Legal Secretary

Our vibrant, energetic Corporate team boasts some of the best lawyers in the region specialising in all aspects of corporate law covering a wide variety of corporate transactions including M&A, private equity, reorganisations, company restructures and general corporate governance matters.

The team currently comprises over 60 specialist qualified corporate law solicitors, including 15 partners, making us one of the largest Corporate teams in the East of England.

The department in Sevenoaks is going through an exciting period of growth and the new Secretary will be part of this journey.

Purpose of job

Proactively working with fee earners to ensure relevant documentation is produced to meet clients’ expectations and deadlines;

• To amend documentation and paperwork in relation to transactions and work undertaken by the fee earners;
• To produce, format and present documents in house style;
• Proof read all work, checking for spelling and grammar;
• Understands a variety of software packages such as Microsoft Word, Outlook and Excel, to produce correspondence, documents and ensure relevant documentation is produced to a high standard to meet clients’ and fee earners’ expectations and deadlines;
• Manage diaries of allocated fee earners in Microsoft Outlook;
• Dealing with client and file inception through our firms client matter management database and software
• Accurately maintain and update client and other relevant contact details on our client database including AML requirements and other client on-boarding information;
• Manage and maintain on behalf of allocated fee earners our client relationship management data base;
• Ensure that all electronic filing is up to date and maintained at regular intervals;
• Respond to internal and external telephone enquiries professionally;
• Provide financial administrative support ensuring compliance with legal, firm wide and practice group specific policies and procedures;
• Keeping accurate and up to date records of all debt, ensuring that items are followed up and escalated to the central credit control officer at the appropriate point in time and keeping the team leader up to date with any potential issyes with clients’ ability to settle bills;
• Carry out photocopying and scanning in accordance with the firm’s paper-lite and clear desk policies;
• Ability to communicate with a wide variety of different people from privately owned businesses to private equity and venture capital organisations;
• Show initiative when responding to queries and actively try to seek solutions to problems;
• Assist in maintaining compliant and accurate file management and office systems;
• Proactively support other members of the secretarial team and to provide cover as and when necessary to ensure that work is completed to a high standard and meets the required deadlines;
• Clarify instructions from fee earners should they be unclear or if deadlines are not made explicit.

The candidate

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;
• Ability to work independently and prioritise work streams;
• Methodical approach to work and management of fee earners and team projects;
• Strong attention to detail, high level organisational skills and reliable;
• Self-motivated with an ability to use own initiative with a desire to learn;
• 50+ wpm typing speed;
• Solid understanding of key IT packages to include Outlook, Word, PowerPoint and Excel;
• A team player with a desire to succeed and grow;
• Excellent spelling and punctuation.