Junior Practice Assistant – SABRE 2022
At Clifford Chance, you'll be joining a global team of bright minds in one of the world's leading law firms. With over 30 offices across the world, we have an unrivalled scale and depth, which uniquely places us to advise market-leading clients on complex deals that frequently headline the business and financial news. Whatever your area of expertise, you'll find a range of career opportunities across our teams. Our firm, work and people span jurisdictions, cultures, and languages. We offer our clients a truly international perspective and give our people a stimulating and expansive career. Whichever area of the business you join, you'll become an integral part an innovative, diverse and ambitious team of people. Whatever your plans for the future, the next step towards building a dynamic career with a bright future is with Clifford Chance.
Role
This role is in the Structured, Asset-Backed and Real Estate Finance group.
The Junior Practice Assistant is responsible for providing professional core business support to the firm's fee earners. The support providedwill be as part of a team with shared responsibilities and collective accountability, working with the firm's other Business Professionals teams. The Junior Practice Assistant is expected to create positive working relationships with fee earners and their colleagues in order to provide excellent business support. The Junior Practice Assistant is responsible for ensuring that all activities are carried out in compliance with the firm's policies and regulatory requirements.
The Junior Practice Assistant must be flexible and adaptable, with the ability to adjust to different practice areas and teams, as required.
Key Responsibilities
This role sits within the London office and includes responsibility for delegating and steering work to the appropriate specialist CC team, which may include the Service Centre, DPU, Design and other Business Professionals teams. The Junior Practice Assistant is responsible for providing clear direction and taking full ownership and management of their work for their allocation, with support and guidance from Practice Assistants (PAs) in their teams to ensure that tasks are prioritised by business need and completed in a timely manner. When working agilely, the Junior Practice Assistant is expected to provide a consistently excellent level of support without disruption to the business and stakeholders.
Practice Management
- Acting as a key point of contact, with guidance, for management of incoming queries, both internally and externally, via phone or email: full inbox management, pre-empting requirements, sending holding emails, drafting or providing responses, filing and archiving, prioritising and actioning, as well as screening calls, answering queries, taking messages and directing enquiries to the appropriate CC teams, as necessary
- Overseeing and confirming the management of diaries (with guidance): organising meetings across different time zones, coordinating meeting requirements, including room bookings, managing diary conflicts, preparation for meetings, including necessary documentation, liaising with internal and external attendees on availability, and organising catering
- Providing full support on video conferencing using CC supported applications: setting up appropriate file management systems, filing emails and documents, archiving and other document management activities such as filing, photocopying, scanning, printing and storing, and arranging couriers
- Arranging domestic and international travel: visas, vaccinations, currency, flights, hotels, maps, client information, itineraries and liaising with our in-house travel provider, as required
- Preparing and drafting: letters, email correspondence, pitch and presentation documentation with direction and input from the people you support
- Handling internal and external post and liaising with mail room, as appropriate
- Managing beginning-to-end document management processes: amending, collating PDFs and renaming, proofreading, generic blacklining and liaising with specialist CC teams, including DPU, Service Centre, Legal Support Centre, Newcastle, as appropriate
- Assisting with the integration of new joiners into the team, general guidance on firm processes, arranging any equipment and ensuring full workstation set-up, scheduling introduction meetings with key personnel outside HR induction, and providing general advice on queries
- Encouraging and proactively following up with fee earners on completion of their mandatory training requirements, other course requirements and ensuring that they are adhering to risk and compliance policies, such as Matter Team Manager (MTM) compliance and engagement letter compliance with guidance from the Practice Assistants (PA) as required
- Participating in the delivery of ad hoc projects and tasks, as required
- Providing guidance to Team Assistants as a mentor/buddy.
Client Focus and Support
- Progressing and assisting with client relationship initiatives: arranging and attending meetings, calls or other associated actions, as required
- Reminding and assisting fee earners with the updating of CVs
- Creating or amending, with guidance, PowerPoint presentations, Excel documents or fee quote documentation at beginner to intermediate level. This will include involving specialist CC teams, as necessary, and ensuring that presentations/ documents/pitches are delivered to both fee earners and Business Professionals (including the Client and Market Development team) as per their initial brief
- Building relationships with internal and external clients and key stakeholders, as appropriate, and developing an understanding of matters from inception to completion for allocated fee earners
- Collating and capturing, with guidance, the correct client and matter-related information in the core systems: Intapp and the Matter Capture System (MIS); for example, sector information in Intapp and deal description information in MIS
- With guidance, organising and attending events: internal and external client and team events, socials, O2 events, retreats and deal-closing lunches and dinners, together with any associated tasks such as researching venues, invitations, collating RSVPs, drafting communications and event management, as required
- Carrying out straightforward research tasks to support fee earners and Business Professionals: researching venues for events and gathering client intelligence for marketing (including working with the GSSC team to produce taxi briefings prior to client meetings and events and adding client activities, as requested), capability statements and pitch materials, as directed
- Assisting with client relationship activities under the direction of the CMD teams: cross-practice client events, maintaining and updating client contact information on Interaction, including mailing lists, RSVPs and registration.
