Paralegal - Costs - Birmingham

Job Introduction

This is an exciting time for the CSG costs product as it is poised for further growth. Currently the product has one Partner, one Legal Director and three Associates. There are seven supervisors with a range of experienced staff including Solicitors, Chartered Legal Executives, Costs Lawyers and Paralegals.

The costs product comprises several distinct teams specialising in a specific area of costs including paying party teams, receiving party teams and complex claims teams.

Lawyers across all teams have the opportunity to be trained on doing costs management work relating to the challenging of and drafting of budgets, with most budget lawyers sitting in the complex claims team.  

Team members aim to build strong links and establish good rapport with the clients and claims handlers, which ensures that team members understand the clients businesses and exceed their expectations.

We are currently accepting applications from candidates with no or minimal experience in costs as paralegals. The successful candidates will be supported in applying for funding support as a trainee of the Association of Costs Lawyers. 

Role Responsibility

Specific responsibilities will include but are not limited to:

• Handle a case load of costs challenges where individual costs claims are up to £100,000 in value.
• Acting as a point of contact for clients, demonstrating a level of knowledge and skill commensurate with experience
• Ensuring full compliance with clients' SLAs and DAC Beachcroft's internal protocols
• Assume responsibility for quality control and benchmark compliance on own caseload, including accuracy and timeliness of management reporting and information 
• Ensure strict and ongoing adherence to benchmark standards in all work undertaken.
• Demonstrating a high level of financial management in respect of own files
• To hit, maintain and apply a consistent approach to all individual targets of chargeable time, financial performance, realisation rates, settlement rates and average claim spend.
• Achieve a minimum budgeted annual target of 1440 chargeable hours per year.
• Exercise full compliance with DAC Beachcroft protocols on billing and credit control and demonstrate a high level of financial management in respect of own files. 
• Supporting marketing and business development activity within the team e.g. attending marketing events and client training 
• Maintain an awareness of the firm's strategies and plans.
• Maintaining and developing technical knowledge through attendance at training sessions, reading appropriate publications 
• Handle confidential information in line with the firm's data security protocol

The Ideal Candidate

• Educated to law degree or equivalent
• Some experience of civil litigation
• IT literate with a good working knowledge of Excel and Word. Previous knowledge or experience of a case management system would be an advantage but is not essential
• Willingness to follow a process driven system, working within set parameters.
• Experience of working within a pressurised and deadline driven environment 
• Have an ability to adopt a commercial perspective to legal issues rather than a purely academic approach
• Must be able to work under pressure and with a high volume caseload, to meet required deadlines
• Demonstrates alignment with the Firm’s Cultural Principles (Clear, Creative, Determined and Supportive).

About the Company

We are a leading international legal business with over 2,500 colleagues and a diverse range of capabilities. We have 11 offices in the UK as well as offices in Dublin, Madrid, Paris, Singapore, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Miami. We also have associations/alliances with firms in Malaysia, Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Central America, the USA, Australia and Germany.

We are a broad-based commercial firm with a strong heritage in insurance, health and real estate. This is complemented by a fast-growing Business Advisory capability. We represent a wide range of clients, ranging from household names to government departments and NHS bodies. We act for all of the UK’s top-ten insurers, we are 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-12 housebuilders.

We have an impressive legal pedigree, with 142 Chambers UK 2021 practice area and individual lawyer rankings. In Legal 500 UK 2021, the firm received a top tier ranking for 37 of its practice areas, and 58 DACB lawyers were singled out in the ‘Leading Individual' rankings.

Our successes have been recognised by the legal industry and the markets in which we operate. These accolades include two top prizes in the ‘Excellence in Business Development’ and ‘Excellence in Technology & Innovation’ categories of the 2020 Law Society Excellence Awards – the highest accolade for law firms in England & Wales. Our health sector team won the ‘Crisis Management Team of the Year’ award at the 2020 British Legal Awards for its support to the NHS at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and our Cyber & Data Risk team received the ‘Business Development Innovation Award’ at the 2020 Legal Innovation Awards, as well as ‘Cyber Law Firm of the Year’ at the prestigious Insurance Insider Cyber Rankings Awards, for its market-leading suite of digital tools to help our clients prepare for and respond to cyber and data risk crises.

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. For further details on our work and our culture, please visit www.dacbeachcroft.com.

Application Details

At DAC Beachcroft, we don’t just accept your differences we celebrate them.  From bespoke solutions for our clients, to treating you like 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.  We welcome direct applications and are happy to talk flexible working.

We also want you to be at your very best.  Please feel free to let us know of any changes we can make at any point in the recruitment process that will help support your application.  If this opportunity sounds of interest to you, please make an application and submit your CV.  Your application will be dealt with in the strictest of confidence.

Note for Recruitment Agencies – the DAC Beachcroft recruitment team is responsible for managing all current vacancies through direct hiring and referrals wherever possible.  We do work with recruitment agencies and where we require external support we will formally release those vacancies to the agencies on our Preferred Supplier List deemed best placed to assist us.  Speculative CVs sent by any agency to any DAC Beachcroft employee without a specific request by the recruitment team will not be accepted and with no introduction fee applicable.  Our recruitment team can be contacted at recruitment@dacbeachcroft.com

DAC Beachcroft