PA - Banking & Loan Finance in London

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Department: Banking and Loan Finance

Office Location: UK

Reports To: Head of EMEA Secretarial Services

Working Hours: 35 hours per week, 9:30am to 5:30pm but additional hours may be required. We are happy to consider agile and flexible working patterns. Our approach to hybrid working allows for up to 40% of time working from home and 60% working in the office.

Role Description: Delivering a professional secretarial, organisational and administrative service, including supporting client billing. The role requires a proactive and responsible individual with a proven track record of independently managing their workload, demonstrating initiative, and delivering comprehensive, client-focused solutions in a dynamic and evolving environment for an allocation of lawyers within a legal group. The role requires flexibility to move between practice groups, PA Support Team or departments based on business needs as required by the firm.

Key Responsibilities/Accountabilities:

• Build an understanding of the nature of the fee earners work, get to know their clients and build relationships with them and the client PAs.
• Demonstrate strong organisational skills, regularly act on own initiative, highlighting issues and suggesting possible solutions.
• Organise and prioritise workload and keep a level-headed approach in a busy working environment and communicate regularly with fee earners on work progress.
• Take ownership of enquiries, resolving or escalating (or identifying alternative contacts) as appropriate.
• Diary management - arranging meetings, conference calls, lunches etc.
• Organising travel (including flights, accommodation and restaurants) and providing the fee earners with detailed itineraries.
• Taking accurate and detailed telephone messages.
• Produce long, complex and accurate house-style documents, manuscript amends, audio dictation and document comparisons, checks own work to ensure accuracy.
• Accurate and regular maintenance of filing systems, e-filing, and archiving and retrieval of files from storage and opening new matter files.
• Supports client billing process in 3E, preparing and producing bills, keeping accurate records of expenses, disbursements and fees for client billing, liaising with billing department to monitor payment of fees and responding to internal and external requests for back up documentation and further information.
• Actively source and share knowledge with others.
• Build a network of strong working relationships both internally and externally.
• Provide cover for others in the wider team as requested and support team admin.
• Ad hoc duties as and when required.

The role and responsibilities are subject to change at any time to reflect the needs of the business.

Person Specification:

• Excellent interpersonal skills with an ability to interact with people at all levels.
• Self-motivated individual with a proactive approach.
• Keen to take ownership.
• Ability to think quickly and solve administrative challenges effectively, leveraging support service departments when needed.
• Client orientated approach – client-focused both internally and externally.
• Willing to become involved with a desire to learn.
• Flexibility with overtime.

Skills and Experience:

• Previous legal PA experience.
• Excellent secretarial skills, fast accurate typing.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Strong document production skills.
• Billing experience, preferably 3E.
• Excellent organisational and administrative ability.
• Meticulous attention to detail.
• Professional telephone manner, fielding calls where appropriate.
• Professional/Technical Skills: Accurate typing at minimum 60 wpm net.
• Advanced knowledge of MS Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
• Experience of using BigHand or other similar workflow management tool.

Qualifications and Training:

• Minimum 5 GCSEs or equivalent at A-C including English and Maths.

Equal Opportunities Employment & Agile Working Statement:

It is the policy of Hogan Lovells Cadwalader to provide equal opportunities for all employees in relation to recruitment, training and promotion. Decisions in these areas will be made only by reference to the requirements of the job and shall not be influenced by any consideration of racial or ethnic origin, religion, sex, gender and gender identity, age, sexual orientation, marital and civil partnership status, pregnancy or disability. Our goal is to embed flexibility across our business by giving everyone the opportunity to work in an agile way, whether as a regular pattern or on an ad hoc basis and we will be happy to discuss this further.

Hogan Lovells Cadwalader operates a Preferred Supplier List (PSL) for Business Team and Secretarial Services recruitment in the UK. We do not accept speculative or unsolicited agency submissions / candidate introductions, via email, from agencies outside of the PSL. Nor will we be liable to pay any placement fees for submissions / candidate introductions submitted directly to any Partners or employees of Hogan Lovells Cadwalader.