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adjustments for candidates | Travers Smith
Travers Smith
An award-winning city law firm. We
build lasting relationships with public and private sector clients.
It is Travers Smith's purpose to provide the very highest quality of
service to our clients whilst enabling our people to achieve
professional fulfilment in a supportive, inclusive, and enjoyable
working environment.
Department
The Funds Department is a leading
international funds practice and currently has four lawyers ranked
in Chambers and Partners and Legal 500. Our success has been
recognised recently across a number of industry bodies not just The
Lawyer, by winning Law Firm of the Year: Fund Structuring by Unquote
British Private Equity in 2018. The Department also recently got
itself in the record books for acting as lead fund counsel on the
largest listed fund IPO in history, raising £822 million in October 2018.
The Funds Department regularly works
closely with other leading departments at Travers Smith, including
the Financial Services and Markets, Tax, Real Estate and Private
Equity and Financial Sponsor Departments.
The Role
You will be expected to provide high
quality, comprehensive personal assistant/secretarial support to
lawyers in the department. You will proactively contribute to the
department, and ultimately, the Firm's success by actively seeking
to improve working processes, anticipating the needs of clients and
colleagues, and facilitating flexible and efficient workflow
management.
As a PA at Travers Smith the
expectation is that you will demonstrate the key characteristics
described below. These areas of focus are aligned with the needs of
those supported by every PA in Firm. While the descriptions are not
exhaustive, they provide an overview of the fundamental expectations
that the Firm places on its PA population.
Proactivity - PAs are
expected to understand and anticipate the varying needs of the
individuals they provide support. This will be realised through action
and results-oriented behaviour, where requirements and challenges are
pre-empted and resolved, and where opportunities to add value are exploited.
Teamwork - PAs are
expected to contribute to their PA team operating as one seamless
'unit'. This will involve maximising individual strengths and drawing
on the capacity of everyone in the team to collectively ensure that
deadlines are met, and excellent work product is delivered. This is
likely to include sharing knowledge, providing support to others at
times when absence or capacity issues arise, and collaborating with
the PA team to suggest and implement improvements to processes.
Communication - Good
communication needs to be channelled in multiple directions to develop
constructive working relationships. This will require managing
expectations of key stakeholders by acknowledging and updating on the
progress of tasks, including tasks that are ongoing and/or non-urgent.
Strong communication skills will be evidenced by recognising and
assisting when colleagues require support and for conveying your own
need for support. Ultimately, good communication is vital for enabling
effective team working and for developing trust.
Inspiring Confidence -
The value added by the PAs across the Firm has a
direct impact on the level of service provided to clients. It is
therefore imperative, as someone providing support for the lawyers,
that support is delivered with a genuine appreciation of the pace and
extent of demands expected by the Firm's clients. This will involve
delivering work with a high degree of accuracy and professional
presentation, turned around promptly to meet deadlines. This goal will
be met with the parallel aim of going above and beyond wherever
possible. A professional attitude and demeanour are integral to a PA
being perceived as part of a lawyer team delivering high quality work
to clients - which should be an aspiration of all of our PAs.
Key Responsibilities
Extensive and proactive diary
management. Gaining an understanding of the week from the
perspective of the lawyers - 'horizon scanning' to pre-empt
conflicts and anticipate needs.
Work to ensure unique and
individual support needs are understood for each lawyer.
Ensure regular communication is
made to convey and share any workload pressures with other PAs.
Pre-empt needs for enhanced or
specific support at times when individuals might be under
additional pressure.
Field and screen communications
(email), ensuring exceptional client service is considered at all times.
Act as a 'gatekeeper' for work
whilst identifying where to delegate tasks that should be sent to
the Document Production ('DP') team or the Central Admin TeamTeam
Administrators.
Ensure 'quality control' forms part
of regular workflow patterns, whereby any work that is delegated
to another team is thoroughly checked before it is returned.
Complete appropriate/necessary DP
tasks to the highest standards and ensuring house style
requirements are met.
Prepare PowerPoint presentations
with minimal input, delivering slides that are clear, in line with branding.
