Lewis Silkin works with leading businesses to protect and enhance their most important assets - their ideas, their people, their brand and their future. We call it: Ideas. People. Possibilities.
With offices in London, Oxford, Manchester, Leeds, Cardiff, Belfast, Dublin and Hong Kong, we are recognised by clients and industry alike as being distinct for our unique culture, market-leading practice areas, sector focused approach and for providing solutions to complex, multijurisdictional business challenges, with a pragmatic and human touch. We have two things at our core: people — both ours and our clients’— and a focus on creative, tech and innovative businesses.
Our culture is encapsulated by an ethos of bravery and kindness, guided by our values of Integrity, Clarity, Unity and Excellence (our ‘I-CUE’). We aim to provide a supportive environment for our people, clients and wider community and embrace diversity & inclusion, ensuring people are able to bring their full selves to work. |
This role is dual purpose incorporating both Coordinator responsibilities alongside undertaking secretarial support for busy fee earners. Any individual in this role will need to feel comfortable and confident in undertaking both components.
The purpose of the role is to provide cover for the Secretarial Coordinator who is responsible for the management, oversight, and development of the Employment, Immigration and Reward secretarial team across the firm’s England and Wales offices. Additionally, the post holder will provide first-class support to a small number of allocated fee-earners. This includes acting as their ‘ambassador’ both within the firm and externally, being the first point of contact for clients and colleagues and being an additional point of contact for secretarial staff. Producing accurate and timely legal documentation and correspondence as required and handling administrative duties on behalf of allocated fee-earners will also form part of the role.
Key Responsibilities:
Coordinator Responsibilities:
- Coordinate fee-earners' secretarial and administrative needs across the team within our England and Wales offices, making decisions on workload and delegating to other support services as appropriate.
- Maintain and review secretarial allocations to ensure the required support is in place across England and Wales, identifying resourcing and recruitment needs as necessary.
- Work closely with the Talent Acquisition team on recruitment activity for secretarial positions across the England and Wales offices for relevant practice groups, including involvement in recruitment for other similar roles as required.
- Undertake the annual appraisal review process for secretarial staff in the E&W allocated teams, also conduct regular review meetings throughout the year to provide ongoing feedback and support the achievement of business and individual objectives.
- Supervise and develop career development plans for all members of the team, supporting and guiding new team members as well as generally mentoring all team members.
- Proactively manage absence or performance issues within the team, liaising with the HR Business Partnering team as appropriate and ensuring holiday and absences are recorded accurately using the firm’s HR system.
- Sensitively manage all people matters in the team with the support of the HR Business Partnering team as appropriate, ensuring confidentiality is always maintained.
- Ensure the effective application of the firm’s secretarial service promise by both secretaries and fee earners.
- Be proactive in designing and implementing ways to improve processes and ways of working to contribute to the continual improvement of secretarial support.
- Hold regular meetings with the secretaries, keeping them informed of important plans and updates and endorsing attendance at the firm’s Lunch and Learns/all applicable training opportunities.
- Build and maintain relationships with Office Managers and secretarial teams in other Legal Practice Groups.
PA/Secretarial Responsibilities:
- Schedule internal and external meetings and maintain diaries of any allocated fee earners, ensuring that all arrangements are in place and any required materials and documentation are prepared in good time.
- Act as the first point of contact for the firm’s clients, dealing with them efficiently and professionally and helping to resolve queries or issues wherever possible.
- Build sufficient knowledge of the firm’s strategy, legal service and products, as well as the relevant files and matters to be able to support allocated fee earners to assist clients when they are unavailable or out of the office.
- Ensure sensitivity and confidentiality when dealing with clients, colleagues and private matters on behalf of allocated fee earners.
- Coordinate billing/credit control and accounting matters relating to clients of allocated fee-earners including drafting bill requests, bill narratives, and chasing clients for payment of unpaid bills as required.
- Assist in the production of materials for any management meetings as required from time to time in relation to secretarial resources and function of the E&W offices.
- Assist with marketing activities as required by allocated fee-earners including liaising with the Marketing team and assisting with the preparation for seminars and other events as required.
- Take an active part in developing own role, ensuring suitable training is undertaken.
- Assist with workload of secretarial colleagues as required.
- Involvement in firm-wide projects as required.
- Any other duties in line with level and nature of the role.
Candidate Profile:
The successful candidate must have proven experience in a similar Secretarial Coordinator/management role, ideally within a legal environment. They will also have a breadth of experience in providing a high level of secretarial support to allocated professionals.
They must have a professional manner, first-class communication skills and be highly organised with excellent administration skills. They will be able to demonstrate a pro-active approach to their work and be able to work on their own initiative, being confident in their own judgement. They must enjoy working in an involved team environment and be keen to guide and motivate others within the team. They will need to have a flexible nature and a co-operative and willing attitude.
- An executive legal PA will usually have at least five years’ legal secretarial experience (ideally within the relevant area of law) with at least three years' working at a senior level.
- Previous experience of supervising the work of others or coordinating a team.
- Excellent typing skills (at least 70 wpm audio/copy typing) as well as accurate numeracy skills.
- Good eye for detail; a high level of accuracy is essential.
- Excellent organisational and administration skills; must be highly organised and able to organise others.
- Ability to manage a heavy workload and support a number of people.
- Ability to work to tight deadlines in a pressurised environment.
- A confident and natural communicator; able to communicate at all levels.
- Ability to be proactive and to work on own initiative without guidance but seeking help if necessary; confidence to use own judgement in relation to current duties, client needs, etc.
- Ability to motivate and train other members of the secretarial team.
- Team player and enthusiastic; flexible and willing to take on extra responsibilities to support allocated fee-earners and business objectives.
IT skills required:
- Proficient IT skills - Office 365, Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Sharepoint, PDF Docs, Word Compare (Deltaview), document management systems and practice management systems, although full in-house training will be provided.
Educational and professional qualifications required:
- Good grammatical English - at least to GCSE standard or equivalent.
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At Lewis Silkin our ethos is simple. We strive to do the best for our clients, our people and the communities in which we operate. We recognise that an inclusive workplace allows for all kinds of ideas and thoughts, a variety of points of view that can trigger discussions or deliver innovative results, and a wide range of versatile skills and expertise. We are proud of the diversity within Lewis Silkin and of our culture that allows people to be themselves at work, ensuring we provide the best possible service to our clients. We are committed to finding the right person for this role and are open to discussing flexible working patterns and office location. |