Personal Assistant - Real Estate - 12 month FTC

We are looking for a Personal Assistant to join our Real Estate Group for secretarial and administrative support on a 12 month fixed term contract. Providing fee earners with the administrative support needed to provide seamless legal services to clients. Be proactively involved in all aspects of the management and execution of their fee earners’ day-to-day workload by providing exceptional and proactive administrative support. Act as workflow manager for other support services including delegating and supervising the completion of document production, file management and copying/scanning work. Take an active interest in and obtain a thorough understanding of all aspects of client requirements to provide exceptional service levels to fee earners and clients. Some of your day to day responsibilities within the team will be: Administrative

• Manage diaries, ensuring they are up to date and reminding fee earners of meetings etc on a daily basis. Ensure critical date diaries are up to date and circulate to team.
• Arrange meetings, book conference rooms, refreshments, check rooms prior to meetings etc and liaise with other attendees, both internal and external.
• Coordinate travel arrangements in the UK and internationally, book and confirm reservations and deal with related details/papers/itineraries.
• Arrange for files to be opened and closed, supervise general filing, e-filing, scanning requirements and record keeping.
• Support lawyers in marketing activities including involvement in preparation of pitches and presentations.
Document Production
• Coordinate correspondence, attachments, documents, reports, presentations, etc produced by the DPC team before they are passed to the relevant fee earner for approval/sign off and undertake basic/minor amendments where appropriate.
Financial
• Coordinate the billing process and assist fee earners in the billing and credit control process by liaising with the fee earner and accounts and to produce financial/time reports through the system. Be aware of any service level agreements or arrangements with clients requiring bespoke billing information.
• Be competent in the delivery of more complex client reporting as and when required.
  
  Previous experience of working within a Administration / Secretarial role or similar is required
• Advanced knowledge of Microsoft Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, research tools and other systems implemented by the firm.
• Excellent telephone manner.
• Confidence to deal with routine client queries and take the necessary action in the absence of fee earners.
• Excellent communication, organisational and team skills.
• Excellent attention to detail.
• Flexible, proactive and dependable with a results-orientated approach.
• Able to remain calm under pressure, work to tight deadlines and prioritise workload.
  
  The opportunity to work for a firm which has been recognised as one of the best places to work in the UK and has been ranked by Great Place to WorkÂŽ for 24 consecutive years.
Excellent benefits, including:
• 25 days annual leave, with the option to buy up to a week's extra annual leave
• Private medical insurance, and the option to add family members
• A generous pension allowance
• Life assurance covering four times your annual salary
• The chance of a three-month sabbatical every five years
• Maternity, paternity and adoption leave schemes
• A range of health and wellbeing programmes
• State of the art offices, in the heart of Birmingham City Centre, with an onsite restaurant
• Opportunities to flourish in your role through training and personal development
Many of our people work flexibly in some way. If you would like to explore your own flexible working arrangements with us, we are happy to discuss this during the recruitment process. Equal Opportunities: Gowling WLG 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 re-assignment 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 Gowling WLG we seek to attract and retain talented people from a diverse range of backgrounds and cultures, to create an exciting and rewarding place to work. Our aim is to fulfil everyone's potential and together to achieve personal and business goals. Any offers we make will be conditional subject to clearance by the SRA, evidence of eligibility to work in the UK and DBS clearance.