Paralegal, Professional & Commercial Risk

Job Introduction

Paralegal – Professional & Commercial Risk – Bristol

What do we mean by Professional and Commercial Risk? Our team provides expert legal advice to clients across a broad range of professions and sectors through our two complimentary sub-teams:

Our Professional Indemnity team – we represent insurers and the professionals they insure including Surveyors & Valuers, Brokers, Solicitors, Directors and Officers, Construction Professionals, Accountants, Pension professionals, Trustees and Financial Advisers; and

Our Commercial Dispute Resolution team - we specialise in financial services disputes, commercial fraud, injunctions, cyber and data risk, white collar crime, regulatory investigations and enforcement actions and specialist health litigation.

At DAC Beachcroft we are committed to and recognise the importance of equity, diversity and inclusion across the board, including and beyond the protected characteristics. We take decisions based solely on merit .

We value, welcome and seek out people with different backgrounds and life experiences , perspectives, beliefs, ways of thinking and identities. Our inclusive culture encourages colleagues to be themselves at work, supporting people to perform at their best and to reach their potential.  

Should you require any support to perform at your best throughout the recruitment process, please contact us so that we can discuss how we can most appropriately assist.

We are a Disability Confident Employer and guarantee to interview anyone with a disability, long term health condition or neurodifference whose application meets the essential criteria for the role (see below). If this applies to you, please contact recruitment@dacbeachcroft.com in confidence, quoting the reference number for this vacancy and "DCS" in the subject box of your email, and a member of the Recruitment 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.

Main Responsibilities

As a paralegal, you will play an integral role in the success of our team. You will support the other lawyers in all aspects of their work.  This role will primarily be to support the Directors & Officers and Brokers service lines. There will be opportunities to work on multi-million pound claims as well as lower value, less complicated claims which you may work on with a greater degree of autonomy, commensurate with your level of experience.

Responsibilities include but are not restricted to:

• Acting as a point of contact for clients, responding to their requests and providing a high level service to clients at all times.
• Legal research.
• Letter drafting and correspondence with third parties.
• Review and analysis of documents.
• Document and bundle preparation.
• Demonstrating a good level of financial management and accurate time recording.
• Supporting marketing and business development activity and contributing to non-fee-earning activity as appropriate, e.g. knowledge sharing, training, assisting and preparing updates for clients and the team, legal research etc.
• Handling confidential information in line with the firm’s data security protocols

Firm wide:

• Understands DAC Beachcroft is an international firm. Works with awareness of this structure to operate as one team/brand.
• Actively operates in the best interests of the firm at all times internally and externally.
• Operates in a regulated environment, effectively managing risk and compliance issues including data security.
• Works in partnership with others to manage and mitigate commercial risk.

The Ideal Candidate

The firm, and the team, is committed to nurturing its talent and you will be given all of the requisite support and encouragement to develop your skills while fulfilling the requirements of your role. The Solicitors’ service line, which focuses on defending solicitors from claims and the defence of regulatory investigations and proceedings, is looking to hire a paralegal to support the team. We want to hear from ambitious professionals who want to develop their career in a friendly, market leading team.  We are looking for a candidate with:

• Experience of working in a target driven commercial environment would be an advantage.
• Excellent commercial awareness and an interest in broader business issues.
• Strong communication skills both written and verbal.
• Ability to deal confidently and professionally with clients and colleagues on day to day issues.
• Excellent organisational skills, able to prioritise and manage tasks within set timeframes.
• Strong attention to detail and ability to identify relevant issues.
• Ability to demonstrate a reasonable level of self-sufficiency, combined with an awareness of the boundaries of own competence/authority.
• Willingness to share knowledge and support other members of the team.
• Excellent IT skills, to include Word and Outlook. 
   

We are looking for colleagues who enjoy litigation and dispute resolution, who are interested in gaining a wide variety of experience early in their career.

About the Company

We are a leading international legal business with over 2,900 colleagues and a diverse range of capabilities. We have 11 offices in the UK as well as offices in Dublin, Madrid, Paris, Milan, Rome, Singapore, Argentina Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Miami. We also have associations/alliances with firms in Malaysia, Brazil, Peru, 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. 

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