Secretarial Co-ordinator

Job Title:

Secretarial Coordinator

Location:

Bristol

Reports To:

Secretarial Manager

Main Purpose of the Role:

To ensure that the demands of Partners feeearners and others are met through the effective supervision of the groups secretaries and to provide Partners and feeearners with effective and highquality secretarial support that appropriately meets their requirements. Supporting the Secretarial Manager in enabling the successful implementation of the firms strategy for the secretarial team promoting performance development and acting as an advocate/role model to the secretarial population.

This dual role would ideally be split 60 current secretarial work 40 secretarial coordinator tasks and duties.

Candidates must possess excellent leadership and organisational skills being positive proactive and robust. The candidate will also need to be someone who keeps calm under pressure can prioritise work effectively has strong problemsolving skills and has a flexible can do approach.

Main Duties and Responsibilities:

People Management and Development:

• Monitor and manage group absence ensuring compliance with group rules and leave policy ensuring maintenance of Team Seer for all absence.
• Monitor sickness issues and undertake informal return to work interviews after short term incidental sickness escalating to the Secretarial Manager as required.
• To provide detailed performance review feedback on the secretarial team to the Secretarial Manager using the secretarial competencies as reference providing informed input in preparation for the Performance Development Review meetings.
• To mediate and resolve any minor issues between Partners feeearners and secretaries and performance issues with secretaries escalating to the Secretarial Manager as appropriate.
• Bring to the attention of the Secretarial Manager any performance issues in the secretarial team.
• Monitor learning and development needs of the team members and suggest actions to the Secretarial Manager.
• Assist the Secretarial Manager in the recruitment of new secretaries and TAs.
• Regularly liaise and work collaboratively with other Coordinators to build relationships and leverage support across all groups.

Workflow and Capacity Management:

• Manage workflow of group and redistribute work where capacity allows inside and outside the group.
• Delegate work to and develop Junior Secretarial support within the team.
• First point of contact in relation to work allocation secretarial performance team absences and day to day operational matters i.e. holidays sickness and overtime cover.
• Work with the Group Heads on adhoc moves including biannual trainee moves and vacation students.
• Regularly review allocations and work with the Secretarial Manager to match and adjust secretaries with the right Partners and feeearners depending on developing needs.
• Ensuring that the correct tasks and/or duties are undertaken by the correct person.
• Regularly review the groups processes and update when necessary.
• Promote the Document Management Centre (DMC) within your Groups.

Group Administration and Pilot/Training on Firmwide initiatives:

• Undertake new hire orientation and familiarisation within group including secretaries Partners and feeearners.
• Assistance to Group Head on time recording (InTapp) exception monitoring and reporting as required.
• Assist visitors with the allocation of office space and secretarial support when required and act as the knowledge bank and first point of call for group and international visitors.
• Manage and maintain group administration e.g. IT systems (eg Filesite BigHand plus individual group systems)
• Updating email distribution lists for new joiner and leavers and telephone lists flowers for operations/babies etc.
• Organise and collate information for departmental and partner meetings and plan social events.
• Cascade information through to group from representation at forums e.g. Secretarial EDG Coordinators.
• Identify resources to pilot secretarial and firm initiatives e.g. MOS Word Experts MFD emarketing etc.
• Schedule secretarial meetings and training sessions for secretarial teams.
• Maintaining contacts list for practice group(s) for the purposes of business continuity reporting.
• Conducting quarterly reviews/PDR meetings.
• Lead the recruitment of secretaries and team administrators at the first stage
• Coach and mentor secretaries in the group and wider team
• Take responsibility for any adhoc moves including biannual trainee moves and summer students.
• Deputise for the Secretarial Manager.

Secretarial

Diary and Contact Management:

• Proactively manage and maintain Partners/feeearners diaries making appointments and coordinating internal and external client meetings research interviews etc. Ensure all work activities are scheduled effectively including the identification and resolution of potential challenges and clashes.
• Arrange the booking of conference rooms video conference facilities cars refreshments restaurants and liaising with meeting attendees both internal and external.
• Monitoring and responding to post and/or emails prioritising correspondence to enable feeearners to focus on urgent matters and using initiative to route emails to the appropriate individuals for swift response and action; wherever possible responding to and filing emails on behalf of feeearners to reduce volume.
• Responding and dealing with external or internal telephone calls and queries in a professional manner and taking clear and concise messages for other members of practice group as required.
• Organising travel arrangements through the travel company booking and confirmation of reservations flights hotels car transfers ordering currency and expense claims and producing detailed itineraries.
• Keeping up to date on the Covid Government Guidelines and providing all information for your groups in relation PCR tests when travelling for business.

Preparation of Key Documents and Correspondence:

• Typing and drafting where appropriate letters correspondence presentations reports and legal documentation; proofreading all work to ensure that completed documents are delivered accurately and to a consistently high standard.
• Preparation of agendas presentations and meeting papers including print production and timely distribution and chasing papers for meetings and ensuring that feeearners have papers and adequate preparation time.
• Formatting of bids pitches and capability statements for clients typically in Word or PowerPoint; inputting edits to client facing documents sourcing feeearner CVs for pitches and coordinating the update of the CVs for the pitch then submission to the BD contact by required deadline and/or submission of pitch documents where online submission is required.
• Presentations for client training seminars and conferences; sourcing of feeearner CVs and coordinating the update of the CV for the specific event then submission to BD contact or event organiser ahead of required deadline and formatting PowerPoint presentations to meet firm guidelines.
• Maintenance of CVs; maintaining feeearner CVs on CV Bank and the website to include entering content changes as directed by feeearners and proactively supporting the quarterly CV review by printing all versions of own feeearners CVs from CV bank for review and markup proactively asking feeearners about adding new deals and cases to their CV upon completion of a matter.

