Senior Executive Assistant

JOB TITLE

Senior Executive Assistant (SEA) - Personal and Family / Private Client

Based in Edinburgh

Our hybrid working approach provides the opportunity for occasional work from home as well as in our offices. It would be useful for the candidate to spend significant time in the first few months in the office.

REPORTING TO

Head of Personal / Practice Support Manager

JOB PURPOSE

The role of the Senior Executive Assistant (SEA) will be to work closely to support the Head of Personal and be responsible for providing a comprehensive, confidential and professional support service in all aspects concerned with the efficient and successful operations of the Personal team.

In addition, they will also support the workload management of the secretarial team within the Personal team, being the first point of contact for day-to-day queries. The role holder will also provide executive assistant / administrative support to the team, under the supervision and guidance of the Practice Support Manager (PSM).

The SEA position is a responsible senior role which requires strong organisational, communication and people skills. The role holder will already be a highly experienced Executive Assistant (EA) / Personal Assistant (PA), preferable with experience working in private client, and have an extensive range of skills which include the ability to juggle multiple priorities, communicate effectively with the Partner team and colleagues, implement new processes positively and support, coach and encourage team members to work together as a team.

CORE TASKS

• Maintain and provide quality support for the partner, anticipate requirements for meetings (both internal and external) i.e. organise papers, produce itinerary, background information, travel etc.
• Efficient inbox management ensuring that all emails are dealt with appropriately and in line with the varying requirements of the partner.
• Arrange appointments and meetings (both internal and external). Manage the partner's diary to allow for time between meetings, time for client work and time to follow up after meetings.
• Prepare adequately for all appointments, including preparation of meeting papers and agendas, obtaining and preparing briefing materials and presentations and taking detailed minutes where required.
• Advise the partner of impending work deadlines for both internal and external commitments, e.g. reports, presentations, conferences, projects, and take action where appropriate.
• Take responsibility for assisting with intermediary team to teams and other intermediary Business Development activity. Liaise with Business Development team with regards to follow up and to ensure accurate intermediary lists, assist with client details for client events, of work sources and keeping spreadsheets of same, and actively updating the CRM.
• Manage the billing process, monitor the monthly fee predictions for the team, assist monthly with information on billing for purposes and dealing with bills and work in progress.
• Organise travel for the partner ensuring all arrangements are in line with policy and expenses are logged accurately.
• Proactively use co-pilot and other AI tools to increase efficiency
• Act as the first point of contact for day-to-day workloads of the secretarial team via BigHand/team central in-box ensuring all work is complete within required timescales for the legal team and clients.
• Develop and maintain solid working relationships with the legal and secretarial teams to effectively deliver a seamless secretarial/administrative support service to the business across all locations.
• Buddy and/or arrange buddies for new secretarial support into the business providing them with the appropriate welcome document for the practice area, making sure that they understand and use Brodies secretarial protocols and procedures effectively.
• Take responsibility to support the EAs if their BigHand Queue should become unmanageable.
• Take responsibility to support the secretarial team, particularly with tasks that require more experience and initiative to complete.
• Allocate new start lawyers and secretarial support to the assigned legal team via the BigHand server updating the PSM accordingly.
• Allocate Trainees to their EA in line with their allocated Line Manager in advance of the practice area seat moves taking place within the business, updating the PSM accordingly.
• Providing EA feedback to the PSM ahead of our annual appraisal process within the business for your area.
• Identify and organise opportunities for secretarial development, taking responsibility for arranging meetings where knowledge can be shared.
• Manage annual leave requests received from the EA team to adequately support workload and allocations, making sure that there is always enough support in place, whilst communicating effectively with our legal colleagues and the PSM to ensure a consistency of service is maintained.
• Identify opportunities for process improvement and enhanced service delivery and encourage others to do the same.
• Be aware of Brodies’ information security policies, and protect information assets from unauthorised access, disclosure, modification, destruction or interference at all times.

PERSON SPECIFICATION

• Highly experienced and outstanding performer with a proven track record as an EA/PA, preferably within Personal and Family.
• Ability to work effectively in a demanding role and experience of working under pressure, often with tight deadlines
• Highly motivated with the ability to use initiative, problem solve and be proactive is essential
• Strong communicator with the ability to demonstrate professionalism and confidence in liaising, and building relationships, with people at all levels.
• Ability to effectively communicate (both verbally and in writing) at all levels to achieve positive outcomes, with a demonstrated ability to persuasively facilitate opposing views.
• Self-motivated, team-player, with a can-do attitude.
• Organises and prioritises time effectively to achieve deadlines.
• Ability to strategically identify and set expectations.
• Always present a professional image to clients and other external organisations.
• Seeks out opportunities to provide a more efficient and proactive service.
• Flexible in adapting working style.
• Good intuition and the ability to work independently, managing ad-hoc projects with minimal instruction and supervision.
• Ability to quickly understand / adapt to change and conflicting priorities of stakeholders with different levels of support needs.
• Actively support the firm’s vision and strategies including embracing and promoting change and communicating and executing on challenging decisions.
• Working practices and EA allocations within the practice group will change from time to time and the successful candidate should have an open and flexible attitude to change and a willingness to train within other legal practice areas.

SKILLS

• Excellent administrative time management and organisational skills.
• Ability to multitask and prioritise effectively, taking responsibility for own workload
• High level of attention to detail
• Diary management
• Excellent in the use of Microsoft applications:
• Word – track changes/mail merge.
• Outlook – diary management, contacts, tasks.
• Excel.
• PowerPoint.
• Willingness to develop and enhance knowledge and skills through training.
• Experience of Aderant, using a Document Management System and Bighand.
• Accurate and competent in document production including formatting and presentation.