Legal PA - Tax - 12 month FTC

at  AO Shearman

A&O Shearman is a new global industry-leading law firm, with 48 offices in 29 countries worldwide. Our fluency in English law, US law, and the laws of the world’s most dynamic markets, enables us to provide unmatched insight and seamless delivery to clients. We work on challenging and important deals and disputes that have the potential to shape the future.
We offer exceptional opportunities for our people; opportunities to work for the world’s leading businesses; to transform the status quo, and to deliver your best work, helping you and your career to thrive, while delivering unparalleled outcomes for our clients.
Whether you’re helping clients solve complex challenges, transforming the ways we manage our business, or ensuring the smooth-running of our operations, this is an environment where you can belong and excel. We provide first-rate training and development, we are committed to diversity, equity and inclusion and we provide support and ways of working that help you optimise your wellbeing.
What truly defines a career with us? We recruit the best and ask for the best of you. And together, we will redefine success.

EXPERIENCE AND PERSONAL ATTRIBUTES

The ideal candidate will be a flexible, resilient & robust individual who is confident in their approach, pro-active, quick to learn and someone that is able to exercise independent thought as to what needs to be done. We are looking for the following skills / personal attributes:

• Experienced Legal PA (5 years plus)
• High level of attention to detail
• Organized and able to prioritise
• Excellent administration skills, keyboard and software proficiency
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Calm, unflappable demeanor
• Professional telephone manner

The role of a Legal PA at Allen & Overy is exciting, challenging and rewarding. Working alongside leading lawyers, Allen & Overy recognises that Legal PAs are an important part of the team. Our Legal PA’s are required to provide a professional and efficient legal administrative service to Partners and other fee earners. Being an integral part of the shared services team you will encounter exciting career opportunities and challenges, working with the best legal professionals in the field.

Key Relationships

• LPAs
• Partners
• Shared Service teams
• Colleagues in other offices in the firm’s network External suppliers to the business.

Key roles and responsibilities

• Manage incoming communication (including email and voicemail). Drafting replies as required.
• Diary management, arranging meeting rooms, collating documentation for meetings and prompting the Partner as appropriate to maintain their working schedule. Spotting issues and thinking ahead to rearrange where necessary. Also prompt fee earners to attend meetings as required.
• Monitoring fee-earners emails and tending to requests from clients.
• Coordinating and booking travel as required.
• Ensure mail is processed efficiently (physically and electronically), maintaining confidentiality at all times. This includes management of mailing lists for Partners and practice areas and circulating newsletters as required.
• Establish and maintain an effective filing system to ensure completeness and accuracy of technical, professional and matter information.
• Produce and amend documents and correspondence. Take responsibility for the general management and turnaround of documents. As required, work with our outsourced design company to update marketing documents, amend pitches, prepare bios for client meetings / lunches and assist with client research requests. This also includes printing print jobs for Partners / Lawyers (over 50 pages can be sent to the print room).
• Help lawyers complete their timesheets every day.
• Provide cross-group and departmental support where necessary.
• Assess and prioritise client requests, ensuring that all messages are relayed in a timely fashion.
• Provide efficient and professional assistance to meet the needs of the client.
• Maintain basic marketing information.
• Field and process calls from ad hoc callers and prospective new clients.
• Enter and update various systems / programs such as EPIC and League tables.
• Schedule coordination of roadshows.
• Manage team CVs and general experience lists, and tailor team CVs for pitches.
• Coordinate events including collating and managing invitation lists, printing names tags and distributing. Assisting with firm events such as clerk recruitment.
• Ensure desks are cleared and clean when; a team member leaves the firm, goes on leave, or when a new starter commences. It involves consulting with your team to ensure this is done efficiently and documents are stored appropriately.
• Organising stationery for any new starters to your team.
• Ownership and management of team’s expense policies when preparing expense claims (refer to expense policies to understand if claim can be processed before sending to Finance).
• Ensure that Finance is advised of status for any outstanding invoices relating to matters and where any action is required from Finance.
• Ensure performance review meetings are organised for the team during review season
• Ensure team members book leave in the system.
• Help with annual processes including renewal practicing certificates.
• Edit narratives, review WIP and submit billing guides to Revenue team in line with communicated deadlines to facilitate the month end billing process.
• Assist with the matter inception process.
• Ensure all required forms and associated backup relating to client trust monies are completed and submitted to Finance in accordance with Law Society Trust rules.