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JOB TITLE
PA - FTC 12 months
DEPARTMENT
Complex Commercial Litigation ("CCL")
OFFICE LOCATION
London
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. This role requires hybrid working of 80% working in the office, 20% of time working from home.
FIRM DESCRIPTION
Hogan Lovells is one of the leading global law firms. Our distinctive market position is founded on our exceptional breadth of our practice, on deep industry knowledge, and on our 'one team' global approach. Formed through the combination of two top international law firms, Hogan Lovells has over 40 offices in the Americas, Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. With a presence in the world's major financial and commercial markets, we are well placed to provide excellent business-oriented advice to our clients locally and internationally. Our people are the key to our success, which is why we seek to recruit and retain the most talented individuals in all regions of our global practice.
In the UK Hogan Lovells has offices in Birmingham and London. The Birmingham office opened in 2015 and has a number of practice areas including Corporate/Commercial, Disputes, Finance and Real Estate, as well as our Legal Delivery Centre and Business teams.
ROLE DESCRIPTION
Delivering a professional secretarial, organisational and administrative service, including supporting client billing, the individual will be proactive and responsible in managing their own workload, acting with autonomy and using initiative. Working with 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 communicates 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
The candidate
- 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 on one's feet to solve administrative problems, using support service departments as necessary
- 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 Mathematics
AGILE WORKING STATEMENT
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.
EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES EMPLOYMENT STATEMENT
It is the policy of Hogan Lovells 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 age, disability, ethnic origin, gender identity, religion, sex or sexual orientation.
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