What are the responsibilities and job description for the Legal Administrative Assistant position at Herbert Smith Freehills?
JOB DESCRIPTION
About Herbert Smith Freehills
As one of the world’s leading law firms, we advise many of the largest and most ambitious organisations across all major regions of the globe. With over 5,000 people, including 3,100 lawyers and over 2,000 business services professionals, operating from our global network of offices across Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and North America, Herbert Smith Freehills is at the heart of the new global business landscape providing premium quality, full-service legal advice.
We recognise that the success of our business and our clients relies on the skills, knowledge and ideas of all our people. Our environment is one in which high performance is expected, in return, we will provide you with rewards and opportunities tailored to your personal and professional goals.
The Opportunity
Title : Legal Administrative Assistant
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.
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.
Key Performance Indicators :
Qualifications, Skills & Experience :
Competencies
Personal Leadership
Connects and Collaborates with People
Contributes to the Success of Others
Enhances the Client Experience
Achieves Results
Work Hours : 9am-5pm; Non-exempt
Salary : The salary range for this role is $60-70k. Final compensation for this role will be determined by various factors such as education, experience, knowledge and skills.
Team
Disputes, NY Secretarial Level 1
Working Pattern
Full time
Location
New York
Contract type
Permanent Contract
Diversity & Inclusion
At Herbert Smith Freehills you will be part of a diverse, innovative culture where high performance, client focus and highly engaged people are our differentiator. People at our firm come from a range of backgrounds and bring a wide variety of experiences and perspectives to their work with us. We strive to ensure that our inclusive environment means you feel valued and able to perform at your best by being your authentic self at work. We know that our future success not only depends on being innovative and progressive in the changing legal market but, most importantly, on our people feeling highly engaged in meaningful work.
We understand that you have commitments and personal interests outside of work and we strive to create a working environment based on mutual trust and respect, in which you can perform at your best whilst maintaining sustainable balance across your life.
Salary : $60,000 - $70,000