Personal Assistant and Legal Secretary, Planning and Environmental Team Leeds - #1783874

About The Role

This role will assist the firm’s Planning and Environment Partner (leading the P&E Advocacy Unit), in their day-to-day duties and support the Leeds planning team and wider national team as required. The Partner and team in Leeds focus heavily on contentious work and act as Advocates for major planning and environmental projects. The team is in ‘start up’ mode and this is an exciting opportunity to support a growing team, with a clear mandate to design and improve the team’s administrative systems.

Communicating effectively across all departments and with clients is a core part of the role; a desire to continually streamline and improve processes within the team is crucial.

The successful candidate will be adaptable, highly organised, proactive, professional and have substantial prior experience working as a PA/Executive Assistant in a similar role. We trust our people to work flexibly in the way that works best for them, their teams, and our clients, however this role is heavily office based with at least 4 days in the office required most weeks (this may increase to 5 depending on the demands of the team) due to document management/prep requirements. Our firm is set up to ensure everyone’s voice is heard, and mutual respect is shown by all.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage the Partner’s diary, scheduling and managing meetings and appointments.
• Act as a point of contact between the Partner and internal/external clients/contacts.
• Manage the Partner’s email inbox – highlighting urgent emails, responding to emails and
• Creating an effective and efficient system for the filing of client emails, documents and matters.
• Assisting the Partner with time recording.
• Make travel arrangements/hotel bookings.
• Arrange team meetings, ensuring collation and distribution of agendas and meeting papers in advance.
• Take minutes of meetings, following up internal action points, electronic bundling, managing document rooms, collating hard copy reports, presentations, and distribution of documents as appropriate.
• Record and submit Partner’s expenses.
• Proactively chase progress on tasks and projects on behalf of the Partner.
• Create an efficient and effective system in relation to billing, tracking of fee estimates and ensuring that financial information across the team is kept up to date and is reported accurately to the Partner each month.
• Opening new files (including dealing effectively with compliance requirements), closing files and archiving.
• Support other fee earners in the team with administrative matters, including bundling of contentious documents and preparing hardcopies
• Handle sensitive information with the utmost discretion and maintain confidentiality at all times.
• Any other reasonable secretarial/administrative task that is required including dealing with dictation for the Partner.
  
  
  

Skills And Experience

• Experience: Proven experience as an executive assistant or in a similar role, preferably within a law firm or professional services environment. This role would particularly suit a candidate with experience of supporting a busy contentious/litigation Partner and team.

• Skills:
• Diary Mastery: Proven experience juggling complex schedules.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to work independently.
• Excellent communication skills: Comfortable engaging proactively with stakeholders at all levels to problem solve and improve the team’s sytems.
• Detail-Oriented: Delivering high-quality output with precision.
• Tech Know-How: Proficient in IT particularly, Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, dictation software, time recording/finance systems), with great analytical skills.
• Adaptable and Innovative: Thrive in an environment that requires effective multi-tasking, development of new systems and prioritising competing demands effectively.
• Relationship Building: Communicate confidently at all levels and forge strong business connections.
• Time Management: Prioritise and multitask seamlessly.
• Experience of document Management systems required.
  

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