Job description
The role
We are now recruiting a Legal Secretary for our London office. The successful candidate will provide high-quality and efficient Legal Secretarial support to 3 Partners within the Commercial Disputes team.
Key Internal Relationships
Head of Practice Services, partners and fee-earners within the Commercial Disputes team and secretarial colleagues.
Reporting Line
The role reports directly to the Head of Practice Services (Tina Lambert)
Duties and Responsibilities include but not are limited to the following:
Organisation:
- Diary management of fee-earners as required, using own initiative to arrange meetings and conference calls
- Checking of fee-earner e-mails as required in their absence; responding where able
- Booking video/conference calls, meeting rooms and required refreshments, and making lunch and dinner reservations
- Making simple travel arrangements as required e.g. booking train tickets and collating itineraries
- Handling telephone enquiries in a professional and polite manner, taking accurate messages and following up on any agreed actions
Documents/Correspondence*:
- Only those which are not mandated for production/collation by DPD or of a length that are typed by individual fee-earners
- Managing the workflow to DPD, Reprographics etc. as required; proactively taking steps to ensure work is returned within required timescales
- Amending and formatting agreements/documents as required
- Short pieces of copy-typing and digital dictation as requiredCarrying out PDF to Word conversions and vice versa
- Collating all indexing on legal documentation and setting up files as necessary
- Production of short, less complex PowerPoint presentations as required
- Proof-reading of all documents to ensure the delivery of work of the highest quality
- Any general correspondence as may be required from time to time
Support of other functions/activities: - Insertion of business contact cards into Outlook and InterAction
- Processing fee-earner expenses on Chrome River in a timely manner
- Liaison with Business Development, Marketing, Events and Finance Teams with a view to supporting them on specific team-based tasks
Knowledge, skills and experience
- Previous experience of working within a busy corporate environment is essential
- Excellent client care skills - the ability to deal with queries from internal and external clients in a professional and polite manner
- Excellent organisational skills - the ability to take responsibility for own tasks and prioritise work in a calm and efficient manner
- Demonstrate proactivity and the ability to work on own initiative
- Highly developed time management skills - the ability to work to very tight deadlines while maintaining a high standard of accuracy
- Highly developed communication skills - the ability to communicate in a confident and professional manner with people at all levels within the business
- Demonstrate flexibility/adaptability in meeting internal and external clients' demands - in both the nature of the work undertaken and working additional hours as required to complete the task(s)
- Reliable with a strong work ethic and a 'can-do' approach
- High levels of IT literacy in Microsoft Word, Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint (although more complex and/or lengthy documents are likely to be undertaken by others in dedicated roles)
- Highly developed administrative skills with the ability to multi-task under pressure