Administrative Tasks:

• Daytoday administrative tasks such as photocopying scanning and demonstrating the ability to delegate to appropriate department/s when necessary e.g. for organising large volume printing photocopying document production.
• Organises document management including closing of files archiving and ensures that all relevant documents are filed electronically and paperbased if required.
• Demonstrate an understanding of the endtoend billing process and Elite (Financial system); assisting feeearners by liaising with the billing team producing the relevant documentation and prompting feeearners to complete all necessary time recording.
• Dealing with and submission of travel invoices and expense claims and maintenance/filing of copies.
• Organising and maintaining up to date systems to ensure effective document management including closing of files archiving and ensuring all relevant documents are filed electronically and paper based.
• Supporting feeearners with InterAction updating; ensure new business contact details are entered and contacts from feeearners Outlook address book are shared updating changes of contact and entering activities when a M&BD activity is planned with a client or target by own feeearner proactively downloading and printing reports on contacts ahead of meetings and pitches with the contact.
• Supporting team in updating information on the SharePoint intranet or in managing and maintaining pages.
• Supporting feeearner with the preparation of speaker CVs and formatting of speaker materials RSVP management for events sponsored by own feeearner by taking/responding to telephone and email enquiries from interested delegates responding to feeearner queries about attending delegates using InterAction reporting function notifying own feeearners about events that are coming up in their/other office when visiting using intranet events calendar and notifying the organiser if feeearner wishes to attend.
• If a Superuser secretary providing support to events by sending out invitations to events led by their NPG and managing the RSVP process including regular reports circulated to partners speaking/running events.

Key Relationships:

• Daily contact with Partners and feeearners for work allocation.
• Daily contact with other secretaries within and across practice group/s to provide/request assistance.
• Regular contact with Team coordinator or Secretarial Manager for wider work distribution.
• Regular contact with all other BSD Groups ie. Facilities Office Management DMC IT Marketing and Business Development Billing and Accounts Payable.
• Regular contact with Secretarial Manager for escalations or issues.

Size and scope of the role:

• Responsible for providing seamless secretarial support service to the appropriate practice groups.
• Undertaking all Appraisal/PDR process for your secretarial teams.

Key skills required:

• Able to build and maintain constructive relationships with people at all levels
• Able to support change and positively promote the firms business plan and strategy of the secretarial services management with secretaries Partners and feeearners.
• Able to take an active role in formulating solutions to problems escalating to the Secretarial Manager where necessary
• Have a collaborative team orientated approach and be a leader
• Have a proven ability to tackle problems by formulating solutions in conjunction with the Secretarial Manager.
• Have excellent communication skills
• Have an interest in learning management skills
• Client service orientated approach
• Selfmanagement and excellent organisational skills with the ability to prioritise work calmly andeffectively in a pressurised environment
• Able to organise others and manage workloads
• Accountability and professionalism
• Business and organisation awareness
• Ability to develop self and others
• Attention to detail and discretion with confidential information
• Good working knowledge of Microsoft applications
• Good working knowledge of document and client relationship management systems Nuance/PDF software and financial recording applications
• Able to work effectively as part of a diverse and inclusive team
• Able to deal with difficult conversations.

Education/Qualifications/Experience:

At least 7 years experience working as a secretary within a professional services environment.

Other requirements:

Flexibility with working hours as required and willingness to work extra and on occasion unsociable hours when required.

Firm Introduction:

Simmons & Simmons is a leading international law firm providing clients with commercially aware legal advice whenever and wherever they need it. We have over 1500 staff in 22 locations situated in key business and financial centres across Europe the Middle East and Asia.

We understand that our firm is equal only to the strengths of our people and place great emphasis on recruiting and retaining staff who meet our high standards. Our philosophy for international growth has been to build practices around local teams who understand the culture business and languages of the countries and regions in which we operate. In doing so we believe that we have succeeded in developing a closely knit and cohesive network that meets local business needs as part of a global service.

Our business services groups provide integrated support for our global operations. The firm is organised in line with our clients requirements into key practice areas and sector groups. Our sector focus allows us to better appreciate the environment in which our clients operate and to work with them to achieve their objectives. Our client base includes leading financial institutions and a significant number of the current FTSE 100 and Fortune Global 500 companies.

Our strategy is founded on excellent client service and a focus on our key industry sectors (asset management & investment funds energy & infrastructure financial institutions life sciences and technology media & telecommunications). The core practice areas from which we draw our sector teams are corporate dispute resolution employment pensions & employee benefits EU competition & regulatory financial markets information communications & technology intellectual property projects real estate and tax.

For additional information on the firm please visit our website at .

Equal Opportunities:

Simmons & Simmons is committed both to promoting equality and diversity in the firm and to Equal Opportunities in employment. The firm believes in equality of opportunity regardless of race or racial group (including colour nationality ethnicity national origins) religion or belief age disability sexual orientation sex gender reassignment and gender identity marriage and civil partnership and pregnancy maternity and paternity. This also includes any incidents of perceptive or associative discrimination and harassment.

At Simmons & Simmons we seek to attract and retain talented people from a diverse range of backgrounds and cultures to create an exciting and rewarding place to firm is supportive of flexible working arrangements wherever possible. Our aim is to fulfil everyones potential and together to achieve personal and business goals.