Legal PA - Corporate/Commercial/Shipping Transactions

Recruiting for a Legal PA to join the London Transactional Shipping/Corporate/Commercial team of a leading international law firm supporting Partners and Legal Directors.

This role will be working alongside 1 other Legal PA supporting a team of Partners, Legal Directors, Senior/Associates and Paralegals dealing with Transactional Shipping law. Although working in the Shipping department the firm will consider experience from a Commercial or Corporate background.

Duties:

Client relationship management:

• Support lawyers in marketing and BD activities, including:
• Enter new contact information onto the CRM system (InterAction) and keep the data up-to-date;
• Ensure that lawyers' client activities and PD reports are recorded on the CRM;
• Keep lawyers' bios up-to-date;
• Create first draft speaker profiles for particular events;
• Assist BD with capability statements and pitches;
• Assist BD with client events: create mailing list, invitations (Vuture), monitor responses; source corporate event suppliers; set up webinars;
• Open and close cases in compliance with case management procedures (IntApp);
• Become an active part in the care of clients and be wholly familiar with contacts/clients;
• Deal with basic client queries and general administration;
• Arrange client meetings.

Financial:

• Assist lawyers in ensuring their time is recorded properly and entered onto the system on a daily basis;
• Chase and post disbursements, eg. counsel fees, on practice management system (Elite 3E);
• Assist lawyers in the billing and credit control process by liaising with the lawyer and Revenue & Collections team to produce standard financial/time reports through the system;
• Send bills to clients and record dates of bills sent on practice management system;
• Request cheques, bank transfers and pay in money received, as appropriate;
• Reclaim BD expenses.

Administration:

• Manage diaries, ensuring they are up-to-date, and remind lawyers of meetings, etc. on a daily basis;
• Arrange meetings, book conference rooms (Condeco), refreshments/catering, check room set-up prior to meetings and liaise with other attendees, both internal and external;
• Liaise with Learning & Development Department regarding CPD;
• Arrange subscriptions/renewals of professional memberships;
• Arrange for travel bookings and related details, including travel itineraries and expenses;
• Arrange scanning, photocopying, printing, organising couriers, sending out of letters, etc;
• Arrange for documents to be eSigned (DocuSign);
• Arrange for files to be opened and closed; general filing requirements (Work Panel) and record-keeping;
• Use effective systems to ensure that both short and long-term tasks are completed within required timescales.

Communications:

• Take internal and external queries, responding as appropriate and/or ensuring that all messages are passed on in a timely manner;
• Monitor post and/or e-mails and deal with as appropriate and ensure that all client-related correspondence is passed on to an appropriate fee earner if the relevant person is out of the office;
• Liaise with business support departments on behalf of lawyers as required;
• Liaise with the Team Leader regarding arranging cover for planned absences, as necessary and communicating this to the relevant fee earners.

Document production:

• Draft standard letters, eg. client care letters, as and when required;
• Check that correspondence, attachments, documents, reports, presentations, etc. produced by the Document Production team are returned in good time and undertake basic/minor amendments where appropriate;
• Type urgent/short/confidential correspondence;
• Produce and maintain Excel spreadsheets as required.

Team Work:

• Assist others in the Group, both proactively whenever there is spare capacity or it is evident that a colleague needs assistance with their workload and at the request of the Team Leader;
• Provide cover for colleagues;
• Pick up telephone calls for other members of the Group when they are away from their desk;
• Work effectively with other legal and business services departments as required.