Service Desk Team Lead

The Service Desk Team Lead plays a vital role in ensuring that IT support at Howard Kennedy is efficient, reliable, and aligned to the demands of a fast‑paced legal environment. Working closely with the Head of Service Delivery, you will oversee day‑to‑day operations, lead a team of 5 analysts, and act as a key escalation point for colleagues across the firm. This position is central to maintaining excellent service standards, driving continuous improvement, and ensuring IT support contributes positively to the productivity of our legal and business teams. Operating within a hybrid working model, the Service Desk Team Leader helps connect IT operations with the needs of our people, fostering strong relationships and a truly service‑centric culture.

Role responsibility

• Team leadership: Provide daily direction, coaching, and escalation support to a team of five Service Desk Analysts, ensuring the delivery of a professional, high‑quality service.
• Performance management: Monitor ticket queues, workloads, and service levels to ensure timely and effective resolution. Identify trends and support the implementation of service improvements.
• Service culture: Promote a proactive, colleague‑focused approach within the team, encouraging ownership, accountability, and consistent first‑time resolution.
• ITSM administration: Support the administration and optimisation of the firm’s ITSM platform (Halo), ensuring accurate ticket categorisation, robust reporting, and identification of recurring issues or automation opportunities.
• Knowledge management: Maintain high‑quality support documentation, self‑service resources, and FAQs to empower colleagues and reduce unnecessary demand on the service desk.

Business relationship & engagement

• Key escalation point: Act as a trusted point of contact for colleagues across legal and business support teams, ensuring professional and timely resolution of escalations.
• Understanding colleague's needs: Engage with legal teams to understand workflows, challenges, and expectations, feeding insights into service enhancements and operational planning.
• Service review support: Assist with the preparation and delivery of regular service review meetings, ensuring stakeholders are informed and feedback is acted upon.
• Vendor engagement and management: Build strong relationships with vendor partners, ensuring they consistently deliver to agreed service levels and address issues promptly and effectively.
• Legal technology knowledge: Maintain awareness of core legal technology applications such as iManage, Elite 3E, and time recording tools to ensure support is relevant and effective.
• Compliance & confidentiality: Support the department in upholding GDPR, confidentiality, and regulatory standards across all service activities.

Communication & change support

• Clear service communications: Contribute to the drafting and delivery of timely, clear communications around incidents, planned maintenance, and IT changes.
• Change adoption: Support the rollout of new technologies by coordinating communication, training materials, and feedback loops to ensure smooth colleague adoption.
• Colleague advocacy: Represent the perspective of end users in IT planning and discussions, ensuring services are designed with colleague needs at the forefront.

About you

• Experience with working in an IT support or service desk environment, ideally within a legal or professional services setting.
• The ability to guide, mentor, and support service desk team members, including handling escalations.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to work effectively with stakeholders at all levels.
• Solid understanding of service management best practice and structured support processes.
• Working knowledge of legal technology applications, or the ability to quickly learn specialist systems.
• Excellent organisational skills, attention to detail, and the ability to remain calm under pressure.
• A flexible approach to working hours, with willingness to support operational needs beyond core hours when required.
• Awareness of GDPR, security standards, and the confidentiality requirements of a legal environment.

We are proud to be an equal opportunities employer. We welcome applications from individuals of all backgrounds and identities, and we’re committed to ensuring that our recruitment process is fair, transparent, and accessible to all. We understand that every candidate’s needs are different. If there’s anything we can do to make your application journey more comfortable—whether for interviews, assessments, or onboarding—please let us know. We’ll work with you to remove any barriers and ensure our recruitment process is comfortable for you.