Junior/Experienced Legal Secretary (Commercial Litigation) - London

Job Introduction

DACBeachcroft has an exciting opportunity for a Legal Secretary to join our Commercial Litigation team on a full-time, permanent, hybrid basis in our centrally located London Walbrook office.

Standard hours for this role are 9:30am - 5:30pm, and will require attendance in the office 4 days each week.

This role would suit either an experienced legal Administrative Assistant, or a Legal Secretary with a minimum of 2 years experience in a similar role and practice area.

Forming an integral part of an established team of secretaries, the main purpose of this role is to provide an excellent standard of admin and secretarial support to a team of fee earners across the practice area in our London office. 

We are a Disability Confident employer and guarantee to interview anyone with a disability, long term health condition or neurodiversity whose application meets the essential criteria for the role as set out in this advert.  If this applies to you contact disabilityconfident@dacbeachcroft.com in confidence, quoting the reference number for this vacancy in the subject box of your email, and a member of the team will be in touch. 

We are happy to talk flexible working and have in place a Flex-forward working scheme. We would encourage you to talk to us about our approach to flexible working during the hiring process if you would like to explore this further.

Role Responsibility

Secretarial

Able to work independently, pro-actively and with accuracy, key responsibilities include: 

• Effective prioritisation and ownership of tasks whilst managing a full workload
• Proactively assisting with billing, cash collection and accounts queries and liaising with internal support teams to resolve issues quickly and effectively, including dealing with expenses claims
• Confidently managing large documents, creating versions, amending, proof reading and creating comparisons to highlight changes to include digital dictation
• Drafting email correspondence to both clients and suppliers
• Booking client and internal meetings, video and audio conferences, to include proactive diary management and co-ordination
• Creating and editing spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations, making the most of available technology and showing appropriate creativity to maximise professional impact of documentation
• Opening and closing files, including researching AML requirements and drafting emails to potential clients on what to provide
• Filing, archiving, photocopying and scanning documents as and when required
• Ensuring that client contact information is kept up to date on relevant systems
• Assisting with booking travel and accommodation arrangements in line with DACB way.
• Proactively assisting with ad-hoc business development and communications activities e.g. client contact reports, delegate packs etc.
• Building and maintaining a level of individual knowledge required for the role
• Helping maintain a clean office and clear desk
• At all times handling confidential information in line with the firm’s data security protocols
• To assist with some paralegal activities such as creating bundles, both hard and soft copy, uploading and downloading files to the network / filesite.

Administrative

• File management – updating and maintaining all files, ensuring documents are filed correctly and named in line with the business wide naming convention and the correct folder structures are adopted (both electronic and paper)
• Undertake all file closing/archiving procedures ensuring compliant at all times
• Make room and taxi bookings as requested, organising hand deliveries and courier requests, and other ad hoc requests
• Printing/copying/scanning of documents flowing to Office Services for support with high volume jobs, as appropriate
• Sending large electronic documents via One Drive
• Dealing with incoming post - scanning, saving to the file and circulating to the relevant fee earners
• Updating of Workflow Tracking Schedules – not sure what this means??
• Assisting with hard copy filing of legal documentation and original documents with wet signatures. Typing of standard letters i.e. payment of invoices, acceptance of events
• Uploading documents to PDF docs and editing documents using the same
• Other ad hoc tasks at the request of the secretarial team

The Ideal Candidate

• Either strong legal administration experience, or a minimum of 2 years experience as a Legal Secretary is essential
• Qualified to a minimum of 5 GCSEs (including a grade C (5) in English and Maths) or equivalent 
• A secretarial NVQ / Diploma or equivalent would be beneficial but is not essential
• Must have good IT skills, particularly in Microsoft packages (including each of Outlook, Word, Powerpoint, Excel) and prior experience of working with a case management system is preferable
• Sound knowledge of pdf docs and file sharing platforms (High Q / sharefile)
• Experience working with iManage is essential
• Good working knowledge of Chrome River, and 3E accounts software is highly desirable
• An excellent eye for detail with a concern for quality and accuracy
• A focused client service approach is essential
• Team oriented and collaborative with a flexible, can do attitude
• Ability to communicate clearly and concisely orally and in writing

About the Company

We're a leading international legal business with over 3,000 colleagues and a diverse range of capabilities. We're market leaders in insurance, health and real estate but with a full-service offering, including growing Financial Services and Tech capabilities. We represent a wide range of clients – from household names to government departments and NHS bodies. We act for nearly all of the top-20 UK and global insurers, we're market leaders in the provision of strategic, commercial and regulatory advice to providers and commissioners in the health sector, and in real estate we advise all of the UK’s top-five housebuilders.

We are a fast-growing international business with offices around the globe.  In addition to our 11 UK offices, we also have offices in Dublin, Madrid, Paris, Milan, Rome, Singapore, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Miami, plus a broad network of affiliations across the globe. 

Working with us

Our vision is to be leading business advisers, recognised for our insight and our outstanding commitment to clients, and for being the place where talented people want to work. Combine this with our supportive culture and hybrid working model, and you have: a Life that Works.

Our flexible approach means that we help our colleagues to be their best at work, while recognising that they have all sorts of different interests and commitments outside work.

We pride ourselves on our supportive, approachable culture. We are trusted, appreciated as individuals and embraced as part of a team. At DACB, we don’t just accept your differences, we celebrate and advocate for them. From bespoke solutions for our clients, to treating you as an individual. Our strength comes from your diverse ideas and bringing the ‘whole you’ to work. So if you’re good at what you do, come as you are!

Note for Recruitment Agencies – the DAC Beachcroft LLP resourcing team is responsible for managing all current vacancies through direct hiring and referrals.  Whilst we do work with recruitment agencies, we will formally release those vacancies to instructed agencies deemed best placed to assist us.  Speculative CVs sent by any agency to any DAC Beachcroft employee without a specific request by the resourcing team will not be accepted and no introduction fee will be applicable.  Our resourcing team can be contacted at recruitment@dacbeachcroft.com.

DAC Beachcroft