Job Description
Job title: Team Administrator
Job type: Full Time, Permanent
Location: London
Reports to: Secretarial Coordinator
Main purpose of the role:
- To provide effective and high-quality administrative support through delegation from the Secretarial Co-ordinator, Secretaries and fee-earners that appropriately meets the requirements of the team.
- To support the team/office with regular and ad hoc administrative tasks and other secretarial tasks.
Key relationships:
- Daily contact with Secretarial Co-ordinator for work allocation.
- Daily contact with Associates and Partners when delivering completed tasks.
- Occasional contact with Secretarial Manager for escalations or issues.
- Building and maintaining relationships with colleagues and key stakeholders.
Main Duties & Responsibilities:
Diary and contact management
- Arrange the booking of conference rooms, video conference facilities, taxis refreshments, restaurants, and liaising with meeting attendees, both internal and external.
- Organising travel arrangements through the firm’s travel company, booking and confirmation of reservations, flights, hotels, car transfers, ordering currency and expense claims and producing detailed itineraries.
Administrative tasks
- Day-to-day 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.
- Effectively manage new client matter opening and any additional tasks and duties relating to this process, following Service Excellence workbooks and process throughout.
- Organises document management, including closing of files, archiving and ensures that all relevant documents are filed electronically and paper-based, if required.
- Dealing with and submission of travel invoices and expense claims using Chrome River.
- Submitting invoices for payment through the Accounts Payable team and monitoring progress
- Prepare WIP reports to be reviewed by fee-earners.
- Supporting fee-earners, Secretarial Co-ordinator or Group Head on time recording (Intapp), including reporting as required.
- Supporting fee-earners with maintenance of InterAction; ensure new business contact details are entered and contacts from fee-earners 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 fee-earner, 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 particular pages.
- Assisting with event management including tasks such as RSVP management for events, responding to fee-earner queries about attending delegates using InterAction reporting function.
- Assisting the broader team with routine and ad-hoc administrative tasks relating to the operation of the team/office.
Preparation of key documents and correspondence.
- Assisting with simple typing tasks including digital dictation, copy typing and handwritten amendments.
- Using the firm’s house style and proofreading all work to ensure that completed documents are delivered accurately and to a consistently high standard.
- Assisting the team with the preparation of agendas, presentations and meeting papers, including print production and timely distribution.
- Regularly updating fee earners’ CVs ensuring they are maintained in the firm’s CV Bank.
- Sourcing fee-earners’ CVs for pitches and co-ordinating the update of the CVs.
Project/matter support
- Assisting Secretarial Co-ordinator, Secretaries and Paralegals with internal project or matter related ad-hoc duties.
- Duties may include but are not limited to uploading files to deal rooms and SharePoint; printing, filing and archiving; arranging for files and bundles to be couriered; and supporting ad-hoc administrative tasks as required.
- Provide ad-hoc support to practice support team with tasks.
Person specification:
Education / Qualifications / Experience:
- GCSEs grade C/4 or above, or equivalent qualifications in English and Maths as a fundamental criterion
- Some office experience desirable, although training will be provided.
General Skills:
- Client service orientated approach
- A proven working understanding of teamwork
- Problem solving skills and solutions focused
- Strong computer skills, specifically in relation to MS Office
- Good communication skills
- Strong spelling and grammar
- Self-management and excellent organisational skills, with the ability to prioritise work calmly and effectively in a pressurised environment
- Accountability and professionalism
- Attention to detail and discretion with confidential information
- Able to work effectively as part of a diverse and inclusive team
- Ability to touch type quickly and accurately
- Creative and forward-thinking approach to task
Other requirements:
- Flexibility with working hours as required and willingness to work extra and on occasion unsociable hours when required
- Awareness of and adherence to the firm’s policies and values
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 1,600 people 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 focus on a small number of sectors means we can understand and respond to our clients’ needs. Our industry sectors are Asset Management & Investment Funds, Financial Institutions, Healthcare & Life Sciences and Telecoms, Media & Technology (TMT).
We also focus on the E&I market, through our international projects and construction teams. We have a track record for innovation and delivering value to clients through new ways of working. 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 www.simmons-simmons.com.
Equal opportunities:
- We are committed to promoting equality and diversity in the firm and to equal opportunities in employment.
- We believe 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. We ensure that those who serve or who have served in the armed forces, and their families, are treated fairly during the recruitment and selection processes.
- 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 work. We are supportive of flexible working arrangements wherever possible and we would encourage you to discuss this with us, should this be something you are interested in.
Background screening:
All recruits of Simmons & Simmons will be required to go through our background screening process. Depending on the position you apply for this may include a Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) certificate. We undertake not to discriminate unfairly against any subject of a DBS certificate on the basis of a conviction or other information revealed. The firm’s policy on the recruitment of ex-offenders is available on request.
