Senior Legal PA, Real Estate (Dubai) – Global Support in London

The Department Legal Support Services includes document production specialists, paralegals, researchers, legal project management experts and legal operations professionals. The team covers a wide range of administrative, operational, and specialist matter and fee earner support using cutting-edge tools and innovative tech solutions to provide exceptional and frictionless service to the fee earners across the firm.

The Legal Operations team forms part of the Legal Support Services department and provides high value administrative support for fee earners with a focus on matter management, diary management, travel and business development.

The Senior Legal PA is a member of the Legal Operations team situated within the Legal Support Services department. This position will be based in the Dubai office. This role is primarily a Partner focused role, based day to day within one of the Firm's fee earning departments. The Senior Legal PA will work with specified Partners and/or other senior fee earners to provide proactive, timely and high quality administrative/co-ordination support, flexing to provide support to the fee earners in the manner which best suits our clients.

The Senior Legal PA will be an engaged, self-motivated and organised individual, able to manage a busy workload and take responsibility for following tasks through to completion, delivering excellence in client service to both internal and external clients. The Senior Legal PA will need to demonstrate technical excellence with superb attention to detail.

Duties And Responsibilities

• Fee Earner Support
  • Acting as a first point of contact on behalf of the fee earners; fielding calls, emails, correspondence, and meeting requests (internal and external), and responding on behalf of the fee earner, if appropriate.
  • Full proactive and advanced international calendar management in multiple time zones for assigned fee earners, including scheduling calls/meetings. Collating necessary information to ensure the fee earners are fully prepared for all client meetings; preparing background information and notes as needed, supporting the follow through of action points.
  • Supporting fee earners with expense claims.
  • Supporting fee earners in their ancillary supervisory roles and with other business related requirements.
• Matter Management
  • Supporting fee earners in the smooth running of the client/matter lifecycle, following documented procedures, and working closely with internal client on-boarding and compliance specialists to ensure all required information/documentation is obtained, issued and correctly stored on the Firm's systems.
  • Supporting the fee earners and supervising Legal PAs to ensure compliance with the Firm's documented compliance policy and guidelines, particularly around new matters, retainer letters, conflict checks, searches, CDD and KYC.
  • Ensuring all documents are maintained and filed in line with the Firm's electronic and hard copy filing protocols.
  • Ensuring all inactive matters are closed, client funds are returned, and matters are archived in a timely fashion.
• Financial Management and Billing Support
  • Developing a strong working knowledge of the Firm's billing systems, including processes and systems, to support the fee earners and supervising the Legal PAs and Business Administrators in producing accurate bills and financial information for their clients.
  • Ensuring files are set up with correct rates, discounts and billing information, and that Money on Account is collected, or files are on the exempt list.
  • Co-ordinating WIP lists and billing on behalf of Partners, including liaison with the billing team. Supporting fee earners with proactive monitoring of time and bills against the estimate.
  • Supporting fee earners with monitoring and addressing unpaid bills, liaising with Credit Control as required.
  • Supporting fee earners with ensuring disbursements, invoices and payments are issued correctly and promptly.
• Travel
  • Full management of travel for assigned fee earners, ensuring business travel is booked via the Firm's in-house provider. This will include both routine and more complex travel arrangements.
  • Ensuring that fee earners are provided with full itineraries, supporting materials and that business expenses are captured, approved and processed for payment in line with policy.
  • Assisting fee earners with building a business case for travel.
• Business Development
  • Supporting fee earners in preparing content and presentations for clients and prospective clients.
  • Organising business breakfasts, lunches, dinners or smaller events and assisting fee earners with expenses.
  • Logging referrals and contacts to the CRM system (InterAction) and management of CRM lists.
• Delegation
  • Collaborating with the Legal PAs to ensure the smooth running of the matter lifecycle and appropriate delegation to ensure that all matters are compliant.
  • Collaborating with the Business Administrators to ensure that they provide support with filing and archiving, scanning, photocopying, updating contacts on InterAction and arranging couriers etc.
  • Working closely with Document Production Unit to delegate all formatting, production, typing, amends, manipulation and house styling work to the unit and, where required, documents that require proofreading.
  • Liaising with Legal Support Services teams, the Global Capability Centre and other internal departments to delegate work where appropriate or to obtain specialist input as needed, taking ownership of issues, and following up where appropriate.
• Team Support and Collaboration
  • Promoting a cohesive working environment within the team and supporting other team members and colleagues.
  • Recognising when processes or systems can be improved and working with the Division Assistants to implement new ideas and change.
  • Approachable, flexible and adaptable to respond positively to changes in requirements and/or providing support for other colleagues as needed.
  • Stepping up when required to cover the Division Assistant or other members of the Legal Operations team.
  • Working flexibly across other Legal Operations Teams where needed.
  • Take full responsibility and ownership for their workload.
  • Be clear and transparent around their working arrangements, and follow through on their commitments to the team (e.g. attending the office when they say they will).
  • Demonstrate a commitment to the Firm's core values.
  • Recognise the importance of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in the workplace, and take responsibility for learning about the EDI strategy, and looking for appropriate ways to support it.
  • Selecting a Focus Area or Specialism to learn new skills and support the firm's business operations strategy to drive service, innovation and engagement across Legal Support Services.

Skills/Experience

• Previous experience gained in a senior legal administrative role supporting a team in a legal environment, having an understanding of industry standards for compliance and matter management.
• Strong time management skills: can juggle several tasks at any given time, plan ahead, and respond positively and willingly to re-prioritise and adapt to changes in requirements.
• Previous experience managing calendars for multiple individuals, with the ability to apply judgement and common sense to ensure the best use of people's time, and that any potential diary clashes are proactively identified and addressed.
• Excellent attention to detail, with the ability to deliver work to a consistently high standard of precision (even under pressure) in an environment where accuracy is prized.
• Organised and methodical, and able to operate effectively and efficiently within structured work processes, in particular with the compliance/quality control frameworks.
• Excellent IT skills across a broad range of MS Office and other business management applications, with a willingness to learn new software and adapt to change.
• Well-developed interpersonal skills, with the ability to work effectively with a range of people and working styles.
• A strong team player, willing to take on work for additional fee earners and/or help with other tasks as needed to meet the needs of the business.
• Able to communicate effectively, with warmth and professionalism, to clients and colleagues both orally and in writing, including drafting business emails/correspondence.
• High levels of discretion, with the ability to deal effectively with sensitive or confidential information.
• Previous experience using bespoke in-house systems (e.g. client contact databases, matter management systems, billing systems etc.).

Please note that this job profile is not an exhaustive list of duties but merely an outline of the key components of the role. You may be required by your line manager to take on additional responsibilities when requested.

About Mishcon de Reya LLP

Mishcon de Reya is an independent law firm, which now employs over 1400 people with more than 650 lawyers offering a wide range of legal services to companies and individuals. The firm has grown rapidly in recent years, showing more than 40% revenue growth in the past five years alone.

With presence in London, Oxford, Cambridge, Singapore, Hong Kong and UAE, the firm services an international community of clients and provides advice in situations where the constraints of geography often do not apply. The work the firm undertakes is cross-border, multi-jurisdictional and complex, centred around three increasingly entwined and connected sectors: the Innovation Economy, Private Wealth and Capital, and Real Estate. The firm is known as a disputes powerhouse with a formidable capacity firmwide for dispute resolution.

We strive to create a fully diverse and inclusive workplace where all our people are empowered to fulfil their potential. We are proud of our agile working culture and are always happy to talk flexible working.