Owen Reed is looking to recruit a passionate Personal Assistant to join top law firm in London.
You will be expected to provide high quality, comprehensive personal assistant/secretarial support to lawyers in the department. You will proactively contribute to the department, and ultimately, the Firm's success by actively seeking to improve working processes, anticipating the needs of clients and colleagues, and facilitating flexible and efficient workflow management.
As a PA, the expectation is that you will demonstrate the key characteristics described below. These areas of focus are aligned with the needs of those supported by every PA in Firm. While the descriptions are not exhaustive, they provide an overview of the fundamental expectations that the Firm places on its PA population.
Proactivity - PAs are expected to understand and anticipate the varying needs of the individuals they provide support. This will be realised through action and results-oriented behaviour, where requirements and challenges are pre-empted and resolved, and where opportunities to add value are exploited.
Teamwork - PAs are expected to contribute to their PA team operating as one seamless 'unit'. This will involve maximising individual strengths and drawing on the capacity of everyone in the team to collectively ensure that deadlines are met, and excellent work product is delivered. This is likely to include sharing knowledge, providing support to others at times when absence or capacity issues arise, and collaborating with the PA team to suggest and implement improvements to processes.
Communication - Good communication needs to be channelled in multiple directions to develop constructive working relationships. This will require managing expectations of key stakeholders by acknowledging and updating on the progress of tasks, including tasks that are ongoing and/or non-urgent. Strong communication skills will be evidenced by recognising and assisting when colleagues require support and for conveying your own need for support. Ultimately, good communication is vital for enabling effective team working and for developing trust.
Inspiring Confidence - The value added by the PAs across the Firm has a direct impact on the level of service provided to clients. It is therefore imperative, as someone providing support for the lawyers, that support is delivered with a genuine appreciation of the pace and extent of demands expected by the Firm's clients. This will involve delivering work with a high degree of accuracy and professional presentation, turned around promptly to meet deadlines. This goal will be met with the parallel aim of going above and beyond wherever possible. A professional attitude and demeanour are integral to a PA being perceived as part of a lawyer team delivering high quality work to clients - which should be an aspiration of all of our PAs.
Key Responsibilities
- Extensive and proactive diary management. Gaining an understanding of the week from the perspective of the lawyers - 'horizon scanning' to pre-empt conflicts and anticipate needs.
- Work to ensure unique and individual support needs are understood for each lawyer.
- Ensure regular communication is made to convey and share any workload pressures with other PAs.
- Pre-empt needs for enhanced or specific support at times when individuals might be under additional pressure.
- Field and screen communications (email), ensuring exceptional client service is considered at all times.
- Act as a 'gatekeeper' for work whilst identifying where to delegate tasks that should be sent to the Document Production ('DP') team or the Central Admin TeamTeam Administrators.
- Ensure 'quality control' forms part of regular workflow patterns, whereby any work that is delegated to another team is thoroughly checked before it is returned.
- Complete appropriate/necessary DP tasks to the highest standards and ensuring house style requirements are met.
- Prepare PowerPoint presentations with minimal input, delivering slides that are clear, in line with branding.
- Take the initiative of overseeing ad-hoc administrative projects for the lawyers, for example, archiving, confidential shredding, photocopying, organising filing systems.
- Liaise with relevant parties to arrange meetings; booking internal rooms; ensuring the appropriate room setups are in place; and that refreshments are booked and confirmed.
- Liaise with and co-ordinate meeting attendees, both internal and external, ensuring all parties have the relevant information ahead of time.
- Proactively prepare and collate papers ahead of meetings.
- Co-ordinate travel arrangements ensuring efficient use of time and expenditure including booking taxis and accommodation, completing visa applications, arranging currency, creating itineraries, and compiling expense forms as appropriate.
- Support lawyers in marketing activities including involvement in the preparation of pitch documents and presentations.
- Use of effective systems to ensure that both urgent and non-urgent tasks are progressed and delivered within the required timescales.
- Assist other members of the department/Firm as required; and
- Develop a general awareness of business issues and challenges within which the lawyers operate to instill trust and confidence in the PA team.
Client Relations
- Be client focused and understand the expectations of internal and external clients.
- Where necessary, pass on full and accurate messages in a timely manner and take appropriate action to ensure the needs of both internal and external clients are met.
- Act in a professional and courteous manner when dealing with clients (including internal clients), potential clients and third parties.
- Assist in arranging internal and external events.
- Capture and manage contact and client relationship data in the Firm’s CRM system (InterAction), maintaining any existing information.
- Interrogate and report on data in the CRM system.
- Become an active part in the care of clients and look for opportunities to build relationships with client contacts and PAs where appropriate; and
- Deal with basic client queries and general administration.
Administration
- Proactively deal with incoming and outgoing mail.
- Action emails and manage inbox as required by the Partner and forward/action as necessary.
- Establish and maintain effective and accurate filing systems (electronic);
- Be capable of operating all the functions of the photocopiers and scanners including clearing jams, replenishing paper and replacing toner.
- Managing lawyer expenses; and
- General ad-hoc administration duties
Communication
- Demonstrate rapport, empathy, and professionalism when communicating and use these skills to build and maintain collaborative working relationships with all colleagues, clients and stakeholders of the Firm;
- Utilise your internal and external networks to help you to solve problems and devise effective solutions;
- Ensure that all client related correspondence is passed on to an appropriate lawyer and actioned as necessary;
- Liaise with the business support departments on behalf of the lawyers as required;
- Liaise with the department’s Team Leader/PA Manager over any planned absences, arranging cover as necessary and communicating this to the relevant lawyers; and
- Communicate and work as a team to cover busy periods and absence.
Documents
- Oversee all document production work, either through delegation and quality control, or through completing a task that falls within the PA remit of responsibility; and
- Provide support with marketing and pitch documents.
Billing and File Opening
- Assist lawyers with time recording where possible, entering absences onto Intapp Time;
- Assist lawyers with billing and credit control by liaising with Central Finance and preparing bill narratives and draft cost details;
- Provide assistance with file opening and conflict checks; and
- Request bank transfers, pay money in/out, as appropriate.
Miscellaneous
- Attend training as required to keep up to date with Firm wide procedures.
- Work proactively as part of a team to ensure time is used effectively using all available Firm-wide resources to meet pressured deadlines; and
- Effective management and prioritisation of work.
Education/Qualifications
- Minimum 5 GCSEs/O'Levels or equivalent at grade A-C including English and Maths.
- Secretarial qualification and/or MOS certification (desirable)
Skills and Experience
- Advanced knowledge of Microsoft Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint.
- Prior experience of working in a fast-paced corporate environment.
- Efficient organisation skills, with a high degree of accuracy to prioritise an often conflicting workload;
- Able to work calmly and efficiently under pressure.
- First-rate inter-personal and communication skills.
- Ability to develop and utilise good working relationships across teams.
- Demonstrate flexibility and dependability.
- Evidence of having used initiative and an understanding of processes; and
- Able to build confidence and earn the trust and respect of others.