Take the initiative of overseeing
ad-hoc administrative projects for the lawyers, for example,
archiving, confidential shredding, photocopying, organising filing systems.
Liaise with relevant parties to
arrange meetings; booking internal rooms; ensuring the appropriate
room setups are in place; and that refreshments are booked and confirmed.
Liaise with and co-ordinate meeting
attendees, both internal and external, ensuring all parties have
the relevant information ahead of time.
Proactively prepare and collate
papers ahead of meetings.
Co-ordinate travel arrangements
ensuring efficient use of time and expenditure including booking
taxis and accommodation, completing visa applications, arranging
currency, creating itineraries, and compiling expense forms as appropriate.
Support lawyers in marketing
activities including involvement in the preparation of pitch
documents and presentations.
Use of effective systems to ensure
that both urgent and non-urgent tasks are progressed and delivered
within the required timescales.
Assist other members of the
department/Firm as required; and
Develop a general awareness of
business issues and challenges within which the lawyers operate to
instill trust and confidence in the PA team.
Client Relations
Be client focused and understand
the expectations of internal and external clients.
Where necessary, pass on full and
accurate messages in a timely manner and take appropriate action
to ensure the needs of both internal and external clients are met.
Act in a professional and courteous
manner when dealing with clients (including internal clients),
potential clients and third parties.
Assist in arranging internal and
external events.
Capture and manage contact and
client relationship data in the Firm's CRM system (InterAction),
maintaining any existing information.
Interrogate and report on data in
the CRM system.
Become an active part in the care
of clients and look for opportunities to build relationships with
client contacts and PAs where appropriate; and
Deal with basic client queries and
general administration.
Administration
Proactively deal with incoming and
outgoing mail.
Action emails and manage inbox as
required by the Partner and forward/action as necessary.
Establish and maintain effective
and accurate filing systems (electronic);
Be capable of operating all the
functions of the photocopiers and scanners including clearing
jams, replenishing paper and replacing toner.
Managing lawyer expenses; and
General ad-hoc administration duties
Communication
Demonstrate rapport, empathy, and
professionalism when communicating and use these skills to build
and maintain collaborative working relationships with all
colleagues, clients and stakeholders of the Firm;
Utilise your internal and external
networks to help you to solve problems and devise effective solutions;
Ensure that all client related
correspondence is passed on to an appropriate lawyer and actioned
as necessary;
Liaise with the business support
departments on behalf of the lawyers as required;
Liaise with the department's Team
Leader/PA Manager over any planned absences, arranging cover as
necessary and communicating this to the relevant lawyers; and
Communicate and work as a team to
cover busy periods and absence.
Documents
Oversee all document production
work, either through delegation and quality control, or through
completing a task that falls within the PA remit of
responsibility; and
Provide support with marketing and
pitch documents.
Billing and File Opening
Assist lawyers with time recording
where possible, entering absences onto Intapp Time;
Assist lawyers with billing and
credit control by liaising with Central Finance and preparing bill
narratives and draft cost details;
Provide assistance with file
opening and conflict checks; and
Request bank transfers, pay money
in/out, as appropriate.
Miscellaneous
Attend training as required to keep
up to date with Firm wide procedures.
Work proactively as part of a team
to ensure time is used effectively using all available Firm-wide
resources to meet pressured deadlines; and
Effective management and
prioritisation of work.
Education/Qualifications
Minimum 5 GCSEs/O'Levels or
equivalent at grade A-C including English and Maths.
Secretarial qualification and/or
MOS certification (desirable).
Skills and Experience
Advanced knowledge of Microsoft
Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint.
Prior experience of working in a
fast-paced corporate environment.
Efficient organisation skills, with
a high degree of accuracy to prioritise an often conflicting workload;
Able to work calmly and efficiently
under pressure.
First-rate inter-personal and
communication skills.
Ability to develop and utilise good
working relationships across teams.
Demonstrate flexibility and
dependability.
Evidence of having used initiative
and an understanding of processes; and
Able to build confidence and earn
the trust and respect of others.
