Job Title: Legal Secretary
Location: Northenden, Manchester
Salary: £17,000 upwards, dependent on experience
Job type: Permanent, Full time
The Company are looking to recruit a talented legal secretary to join their expanding firm. The Legal secretary role will include audio typing, preparation of documents and correspondence, speaking to clients and third parties by telephone, and diary management.
The Company is a top 200 Law firm that specialises in personal injury. They cover every area of personal injury including public liability, occupier’s liability, road traffic accidents, employer’s liability, industrial disease, serious injuries and clinical negligence matters.
They are LEXCEL and Law Society accredited and are a Legal 500 Leading Firm for both Personal Injury and Clinical Negligence. Six of their Partners are members of the Law Society Specialist Personal Injury Panel and one of them is a member of the Law Society Specialist Clinical Negligence Panel.
Key Requirements
- To prepare correspondence and documents for a busy Solicitors firm. Usually within a defined work stream of RTA, Employers Liability, Public Liability or Clinical Negligence.
- To administer filing which will include daily filing and the opening, closing, storage and retrieval of client files in accordance with the detailed procedure contained in the Staff Handbook
- To prepare mail and enclosures for despatch if required.
- To arrange for all copying to be done, in person if the admin assistant is not available to undertake the task.
- To make appointments, arrange meetings and to liaise with fee earners, clients, counsel.
- To provide support to other secretaries and the administration team as required.
- To attend clients both in person and on the telephone and to provide such support in a professional and friendly manner in keeping with the firm’s standards for client care.
- To undertake any specific training when required to do so and overall to have a responsibility towards self-development.
- To ensure the confidentiality of all the firm’s and clients’ documentation and information.
- When working on a file always making sure there is a task in there for the next step. Review the file and make sure if you have e.g. requested a Form of Authority, the appropriate chaser task is set.
- Fully complete jobs. If a dictation asks you to make a call to arrange e.g. an appointment, you may not mark the dictation as closed until the appointment is made (especially where it takes repeated attempts contact the client). Legal Secretaries must put their own tasks on the Proclaim file to ensure this is not forgotten (and use text and other means as necessary)
- Update case details such as client email address and / or 3rd party details. They are required to send as much correspondence as possible electronically.
- Responsible to ensure all COB’s are completed before going home for that day and you must check regularly.
- Responsible for sending completed work to the file handler for checking.
- Legal Secretaries must proof read their own work before giving to the file handlers. No spelling errors, typos or grammar issues. Pride in the speed and accuracy of work completed is the hallmark of an effective legal secretary.
The Candidate:
Essential Skills
- Legal knowledge
- Computer literate.
- Excellent command of English spelling, punctuation and grammar (Grade C and above at GCSE)
- Excellent word processing and audio typing skills
- Excellent customer service skills, including professional and friendly telephone manner.
Desirable Skills
- Knowledge of the Proclaim case management system
- Experience of working in a personal injury law firm, or civil litigation firm
- Audio typing speed of 65+ words per minute
- Experience of working with court forms and creating pleadings
- Experience of digital dictation
Benefits:
The company always endeavour to recruit and retain the best staff around. To do so they offer competitive remuneration packages, ongoing training and development opportunities and a wide variety of interesting and challenging work. Additionally, they also offer the following incentives:
- 20 days holiday, rising 1 day per year to a max of 23 days, plus bank/public hols. In addition the office is closed between Christmas and New Year and you are not required to use your holiday entitlement for this period
- 3 holiday buy backs per year after 1 year of service
- Private medical insurance available after 2 years’ service
- Death In Service – 2 x salary based on annual salary only – eligibility commences when you join the company
- Active social committee, firm pays for trips to e.g. Bowling, Chester Races, Christmas party, Summer Barbecue
- Employee Assistance Programme which offers 24 hour helpline, Legal info and CBT – available immediately
- Free fruit delivered twice a week
Please click on the APPLY button to send your CV and Cover Letter for this role.
Candidates with the relevant experience or job titles of; Legal PA, Legal Secretary, Legal Client Secretary, Legal Administrator, Personal Assistant, Legal Office Support, Corporate Legal Secretary, Legal Business Support, Legal Support Assistant, Fee Earner Support will also be considered for this role.
