Library & Legal Research Assistant in Belfast

Ashton Recruitment require a Library & Legal Research Assistant for our client, The Bar of Northern Ireland.

Location: Belfast City Centre

Duration: Permanent

Pay Rate: Salary on Request

Hours of Work: 37.5 hours per week, 7.5 hours per day Monday to Friday, not including a 1 hour lunch break.

The Bar of Northern Ireland is the professional body for barristers in Northern Ireland, representing those who are qualified to practice as advocates in the courts. Barristers play a crucial role in the justice system, providing specialist legal advice, advocacy, ensuring the rule of law and access to justice are upheld. The Bar of Northern Ireland represents the barrister profession, regulates the profession, and provides continuing professional development as well as a range of professional services to Bar Library members.

Duties will include (but not limited to):

• Receive and process legal research enquiries in accordance with the LIS procedures ensuring that the enquiries are handled efficiently and accurately from receipt to end billing.
• Drill down into the detail of the enquiry, and extracting more information from the member if required.
• Correctly identify the appropriate materials and information (hard and soft copy) that need to be searched/consulted.
• Interrogate legal information databases in order to extract the appropriate information.
• Identify authoritative data and weed the non-authoritative data.
• Present and collate the data in a comprehensible and organised form allowing the member full insight as to how their information was retrieved, filtered, refined etc.
• Receive and process Bar Library Authority Gathering (BLAG) requests and Optimised Brief & Bundle Service (OBBS) in accordance with LIS procedures and current Practice Directions ensuring that the BLAGs and OBBS requests are handled efficiently and accurately from receipt to end billing.
• Using Adobe at an advanced level, collating and indexing the information into hard copy and soft copy bundles suitable for further dissemination beyond the Membership.
• Responding to change requests, often complex, as they arrive and action those without compromising the integrity of the bundles.
• Support the activities and duties of the LIS office in order to maintain an up-to-date legal information service and deliver effective and relevant Member services.
• Ordering and processing titles as part of the Bar Library Bookshop.
• Administering the Members Subscription Service.
• Assisting, when requested, to deliver the Bar Library Current Awareness Service.
• Data entry into Bar Library databases and online catalogues.
• Indexing of legal materials.
• Keep abreast of current topical legal information and legal/justice developments both in Northern Ireland and nationally.
• Actively promote all aspects of the LIS to the membership ensuring that members are kept informed of the range of services available to them and how their use may benefit their practice.
• Retrieve and re-shelve Library materials and tidy Library shelves to ensure a well-organised physical Library environment.
• Obtain materials from external sources as required in accordance with LIS procedures and complying with copyright restrictions.
• Undertake looseleaf updates accurately and in a timely fashion.
• Repair Library books and organise binding/rebinding of the Library Collection as and when required.
• Provide a reception service to solicitors/clients and other visitors to the Old Bar Library.
• Undertake training courses deemed necessary by the Bar Council to effectively discharge the role.
• Engages meaningfully with the Bar Councils Performance Management System.
• Adheres to the Information Security Management systems employed by the Executive Council.

Essential Criteria:

• Law degree (or a related discipline e.g. criminology) or equivalent professional experience of not less than 5 years.
• Thorough working knowledge, gained within the immediate past 3 years of technology including: Online databases, including Lexis and Westlaw UK, Internet research, MS Office applications for Word and Excel.
• A demonstrable and thorough understanding of legal process and legal materials.
• A minimum of 1 years experience, gained within the immediate past 3 years of working with knowledge, information and research in: a law library; or as a paralegal in e.g. law firm/ solicitors office or chambers.
• Demonstrable excellence in written and verbal communication.
• Demonstrable excellence in customer service.
• Demonstrably strong IT proficiency and focused on continual learning and development in IT applications.
• Ability to extract the key information needed to progress legal research enquiries.
• Demonstrate an orderly and disciplined approach to the presentation of information.
• Be highly motivated and an energetic self-starter.
• Possess an exacting attention to detail.
• Demonstrable analytical skills.
• Strong personal management skills; ability to prioritise own time to meet deadlines.
• A proven team and cross team collaborator.
• A problem solver/solution finder.
• Be tactful and diplomatic.
• Be flexible and capable of adapting to pressurised and demanding periods at a Service Desk.

Desirable Criteria:

• Good working knowledge of Adobe Acrobat especially in creating and manipulating electronic pdf documentation.
• Experience of Northern Ireland specific law making processes and materials.