Main Purpose of the Role:
To provide fee-earners with proactive and high-quality secretarial support that appropriately meets their requirements, enabling them to focus on providing legal services to clients and reducing the need for them to undertake administrative tasks.
Key Relationships:
* Daily contact with Partners and Associates for work allocation
* Daily contact with other secretaries and team administrators within and across practice group(s) to provide/request assistance
* Regular contact with your Secretarial Co-ordinator or Secretarial Manager for wider work distribution
* Occasional contact with Secretarial Manager for escalations or issues
* Building and maintaining relationships with colleagues and key stakeholders
Main Duties & Responsibilities:
Diary and Contact Management:
Proactively manage and maintain fee-earners' diaries, scheduling appointments and co-ordinating internal and external client meetings and ensure all work activities are scheduled effectively, including the identification and resolution of potential challenges and clashes.
Having a good knowledge of fee earners clients, liaising with their PAs
Monitor individual responses for meetings and update fee-earner(s) as required
Ensure fee-earners have relevant materials and information in advance of each meeting
Administrative Support:
Arrange the booking of conference rooms, video conference facilities, taxis refreshments, restaurants, and liaising with meeting attendees, both internal and external
Monitoring and responding to post and/or emails, prioritising correspondence to enable fee-earners to focus on urgent matters and using initiative to route emails to the appropriate individuals for swift response and action; wherever possible, responding to and filing emails on behalf of fee-earners to reduce volume
Person Specification:
Education / Qualifications / Experience:
Experience working as a secretary within a professional services environment
Knowledge and Technical Skills:
Good working knowledge of all Microsoft applications
Experience of working with house-styles and branding
Good working knowledge of document and client relationship management systems, OCR/PDF software and financial recording applications
General Skills:
Client service orientated approach
A proven working understanding of teamwork
Problem solving skills and solutions focused
Advanced communication skills at all levels
Self-management, ability to take ownership and excellent organisational skills, with the ability to prioritise work calmly and effectively in a pressurised environment
Accountability and professionalism
Benefits:
Negotiable