Legal Administrative Assistant

A top international law firm is seeking an experienced Legal Administrative Assistant for their New York office.

Primary Objectives: To provide secretarial and administrative support at a consistent and high standard to partners, fee-earners, and office operations in the office to meet client requirements and deadlines to deliver an exceptional client experience.

Qualifications, Skills & Experience:

• Associate's degree required; preference for a Bachelor's degree.

• Intermediate to advanced skill level with the Microsoft suite (Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint).

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with a demonstrated ability to building effective and trusting relationships with people internally and external to the firm.

• Proven high level organizational and time management skills with the ability to think ahead, prioritize workload, respond to and manage changing circumstances and work under pressure to meet deadlines.

• Strong attention to detail.

• Good judgement and problem-solving ability.

• Demonstrated high level experience as a Secretary/PA working in a professional services environment (legal experience is desired).

Primary Responsibilities:

• Deliver high quality, accurate work while managing deadlines, responding to change and the competing priorities of all work.

• Coordinate and produce accurate Herbert Smith Freehills’ compliant documents and correspondence (including draft engagement and billing letters). Meet required deadlines and negotiate alternate timeframes when necessary. Utilize other services as appropriate.

• Establish effective work practices with partners and fee- earners to manage the matter life cycle from file opening to closure/archival. This includes adhering to the firm’s conflicts process, managing information barriers, contributing to the effective management of electronic and hard copy content and active legal project management.

• Implement effective telephone call management and other communication work practices. Ensure callers and other parties receive a consistent, high quality service and their expectations are managed. Take all steps necessary to ensure that team members are aware of partners’, fee-earners’ and your own movements.

• Manage internal and external appointments with appropriate meeting lead and travel times, assisting with meeting preparation and the coordination of post meeting actions (this includes coordinating/printing documentation and organizing meeting room logistics as required).

• Coordinate detailed travel arrangements for assignments, including appropriate visa documentation and domestic and international itineraries.

• Arrange lunches and dinners and other events as required, including reviewing venues and menu planning and ensuring costs are maintained against budget. Booking conference rooms as needed, Handling arrival of guests.

• Manage own email. This includes timely filing of emails (including hard copy filing where necessary), filtering incoming correspondence, proactively dealing with queries and meeting invites. Deal with hard copy mail/post in the same manner.

• Ensure electronic filing is up to date and undertaken regularly. This includes saving to iManage. In some cases printing documents as required and filing them in the relevant files promptly.

• Assist with expense claims and invoice approval forms in a timely manner; updating tracker charts where appropriate. Cross functional communication with other offices and internal departments for follow through

• Assist with narrative edits of bills and with managing alternative pricing arrangements and cross-border invoicing and follow up throughout entire process

• Prepare OFF SITE files for archiving and manage return and retrieval of files following firm guidelines. Maintaining records of same.

• Treat your key relationships as ‘internal clients’ and demonstrate diligence, professionalism and a commitment to providing them with an exceptional experience including being a key point of contact for the team.

• Take an interest in the office practice areas, key matters, issues and ‘hot topics; so that appropriate priority is given to queries and requests and issues are escalated where necessary.

• Serve as primary backup coverage for the reception desk and Office Services as needed. Binding and printing projects. Coordinating courier packages, fed ex etc. outside vendor.

• Adhere to firm, office and practice group policies and procedures, including those that are formal, informal, documented or verbal.

• Take all necessary steps to ensure you are aware of correct procedures. Maintaining inquisitive, collaborative and vigilant work habits, keeping abreast of changes and developing more efficient work processes. Demonstrate this in your interactions with others.

• Demonstrate enthusiasm and proactivity in the workplace, including participating in and contributing to secretarial and practice group meetings, firm initiatives, welcoming and settling in new starters, projects, focus groups, pilot groups, team building activities, learning and development sessions and other relevant activities.

• Take responsibility for your own learning, undertake recommended training, keep up to date and comply with firm policies, adopt new or improved firm and practice group recommended work practices, and share information with others about better ways of working.

• Provide secretarial support to visitors, ensuring their needs are met.

• Be available and prepared to contribute towards working out of office hours to a reasonable extent.