Legal Secretary - Sevenoaks, Kent

Birketts is a full service, UK Top 50 law firm with a heritage spanning 160 years. We have more than 700 lawyers and legal professionals based in various locations including Bristol, Cambridge, Chelmsford, Ipswich, London, Norwich, and Sevenoaks. We advise businesses, government and public sector organisations, and individuals in the UK and internationally across four principal practice groups: Real Estate, Corporate Services, Dispute Resolution, and Private Client.

We are defined by our Next Level Law proposition, working with clients as proactive partners, horizon scanning and thinking ahead to the changes, challenges, or opportunities they may face. Our collegiate culture encourages everyone to achieve their next level in everything they do. RollOnFriday recently ranked us as the 5th best law firm to work at in 2024.

The team currently comprises over 28 specialist lawyers, including eight partners, ensuring we deliver the expected service in terms of technical quality, practical approach, and timeliness of advice. We act as trusted advisers to individuals, families, and owner-run businesses both in the UK and internationally. The team won the Lexis Nexis award for the best family team to work for in 2024.

You will work in the Family Team to provide professional, proactive, high-level secretarial support on a broad range of issues relating to all aspects of the family law services we offer. You will work primarily with the Sevenoaks and London teams and assist the wider Family team across the seven offices.

The team covers:

• Divorce
• Separation
• Relationship difficulties
• Modern Families – includes surrogacy, adoption, fertility law
• International family issues
• Pre and post marriage agreements
• Children arrangements
• Mediation
• One Couple One lawyer
• Arbitration
• Financial arrangements

You will have the ability to contribute at an operational level, with excellent communication skills and can demonstrate general skills in:

• Strong administration experience
• Positive, enthusiastic, and professional approach to all work
• Reliable
• Strong attention to detail and high-level organisational skills
• Self-motivated with an ability to use own initiative and a desire to learn
• A desire to share new processes to support the wider team

Technical ability:

• To produce and amend documents including PDF court bundles with speed and accuracy.
• To format, paginate, number, and present documents in Birketts LLP house style.
• To proofread all work, checking for spelling and grammar.
• To be a user of key software packages and take responsibility for any training needs to improve relevant skills needed to meet the needs of the business.
• To proactively work with fee earners to ensure relevant documentation is produced to meet clients’ expectations and deadlines.
• To help cover holidays and periods of sickness in other teams when required.

Administrative skills:

• Manage diaries of fee earners in Microsoft Outlook.
• To scan and save incoming and outgoing post.
• Familiarity with the creation and management of datarooms and file management processes.
• To add and amend data on Intapp, including contact details of intermediaries, and referrals into and out of the team.
• To open new clients and to open and close matters and carry out conflict checks where appropriate.
• To complete the client engagement process, including preparing letters of engagement and sending Thirdfort invitations.
• Making appointments and arranging meetings/conferences.
• Sending and responding to invites.
• To arrange payments.
• To ensure that all electronic filing and paper-based filing is up to date and maintained at regular intervals.
• To keep team spreadsheets up to date.
• To carry out photocopying and scanning as required.
• Be the coordinator for mediation enquiries and matters.

Professional Skills:

• To immediately clarify instructions from fee earners should they be unclear or if deadlines are not made explicit.
• To respond to internal and external telephone enquiries politely and professionally and take accurate telephone messages (name/number/company), passing them on to the relevant fee earners.
• To support other members of the Family Team assistants when required and to provide cover as necessary to ensure that work is completed to a high standard and meets the required deadlines.
• To provide full support to the London and Sevenoaks fee earner(s) in the full range of activities performed and to carry out any other duties as reasonably requested.

General Approach:

• To show a positive approach and interest in the work that your fee earners are undertaking.
• Show initiative when responding to queries and actively try to seek solutions to problems.
• To support your fee earners when clients demand the work product to be delivered.
• To support and build working relationships with the secretaries and fee earners in the team and to actively work for the interests of the whole team and firm.
• Strong typing speed of at least 50 wpm.
• Excellent spelling and punctuation.
• Excellent written and verbal communications.
• Ability to use discretion.
• Excellent IT skills, including Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.
• Positive and enthusiastic approach to teamwork.
• Good telephone manner.
• Adaptable and flexible.
• Self-motivated, ability to use initiative and provide proactive support to fee earners.
• Ability to pay attention to detail and check own work.
• Reliable and well organised.
• Ability to remain calm and work under pressure to meet strict deadlines.
• Commitment to ongoing learning and development.

At Birketts, our culture is driven by ambition and a commitment to positively impact all the communities we serve. We are dedicated to the success, development, and wellbeing of our colleagues, helping them achieve their goals and seize the opportunities that come with our growth. Alongside a flexible and inclusive work environment, we offer the following core benefits: 25 days holiday (FTE) plus.