Job Title

Legal Secretary

Position

Full Time

Role

Business Services

Location

Bristol

Experience

Business Services

Description

The role

We are now recruiting a Legal Secretary for our Bristol office. The successful candidate will provide high-quality and efficient Legal Secretarial support to fee earners within the Professional & Financial Risks team. As a Legal Secretary, you will report directly to the Head of Practice Services (Tina Lambert) and work closely with partners and fee-earners within the Professional & Financial Risks team, as well as secretarial colleagues.

Duties and responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Checking fee-earner e-mails as required in their absence, responding where able
• Organising and setting up meetings, including securing conference rooms, necessary equipment and any catering requirements
• Assisting in setting up meetings such as preparing meeting materials and correct room set-up
• Maintaining and organising files, records and documents, ensuring they are easily accessible when needed (this can include both physical and digital records)
• Diary management of fee-earners as required, using own initiative to arrange meetings and conference calls
• Gatekeeping by ensuring fee earners time is spent in the correct way and assisting with non-chargeable work when required
• Being a conduit between staff both in your department and others and with external contacts
• Scheduling meetings, appointments and events, co-ordinating travel arrangements and accommodation.
• Sending out blogs to both internal and external contacts
• Ensuring all issues are actioned and deadlines met
• Ensuring all PI checklists are completed
• Maintaining WIP schedules and ensuring all matters are billed, including checking rates, references etc
• Liaising with Finance regarding aged debt management

Knowledge, skills and experience

• Previous experience of working within a busy corporate environment is essential
• Demonstrates a growth mindset and is committed to lifelong learning to build knowledge and expertise.
• 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
• Demonstrates 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
• Communication skills - the ability to communicate in a confident and professional manner with people at all levels within the business
• Demonstrates 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
• Develops internal and external client service skills to build collaborative client relationships.
• Understands the importance of working commercially to achieve the objectives of the team/firm.
• Collaborative and works effectively in a team.
• Committed to being part of a supportive, inclusive and collaborative firm culture.

RPC