The posting
Personal Assistance
You will provide a full range of PA, secretarial, co-ordination and administrative tasks, including all document work, matter management, billing, developing pitch material, and supporting on marketing and K&L activities.
You are expected to build close relationships with your fee earners so that you can anticipate their needs in advance and understand how they like to manage their time. This will enable you to manage their diaries in a highly effective and proactive manner, understanding and anticipating (for example) which clients / colleagues need to be prioritised at any given time, whether to block out time to assist with their preparation for meetings or whether any meetings are required in advance of any client meetings for the purpose of preparation. You will play a key role in assisting your fee earners with the management of both internal and external meetings, collating, and circulating materials to attendees as appropriate. You may also be required to attend meetings to take minutes and assist with the follow up of any action points.
You will be a first point of contact for your fee-earners, you will be responsible for managing your fee-earners’ inboxes, liaising with clients and answering and distributing incoming phone calls. The most effective PAs proactively respond to queries from clients and colleagues on their fee earners behalf, anticipating where you may be able to support your fee earners further, by completing follow up actions without asking them. Building effective relationships and trust with your fee-earners, will allow you to have the appropriate autonomy, agreed with them.
You should meet with your fee earners on a regular basis to support with building and developing strong relationships to enable you to develop your knowledge and understanding of their business, clients, and workload. In those meetings, you should seek to relieve them of any work that you can manage on their behalf.
You will manage all travel arrangements and be proactive in ensuring that your fee-earners have everything they need in advance of meetings/travel etc and are reminded about timings and locations.
You will work with the other PAs, Secretaries and Administrative Assistants in the team and as appropriate delegate associated administrative tasks such as printing, expenses, and invoices, in order for you to focus on delivering a highly valuable service.
Network Building and Relationship Management
You will work in line with the firm’s ‘one team’ approach, sharing your experience and your workload and using all available firmwide resources to meet deadlines; positive engagement with the Secretarial Services Team will be key to your success.
You will be empowered to build effective relationships across the firm, and with your fee-earners’ clients, to complete tasks in the most effective way. You are encouraged to build relationships with the PAs of your fee earners’ clients to further enhance effective communication between you, your fee earner and their clients.
Technical and Professional Expertise
Using your knowledge and experience, you will support your fee-earners with a range Business Development and Marketing activities e.g., pitch production and the co-ordination of internal and external events, including meeting with event organisers, liaising with Business Teams and ensuring costs are maintained against budget.
You will be proactively involved in the billing process from beginning to end, undertaking specific tasks as part of this process relevant to your practice area e.g., liaising directly with local counsel to obtain invoices for certain matters and producing detailed narratives/reports according to the clients' needs. You will look to reduce billing administration burden from your fee earners, while looking for ways to improve efficiency in the process. You will work closely with the practice group’s Revenue Management team and if applicable, Billing Administrator.
You will use your knowledge of the firm’s systems and policies to anticipate and proactively offer solutions to issues and ensuring compliance with Legal & Risk policies.
Continuous Improvement
You will continue to develop your competencies and skills in order to provide excellent professional assistance, attending training when required. You will actively generate and implement ideas for process improvement within both your practice and the broader team.
Teamwork
You will be an adept collaborator, working as part of a team with a high level of commitment and determination to help your team achieve success. You will demonstrate a proactive, enthusiastic, can-do approach to your work and have the ability to delegate effectively. You will show support and provide guidance to more junior members of the Secretarial team.
Communication Skills
Strong communication skills are a must. You should be approachable and flexible with an ability to communicate with senior stakeholders effectively and know how to target messages to the audience.
Reliability
Given the nature of our work, the ability to maintain high levels of accuracy and confidentiality whilst working under pressure is essential.
You will be expected to be able to prioritise your own workload effectively and show flexibility with your time should you need to complete urgent tasks (this may include shortening your lunch break or working longer hours on occasions).
Experience required:
Practical Experience
At least 3 years’ experience working as a secretary/ PA.
Office Skills
A strong understanding of MS Office, Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint
Proven IT skills and an interest in new ways of doing things.
Strong organisational / self-management skills
PA Skills
Articulate and confident in communicating at all levels within and outside the organisation (written and verbal).
Excellent attention to detail.
Well organised and comfortable taking the initiative
Strong client service orientation - proactive, adaptable, flexible and responsive.
Resilient and able to perform under pressure
Professional approach, strong integrity and appreciation of the confidential nature of the work.
Technical Skills
This list of duties and responsibilities above is not exhaustive. It is intended to describe the general content of, and requirements for, the performance of this job. As such, the role may also include the undertaking of additional tasks as required.
Application Policy
Applications and CVs (direct or via agency) are only accepted online via the portal. Queries related to our roles must be directed to the relevant recruitment team and not the partners, practices or stakeholders ([email protected] for legal roles or [email protected] for business team roles).
