requirements and prepare high-quality briefing packs, agendas, papers, presentations, correspondence and supporting materials.
- Coordinate complex travel, itineraries, expenses and associated logistics, responding calmly and quickly when arrangements change.
- Act as a trusted point of contact for senior stakeholders, handling confidential and sensitive matters with discretion, judgement and professionalism.
- Lead the end-to-end coordination of Executive Committee meetings and other senior management and governance forums supported by the office.
- Establish and manage annual meeting cycles, forward plans, agendas, paper timetables and submission deadlines.
- Coordinate contributions from senior stakeholders, quality-check materials and ensure papers are accurate, complete, consistent and issued on time.
- Attend meetings where required to capture decisions and actions, maintain action trackers and drive timely follow-up.
- Maintain clear governance records and ensure decisions, dependencies and outstanding actions are visible to the appropriate stakeholders.
Strategy & Governance Office coordination
- Provide a central coordination point for the GHGS office, bringing together priorities, workstreams, deadlines and dependencies across the office.
- Coordinate implementation activities, ensuring alignment of priorities and timelines, monitoring progress and dependencies, and providing a consolidated view of updates, actions, risks, and emerging issues for the GHGS
- Create practical team rhythms, trackers and reporting mechanisms that support alignment, transparency and effective delivery.
- Coordinate cross-functional activity and follow up with contributors to maintain momentum against agreed priorities.
- Support the preparation of leadership updates, strategic communications, presentations and reporting materials.
- Build effective relationships across the wider firm and facilitate seamless collaboration between senior leaders, business teams and key stakeholders.
- Provide flexible administrative and project support across the functions represented within the office.
Financial management and planning
- Support the financial management of the Strategy & Governance Office through budget coordination, expenditure tracking, forecasting and reporting.
- Work closely with the GHSG and Finance teams to monitor spend, identify variances and provide meaningful insights to support informed decision-making.
- Ensure appropriate financial governance and approval processes are followed.
- Contribute to the development of business cases, investment proposals, budget planning and cost management initiatives.
Continuous improvement and team effectiveness
- Identify opportunities to simplify, standardise and improve administrative, governance and information-management processes.
- Use technology and AI-enabled tools to confidently to improve organisation, collaboration, document quality and the visibility of actions and deadlines.
- Help establish a high-performing, collaborative office culture in which information is shared appropriately and commitments are delivered.
Qualifications
Your Experience
- Significant experience in a senior coordination, administration or executive support role within a complex, fast-paced, global professional environment.
- Exceptional organisation and prioritisation skills, with the ability to manage multiple high-profile and time-critical demands without loss of quality.
- Outstanding attention to detail and a consistent commitment to accuracy, presentation and follow-through.
- Strong strategic awareness: able to understand the wider context, connect themes, identify dependencies and anticipate what is needed next.
- Excellent judgement and confidence in making decisions, escalating appropriately and constructively challenging where necessary.
- Highly developed stakeholder-management skills and the credibility to work effectively with the most senior people in the firm.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to draft clear executive-level correspondence and materials.
- Proven experience coordinating senior governance meetings, complex meeting cycles and high-quality papers or briefing materials.
- A collaborative approach, with the ability to bring together colleagues across different disciplines and levels of seniority.
- Resilience, composure and flexibility when priorities change or pressure is high.
- Absolute discretion and a strong understanding of confidentiality.
- Advanced capability in Microsoft 365, particularly Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, Teams and Excel, with confidence adopting new tools and ways of working.
Personal attributes
- Proactive and highly responsive, with a strong sense of ownership.
- Intellectually curious, commercially aware and interested in the firm's strategic priorities.
- Methodical and precise, while able to work at pace and see the bigger picture.
- Service-minded but confident, able to set expectations and maintain appropriate boundaries.
- Dependable, calm and solutions-focused.
- A natural connector who builds trust and enables others to perform at their best.
- Fluency or native in English language
Additional Information
How we will support you
From your first day with us, you will have varied opportunities to continuously grow and development your skills and knowledge. From formal training, informal coaching and mentoring through to skills-based and technical training and on the job learning.
Hybrid working
This role follows our 'balanced' hybrid working approach and as long as business needs allow, you will be supported to work in a hybrid way in line with the hybrid working policy.
What we offer including our broad range of benefits and working environment
When you join Clifford Chance, you will have access to a broad range of benefits to support you across many aspects of your personal and professional life including financial, wellbeing, lifestyle, and family friendly benefits. For more information on what we offer specifically in the UK, please visit our What We Offer page on our career site.
Equal opportunities
At Clifford Chance, we forge an inclusive culture, where diverse perspectives are recognised and valued. It’s a culture where everyone has equal access to opportunities to thrive and succeed. We are guided by our values-based Code, which sets high standards of conduct and has a principle focused on being inclusive.
We comply with the law and regulations in every location where we operate and we are committed to delivering fair and equal access to all applicants and employees irrespective of background. This applies across all aspects of employment from recruitment and selection to development, progression, and day-to-day working life.
Our global network of affinity, faith and support groups are open to all. These communities help to create an environment where everyone at the firm can feel they belong and can reach their full potential.
Find out more about our inclusive culture here
