Legal PA in Leeds

Group: Property

Location: Leeds

Hours: Monday to Friday 9.30am to 5.30pm

About the Business:

Here at Pinsent Masons we bring together the best people to get the job done. We’re naturally curious, constantly learning, listening, and growing. We’ll truly value your ideas. You’ll be joining an award-winning, hardworking and commercially minded team, where you’ll have the opportunity to work with leading experts and form meaningful relationships, while making a difference. You’ll get the opportunity to be involved in varied and challenging work, working in an open and supportive environment to deliver outstanding results.

Purpose of the role:

Provide proactive and professional Legal PA support to the group. Services to be delivered to the business in a manner which is consistent with the increasingly competitive environment in which the Firm operates. This role is intended to embrace a team-working approach, collaborating with lawyers and other members of Business Operations to fulfil the needs of the business. In addition to being assigned to a number of specific lawyers, it is expected that a Legal PA will work with every member of the team to ensure that overall needs are met. Support may need to be provided to staff from more than one business unit and numbers and content of the group may change from time to time to reflect the current structure of the Firm.

Candidate Overview:

We are looking for candidates who ideally hold the following skills and experience:

• Building and maintaining effective relationships with both internal and external clients and their teams and developing knowledge of their business.
• Actively contributing to client service initiatives in the group, including attending client events and seminars where required.
• Developing and maintaining core sector understanding to support delivery of optimum client service.
• Liaising regularly (at least on a weekly basis) with lawyers to identify work commitments and prioritising your workload accordingly.
• Proactively identify areas of responsibility and tasks you can take ownership of.
• Diary management for lawyers including arranging meetings and appointments, both internally and externally, ensuring the Outlook diary is up to date and holds all the necessary information in relation to the appointment including taking responsibility for booking travel, meeting rooms and arranging for necessary equipment and refreshments.
• Proactive advance monitoring of lawyers' diaries, reminding them of diary commitments and taking responsibility for the provision of all supporting paperwork and necessary information for each meeting.
• Liaising with the travel company to make travel and accommodation arrangements (UK and international), keeping lawyers advised of any changes in scheduling and ensuring they have accurate information.
• Taking ownership of answering lawyers' telephone calls when they are unavailable, taking accurate messages and passing them on promptly, trying to assist and answer any non-legal queries if possible and ensuring the caller receives a satisfactory response.
• Screening, prioritising and dealing with lawyers' incoming e-mails, post and voicemail when lawyers are out of the office, acknowledging receipt and responding where able and appropriate.
• Proactively ensuring that the Exigent transcription service and Document Production service is utilised effectively.
• Managing production of documents (produced in-house and externally), co-ordinating changes made including taking responsibility for the consistency of those documents (e.g. formatting, numbering, Compare Docs etc.).
• Coordinating typing of audio files, drafting correspondence, producing documents/letters/e-mails and memos.

What can we offer you?

• Carers’ leave (up to five paid days’ leave towards caring responsibilities).
• 25 days’ annual leave entitlement and the opportunity to purchase or roll over 5 days.
• Contributory pension of up to 5%.
• Private healthcare policy.
• Death in service cover (4 x base salary).
• Eligibility to apply for an interest free season ticket loan, an interest free gym membership loan and/or an interest free rental deposit loan.
• Cycle to work scheme.

What happens next?

Once your application has been submitted and reviewed, our Recruitment team will share the outcome with you by email. We typically hold two interview stages per vacancy providing the opportunity to meet two members of the hiring team at each stage. The first stage is typically conducted virtually and the second stage typically in person at the office in which the role would be based. However, we strive to remain flexible depending on the requirements of the role or the candidate.

Our strength lies in our differences. We are a Disability Confident and top Stonewall employer, a Valuable 500 member, a founding member of the Mindful Business Charter, signatory of the Race at Work Charter and a proud partner of Neurodiversity in Law. We encourage and value different ideas and styles of thinking. It’s with different perspectives that we’ll find solutions to our clients’ most complex challenges. It’s how we’ll deliver outstanding results today, and tomorrow. We want everybody attending an interview to be comfortable and able to fully demonstrate their experience and talents.