Owen Reed is looking to recruit a motivated Junior Secretary to join a top law firm in London.

Main purpose of the role:

To provide fee-earners with proactive and high-quality secretarial support that appropriately meets their requirements, enabling them to focus on providing legal services to clients and reducing the need for them to undertake administrative tasks.

Reports to:

This role will report directly to the Partner.  Other key liaison relationships are:

•Group Heads of all national and international practice groups •Sector Heads •Business Services Departments •Fee Earners and Secretaries in the Central Management team •Internal and external clients and contacts

Key Responsibilities:

•Complex diary management for the Partner ensuring the organisation and scheduling of the Partner’s tasks, including the identification and resolution of potential challenges and clashes and re-organising and re-scheduling where necessary

•Organising prep meetings with the teams before client meetings take place, ensuring full diary management in advance.

•Pro-active management to ensure the Partner is fully updated on diary activities, attending meetings on time and with the appropriate documents/presentations.

•Acting as gatekeeper for the Partner to manage diaries

•Co-ordination of both internal and external meetings on behalf of the Partner, including booking all required facilities.  Sourcing off-site meetings venues, arranging logistics for such meetings and dealing with related expenses/invoices.

•Planning and co-ordination of travel programmes to include liaison with overseas offices, booking flights, hotels, car transfers.

•Proactive management of emails and post, using initiative to route emails to the appropriate individuals for swift response and actions, ensuring that these are followed up.

•Prioritise correspondence to enable the Partner to focus on urgent matters.  Bring urgent matters to the Partner’s attention.

•Drafting high-quality correspondence, letters, documents, agendas, reports, presentations and spreadsheets for meetings and ensuring their timely distribution and distributing and arranging DMC to undertake presentations. •Responding to and typing/composing correspondence on behalf of the Partner.

•Taking Minutes at meetings and producing action lists.

•Production and maintenance of action lists for Partner, together with pro-active follow-up to ensure that actions are completed on time.

•Building strong relationships with, and developing and maintaining a comprehensive knowledge of, internal and external clients, mandates and projects.

•Dealing with invoices and expenses.

•Maintenance of up-to-date and robust filing systems to ensure efficient document management.

•Undertaking other activities as required by the Partner and the Central Management team.

•Client facing work, including M&BD team events and webinars.

This role has no supervisory responsibility and no responsibility for budgets.

Project Support Tasks

•Assist with creating, formatting, editing and proof-reading legal documents, as well as the filing and retrieval of these documents.

•Monitor and report on budget vs actuals relating to matters.

•Manage calendars and scheduling meetings with all involved parties; ensuring everyone is available and informed. •Responsible for  all correspondence relating to the matter, such as calls and emails as well as liaising with clients, lawyers and other staff members.

•Assist with conducting any preliminary research for the project.

•Preparation of agenda’s, using co-pilot to take minutes and distributing post-meeting summaries and action points. •Provide administrative support by assisting with adding activity codes, billing and other admin tasks relating to the project.

Person Specification:

•A thorough understanding of working in a professional, service driven environment and of stakeholder / client / business confidentiality

•Ability to maintain tact, diplomacy, trust and confidentiality •Confident and professional manner with the ability to build strong relationships with stakeholders and clients

•Excellent communication skills and ability to interact at all levels

•Forward thinking and proactive in their approach •Works well under pressure in an ever-changing environment •Collaborative and supportive of the business and its initiatives

•Adaptable and open to change showing a willingness and confidence to make suggestions for change where appropriate

•Strong organisational skills and excellent attention to detail •Anticipate and identify potential problems and provide innovative solutions

•A strong team player

•Demonstrate strength of character, resilience and tenacity in the face of challenge and resistance – and so able to drive change

•Ability to build relationships with partners and colleagues and demonstrate good influencing and negotiating skills •Must have previous experience of extensive diary management within a professional services environment and preferably a partnership

•Strong working knowledge of Microsoft Office suite of products, particularly Excel, Word and PowerPoint