Financial and Matter Management
Providing financial management support from inception through to billing with guidance from PAs within your team and the Billing team: supporting the firm's commercial discipline initiatives such as conflict checking, drafting engagement letters, using Intapp and ensuring that fee estimates and phases are included, setting up Matter Team Management (MTM) and ensuring that the relevant team members are added, setting up and maintaining project email distribution lists, setting up Document Management System workspaces with appropriate folder structure, including creating a legal project management (LPM) folder with relevant project templates, if required, setting up matter balance reports and ensuring that all relevant information is included, creating and informing the deal team of any time recording rules, taking account of specific client e-billing rules and sending regular reminders to the deal team, amending narratives as required, including sharing further guidance with the team to reduce errors, and drafting bill letters
- Processing and managing all expenses and invoices and liaising with Accounts Payable, when required
- Under the direction of the Billing team, making updates to pre-bills and ensuring smooth running and preparation of bills
- Attending work in progress (WIP) and debtor meetings, as required, and following up on action points with the Billing team
- Supporting fee earners with Time Sheet entries: proactively inputting holidays and absences, resolving unposted time and managing held time
- Providing support and guidance on Expert Time
- Assisting with good housekeeping of documentation, including post-closing administration.
Best Delivery
- Having an awareness of the firm's processes and best practices, including systems and Best Delivery tools
- Encouraging use of the Best Delivery hubs and engaging with the firm's Best Delivery tools to provide efficient support to the fee-earning community.
Skills
- Strong organisational skills with excellent attention to detail
- Understands the importance of the role and how this contributes to the practice area and wider firm strategy
- Client orientated with some experience of building strong relationships both internally and externally
- Ability to show initiative, gather information, make decisions and seek guidance, as necessary
- Strong communication skills, both written and oral
- Awareness of confidentiality and the use of discretion, when required
- Manage workflow and delegate appropriately to TAs under the guidance of PAs within your team.
Experience
- Previous experience in a support/administrative role, ideally gained from working within a professional services firm an advantage
- Some experience of diary management, international travel, email management and assisting with the preparation of correspondence
- Some experience of supporting on financial matters, i.e. knowledge of recording time sheets, e-billing, expenses and invoices.
Knowledge
- Intermediate to advanced knowledge of Word, Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint
- Knowledge of setting up data rooms would be an advantage
- Some knowledge of legal processes and matter management is desirable
- Knowledge of any of the following would be an advantage, but not essential: Intapp, Expert Time and time reporting systems, Interaction, Kira and Transact.
Qualifications
- 5 (A*-C/9-4) GCSEs, including English and Mathematics
- Cilex or BTEC Administration qualifications are desirable, but not essential.
About the Firm
Clifford Chance is one of the world's leading law firms, helping clients achieve their goals by combining the highest global standards with local expertise. The firm has unrivalled scale and depth of legal resources across the three key markets of the Americas, Asia and Europe and focuses on the core areas of commercial activity: capital markets; corporate and M&A; finance and banking; real estate; tax, pensions and employment; and litigation and dispute resolution.
Alongside world-class legal careers, Clifford Chance offers excellent opportunities in the support functions that underpin its business operations. By joining us in the Business Professionals team, you will help us innovate in the way we deliver our services and enable us to run a successful multinational business that never stands still. Business Professionals are integral to the running of the firm and are critical to its success.
We expect you to aspire to deliver the highest standards of customer care to your colleagues, both fee-earning and otherwise. You will strive to make every interaction with your area of service as easy as possible, proactively anticipating requirements, suggesting solutions and removing friction, wherever it arises. You will take personal responsibility for ensuring that any service issues are resolved as quickly as possible and will take full ownership of these issues, permitting the people you are allocated to support to concentrate on looking after our clients. You will support our shared success model, recognising that exceptional client service relies on us all succeeding, both individually and as a team.To find out more about what it is like to work in Clifford Chance in UK, please visit link.
Equal Opportunities
It is the firm's policy to treat all employees and job applicants fairly and equally regardless of their gender, marital or civil partnership status, race, colour, national or ethnic origin, social or economic background, disability, religious belief, sexual orientation or age. Furthermore, the firm will ensure that no requirement or condition will be imposed without justification that could disadvantage individuals purely on any of the above grounds.
The policy applies to recruitment and selection and terms and conditions of employment, including pay, promotion, training, transfer and every other aspect of employment.
The firm will regularly review its procedures and selection criteria to ensure that individuals are selected, promoted and otherwise treated according to their relevant individual abilities and merits.
The firm is committed to the implementation of this policy and to a programme of action to ensure that the policy is, and continues to be, fully effective. All staff are required to comply with the policy and to act in accordance with its objectives so as to remove any barriers to equal opportunity. Any act of discrimination by employees or any failure to comply with the terms of the policy will result in disciplinary action