Admin Assistant

Department: Business Services

Reports to: Legal PA Manager/Associate Director of Legal Support EMEA

Purpose of job:

To provide Legal PAs and Fee Earners with effective, proactive, professional and high-quality administrative support that enables Fee Earners to focus on providing legal services to clients, and Legal PAs to provide personal/client management to Fee Earners. A Legal Admin Assistant will be an integral part of a busy team and will need to interact daily with Legal PAs and Fee Earners, and have the ability to prioritise workloads and liaise with other support functions to ensure timely delivery.

What’s in it for you?

BCLP is an award-winning international law firm that provides legal services to well-known brands, including National Grid, The Financial Times, Tesco, and Thames Water to name just a few.

Any successful law firm needs excellent support and we are currently looking to expand this pool of resource through hiring a Legal Admin Assistant. As a Legal Admin Assistant, you are responsible for ensuring that our Legal PAs, Fee Earners, and clients receive professional, efficient, and high-quality support.

Key responsibilities:

Responsibilities will include the following tasks, delegated by Legal PAs or directly from Fee Earners:

• Production of engrossed documents, particularly those with multiple appendices.
• Printing of emails and attachments.
• Small volume photocopying and scanning, and delivery/collection of large volume document production, courier and repro jobs.
• Processing/submitting travel invoices, expense claims, and maintenance and filing of copies.
• Administration in association with payment for Fee Earners’ individual memberships of institutes and associations.
• Preparation of admin for money payments e.g., Chaps payments.
• Simple file opening including conflict searches and money laundering requirements, liaising with the Office of General Counsel.
• Organising and maintaining systems to ensure effective document management, including closing files, archiving, and ensuring all relevant paper-based documents are filed electronically.
• Supporting Fee Earners with updating Dynamics; ensuring new business contact details are entered, contacts from Fee Earners’ Outlook address books are shared, updating contact changes and activities when BD activity is planned with a client/target.
• Assisting Legal PAs with proactively downloading and printing reports on contacts ahead of meetings and pitches, populating Dynamics mailing lists with contacts as directed by Fee Earners and editing/refining these lists as appropriate.
• Supporting the group in updating information on Connexus or managing and maintaining particular pages.
• Supporting Fee Earners and Legal PAs with the firm inclusivity strategy; key tasks include: booking rooms, coordinating meetings, booking meeting room facilities, arranging events (invitations, room bookings, catering, speaker presentations, event materials).
• Undertaking research using the internet, databases etc.
• Creation, uploading, and general maintenance of client sites and extranets.
• Collating and indexing legal documentation.
• Practice group specific support.

Real Estate specific tasks:

Additionally, there are a number of real estate specific tasks which you may be required to undertake if you are a Legal Admin Assistant in our Real Estate department such as but not exclusive to:

• Searchflow searches
• SIM searches
• Other Land Registry searches
• Company searches
• Creation of Laserforms
• Land Registry application forms

Key relationships:

This role is part of the Business Services unit and reports to a Legal PA Manager or the Associate Director of Legal Support EMEA. Legal Admin Assistants (LAA) will support Legal PAs and Fee Earners in or across practice groups and will have work delegated to them.

Experience and knowledge:

Standard GCSEs a minimum of: C/4 for English Language; C/4 for Maths.

Skills and competencies:

Interpersonal/communication skills:

• Constant enthusiastic, can-do and positive approach to tasks and situations, as well as requests for action outside normal scope of duties.
• Ability to take personal responsibility, ownership and behave responsibly.
• Good communication skills, both oral and written.
• Friendly, co-operative and approachable at all times.
• Remains calm and focused under pressure i.e., when faced with high volume workloads or difficult situations.
• Ability to build relationships with Fee Earners and Legal PAs.
• Listens carefully and questions to make sure you have all the information you need to take action.
• Displays discretion when dealing with sensitive information.
• It is a key requirement that the LAA is able to demonstrate proactivity, initiative, confidence, attention to detail and willingness to do whatever it takes to ensure the team meets the needs of the clients.

Organisational skills:

• Ability to plan and manage own workload and multiple tasks, and prioritise work calmly and effectively in a pressurised environment.
• Strong organisation and planning skills.

Knowledge/Technical/General Skills:

• Good knowledge of Microsoft and other commonly used software.
• Effective and professional telephone manner.
• Client service orientated approach.
• Able to work either on own initiative or part of a team.
• Able to anticipate problems and develop solutions.
• Attentive to detail; sense and quality checking work and the work of others.
• Accountable and professional.
• Ability to develop self and others and be learning oriented, wanting to learn and seek improvement.
• Ability to display discretion when dealing with sensitive and confidential information.
• Willing to learn and understand different cultures as well as have the required patience to ensure good working relationships.

Other requirements:

Flexibility with responsibilities and working hours as required and willingness to go the ‘extra mile’ as needed.

Diversity, inclusion and working differently:

At Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner we understand the value of a diverse workforce and we believe people perform at their best when they can truly be themselves at work. We aim to create an inclusive environment where all our employees are valued, motivated, and able to be themselves. In order to provide the best possible service to our diverse client base, we are committed to recruiting, retaining, rewarding, and developing our people with regard to their abilities and contributions and without reference to their background, gender, gender identity or expression, ethnic origin, age, religion, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, political belief, disability or any other protected characteristic.

Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner is a firm with an increasingly flexible workforce and is supportive of flexible working arrangements, tailored to the individual, wherever possible.

Please feel free to speak to the Recruitment Team about the flexibility we are offering for this role.

Confidentiality:

Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner will ensure all hardcopy and electronic materials containing confidential information are securely stored and accessible only to those authorised to view such content.

Agencies:

Please note: we will not accept speculative CVs sent to hiring managers or partners via email. We can only accept CVs sent via the portal from agencies that have agreed terms of business with the Recruitment team. For further information, contact recruitment@bclplaw.com.

Disclosure:

As a regulated firm of solicitors, Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP (“BCLP”) is required to undertake appropriate vetting of staff. In addition to completion, by applicants who accept a job offer, of a regulatory questionnaire, BCLP uses a specialist provider to undertake professional verification and background checks (including through electronic data sources, and directly with employers and professional bodies/regulators) on our behalf. We will also undertake certain verifications ourselves.

BCLP adopts a risk-based approach to its vetting procedures, which are only undertaken with consent, and in accordance with its legal and regulatory obligations. For further details, please see our recruitment website: www.bclplaw.com.