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Job title
PA
Department
Corporate & Finance - CCCM/Investment Funds
Office location
UK
Reports to
Head of 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. Our approach to hybrid working allows for up to 40% of time working from home and 60% working in the office. Please contact a member of the recruitment team to discuss further.
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 several practice areas including Corporate/Commercial, Disputes, Finance and Real Estate, as well as our Legal Delivery Centre and business services departments. The office has recently trebled in size and moved into a new fitted out space in the Colmore Building.
Role Description
Delivering a professional secretarial, organisational and administrative service, including supporting client billing. The role requires a candidate with a high level of technical expertise, capable of working confidently with systems and tools and who is proactive and responsible with a proven track record of independently managing their workload, demonstrating initiative, and delivering comprehensive, client-focused solutions in a dynamic and evolving environment for an allocation of lawyers within a legal group.
Key responsibilities/accountabilities
Organisational Skills
- Take ownership of tasks from start to finish, ensuring delivery of high-quality work on time and to expectations
- Organise and prioritise workload and maintain a level-headed approach in a dynamic working environment, communicates regularly with fee earners to provide status updates
- Plan for and deliver high quality, accurate work whilst managing deadlines, responding to change and the competing priorities of all work
- Demonstrate strong organisational skills, regularly act on own initiative, identify issues and propose potential solutions
Diary, Meeting and Mailbox Management
- Support inbox management and proactively manages conflicting demands and scheduling challenges and providing solutions
- Proactive diary management including arranging meetings and associated logistics, conference calls, lunches and other appointments using business knowledge
- Organising travel whilst ensuring adherence to the Global Travel Policy requirements (including flights, accommodation and restaurant suggestions/reservations) and providing the fee earners with detailed itineraries
- Taking accurate and detailed telephone messages
Client Relationship Management
Client Interaction & Relationship Building
- 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
- Initiate regular communication with allocated fee earners to understand their priorities and support requirements
- Take ownership of client enquiries, resolving or escalating (or identifying alternative contacts) as appropriate
- Build a network of strong working relationships both internally and externally
- Demonstrate awareness of client circumstances and pressures, and proactively anticipate and prioritise client needs
Business Development & Commercial Awareness
- Demonstrate active interest in the firm’s clients, business needs and commitment to responsible business
- Assist partners and fee earners with their BD responsibilities including pitches and proactively updating CVs and credentials.
Billing and Financial Administration
- Works independently to a high standard in billing cycles, with a good understanding of client preferences and firm systems
- Supports the client billing process using 3E by preparing and generating bills, maintaining accurate records of expenses, disbursements, and fees, liaising with the billing department to track payments, and responding to internal and external requests for supporting documentation and further details
- Demonstrates a strong understanding of risk and compliance procedures, including the preparation and management of client engagement letters. Skilled in supporting firm-wide compliance initiatives by ensuring documentation accuracy, upholding confidentiality, and promoting adherence to internal policies and external legal requirements.
Team Support and Collaboration
Team Contribution
- Support wider team and department administration tasks to manage workload peaks and troughs when capacity allows
- Provide cover for others in the wider team as requested and support team admin (including across other practice areas where necessary)
- The role and responsibilities are subject to change at any time to reflect the needs of the business
Collaboration and Communication
- Actively contribute to a collaborative team environment by sourcing, sharing, and exchanging knowledge while supporting new colleagues
- Proactively communicates with line manager on workload issues, capacity and hybrid working arrangements
Learning and Adaptability
- Take responsibility for your own continued learning, undertake recommended training, keep up to date with and comply with firm policies.
- Learn and maintain strong knowledge in your own practice area
Documentation and Filing
- Proficient to produce long, complex and accurate documents; remain up to date with HL house-style and able to correctly apply to documents, manuscript amends, audio dictation and document comparisons, proofreads own work to ensure accuracy
- Utilises the firm’s document support services effectively, with clear instructions and realistic deadlines, taking ultimate ownership of task
- Consistently maintain accurate filing systems, including e-filing, in accordance with the firm’s archiving protocols, effectively retrieving stored files promptly and the opening of new matter files
- Demonstrate proficiency in firm templates, styles, and document processes, ensuring consistency and quality.
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 quickly and solve administrative challenges effectively, leveraging support service departments when needed
- Client orientated approach – client-focused both internally and externally
- Willing to become involved with a desire to learn
- Demonstrate resilience and adaptability when faced with change, consistently maintaining strong performance under challenging conditions
- 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
- Advanced knowledge of MS Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint
- Experience of using ServiceNow or other similar workflow management tool
Qualifications and training
Minimum 5 GCSEs or equivalent at 4 or above, 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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