Executive Personal Assistant - London

We are Eversheds Sutherland, a global law firm, with more than 5,000 people across over 30 countries. We’re full-service with deep niche and sector experience. Whatever challenge, wherever in the world, we’re equipped and ready to meet it. We live our values, we’re purposeful and purpose-led. So although the world is fast-moving and rapidly changing, we see it as a place where everyone can thrive. We’re ambitious for our clients, our communities – and for you.

This Executive Personal Assistant role is a fixed term contract for 12–15 months. We are looking for an experienced Executive PA to support our People Senior Leadership team. In this role, you’ll have an opportunity to develop an exceptional internal and external network. We empower our people to stretch their skills and encourage ongoing personal and professional development, leading by example to junior team members. To increase motivation and help you to succeed, we offer a variety of technical training and soft skills courses, and are committed to a culture of continuous feedback.

Role And Key Responsibilities

• Arranging and attending regular meetings with stakeholders to discuss actions, priorities, expectations and future planning.
• Comprehensive and proactive diary and travel management, anticipating future demands and actions required, using knowledge and initiative to resolve conflicts.
• Co-ordinating, organising and planning meetings and events, to include liaising with all attendees, drafting agendas, collating papers and producing documents for internal and external meetings.
• Arranging all logistics including booking travel, rooms, equipment and refreshments using technology and resources available for both physical and virtual meetings.
• Tracking all progress and attending to take minutes/actions.
• Putting measures in place to ensure all stakeholders take forward their actions/takeaways from calls and monitor to ensure priorities continue to progress.
• Managing workflow, delegating and owning transactional activity to a successful conclusion.
• Acting as a liaison point for clients and colleagues, exercising discretion and maintaining confidentiality at all times, including assisting with client queries during stakeholder absences.
• Project management and compiling reports, requiring advanced drafting skills and adaptability to “tone of voice” dependant on audience and messaging.
• Agreeing an email management system, creating and managing folders, tags and filters to categorise emails.
• Implementing an effective email filing system.
• Monitoring, managing and reviewing inboxes, assessing the urgency and importance of each email, categorising them accordingly and routing them to the appropriate parties for response or action.
• Identifying and prioritising urgent messages and drafting responses for those requiring immediate attention.
• Responding to incoming emails promptly on behalf of stakeholder ensuring responses are clear, concise and professional.
• Managing paper and electronic filing, as well as preparing and submitting expenses.
• Building and maintaining collaborative working relationships with all clients and colleagues, building trust and strong networks.
• Demonstrating client service excellence by being responsive to all requests, effectively utilising all communication channels available across a blended work pattern.
• Continuously seeking opportunities to embrace technologies that improve ways of working and drive efficiencies, acting as a champion for process changes and supporting their successful adoption.
• Ambassador for self-serve technology, role modelling the use of technology to support day to day tasks as well as aiding team members to embrace new technology-enabled ways of working.
• Championing and promoting the use of Eversheds InHouse with stakeholders, as appropriate.

Skills And Experience

• Experience of providing Executive PA support to senior stakeholders within a law firm, HR function, or comparable professional services environment.
• Excellent communication, organisation and interpersonal skills, with the confidence to liaise with senior stakeholders and demonstrate flexibility and resilience.
• Seeks to provide an outstanding level of client services at all times.
• Excellent problem solving skills and using initiative, anticipates what is needed and takes appropriate action.
• Excellent relationship building skills, both internal and external, and influence, negotiate and manage conflicting demands using initiative.
• Flexible approach, adopting a blended work pattern approach in hours and location, to accommodate stakeholder and client needs.
• Collate, manage, track and update monthly KPI, performance and professional data.
• Managing the end to end file management process.
• Experience of creating pitch documents/slide decks using PowerPoint for stakeholder group liaising with the marketing/pitch team as needed.
• Ability to delegate and own transactional activity.
• Strong team ethic; support and challenge where necessary and desire to strive and go the extra mile.
• Advanced skills in Microsoft applications including Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams.

What’s in it for you?

At Eversheds Sutherland, we provide benefits focused on looking after you: your development, your performance, your financial future and your health, as well as providing the opportunity to make a contribution to the world. We’re fair, transparent and equitable. We share in the success of the firm, reward alignment to our values, going above and beyond and your individual performance. We support flexible ways of working through our remote working policy and commitment to flexible, agile and hybrid ways of working. We support your health and performance through our dental, healthcare and wellness support. We support everything you are and all you bring through our powerful commitment to diversity and inclusion. We provide a platform for your career, whatever your ambitions through our structured professional and personal training, mentoring and development programs. We provide experience and opportunity through international and cross-function exposure. We provide an opportunity to give back through our pro bono work and community engagement. We help you plan ahead through retirement planning, insurance and assurance.

Diversity & Inclusion

At Eversheds Sutherland, “Inclusive” is a core business value. We bring together different skillsets, global mindsets and approaches. We foster diversity of thought and the freedom to put ideas into action. We have an inherent respect for the individual. We have a strong belief in collaboration and teamwork. Sharing ideas, asking questions, solving challenges and meeting our clients’ goals: together. We want all our people to thrive at work and reach their full potential and we work hard to continue to build a diverse and inclusive culture, monitor and report on our progress and impact, and develop our approach. This is reflected in our policies, systems and processes, and in our work with diversity membership organisations. Many of our people work flexibly in some way and we are open to considering how we can accommodate flexible working arrangements alongside role requirements. If this is important to you, please talk to us about it during the recruitment process. We want you to perform at your best during our recruitment process. If there is any adjustment or support you need, please contact us so we can discuss how we can best assist you.