Legal Secretary

The Practice Assistant is responsible for providing professional core business support to the firm's fee earners. The support provided will be as part of a team with shared responsibilities and collective accountability, working with the firm's other Business Professionals teams. The Practice Assistant is expected to create positive working relationships with fee earners and their colleagues in order to provide excellent business support. The Practice Assistant is responsible for ensuring that all activities are carried out in compliance with the firm's policies and regulatory requirements.

The 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 Milan 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 Practice Assistant is responsible for providing clear direction and taking full ownership and management of their work to ensure that tasks are prioritized by business need and completed in a timely manner. When working agilely, the Practice Assistant is expected to provide a consistently excellent level of support without disruption to the business and stakeholders.

Day-to-day activities

• Managing and organising agendas of supported partners and fee earners, managing appointments autonomously.
• Supporting partners in managing inbox and drafting/sending emails.
• Supporting partners with update of contacts.
• Supporting partners with time-keeping tasks.
• Processing and managing expenses and reimbursements for all fee earners.
• Managing al matter related activities from inception through to billing, such as ad hoc conflict checking, opening of new matters, AML for new clients/debtors.
• Arranging and managing domestic and international travel.
• Full assistance with all commercial discipline/billing activities.
• Processing and managing all expenses and invoices.
• Attending work in progress (WIP) and debtor meetings, as required, and following up on action points with the Billing team.
• Assisting with good housekeeping of documentation, including post-closing administration;
• Providing full support on video conferencing using CC supported applications.
• Managing beginning-to-end document management processes, such as amending, formatting, running sanity checks.

Client Focus and Support

• Progressing and assisting with client relationship initiatives.
• Reminding and assisting fee earners with the updating of CVs.
• Assisting during pitching process by creating or amending PowerPoint presentations, Excel documents or fee quote documentation.
• Assisting BD team with tender offers' procedures and onboarding / management of  supplier portals.
• Supporting BD team with client relationship activities.
• Supporting BD team with Matter Capture information.

Financial and Matter Management

• Providing financial management support from inception through to billing: supporting the firm's commercial discipline initiatives such as conflict checking, using Intapp and ensuring that fee estimates and phases are included, setting up SPM and ensuring that the relevant team members are added, setting up and maintaining project email distribution lists, 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. 
• Processing and managing reimbursements for all fee earners.
• Keeping track of 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.
• Drafting emails and taking responsibility for sending client matter updates on WIP and debts.
• Assisting with good housekeeping of documentation, including post-closing administration.

Other Support Activities

• Assisting Partners and fee earners during appraisal processes.
• Encouraging and proactively following up with fee earners on completion of their mandatory training requirements.

Skills

• Exceptional organizational 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 proven experience of building strong relationships both internally and externally
• Excellent communication skills, both written and oral
• Aware of confidentiality and the use of discretion, when required

Experience

• Previous experience of working as an executive assistant within a legal firm required
• Experience of complex diary management, international travel, email management and assisting with the preparation of correspondence on behalf of stakeholder
• Supporting new business, client or business development teams with pitches, events, marketing materials and client research
• Proven experience of supporting on financial matters, i.e. knowledge of recording time sheets, billing and e-billing, expenses and invoices.

Knowledge

• Intermediate to advanced knowledge of Word, Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint
• Experience of setting up data rooms and other document sharing platforms would be an advantage
• Experience on supplier and e-billing platforms is a plus
• Knowledge of legal processes and matter management is required
• Knowledge of any of the following would be an advantage, but not essential: Intapp, Intapp Time, Interaction, Kira and Litera Transact.

Qualifications

• Higher education

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, recognizing that exceptional client service relies on us all succeeding, both individually and as a team.

At Clifford Chance, we understand that our true asset is our people. Inclusion is good for our team and their families, our firm and society.

We are committed to treating all employees and applicants fairly and equally regardless of their gender, gender identity and expression, marital or civil partnership status, race, colour, national or ethnic origin, social or economic background, disability, religious belief, sexual orientation, or age.  This applies to recruitment and selection, terms and conditions of employment including pay, promotion, training, transfer and every other aspect of employment.

We have a variety of flourishing employee networks. These networks are a place for colleagues to share experiences and advocate for change wherever they see an opportunity for improvement.

Our goal is to deliver an equality of opportunity, an equality of aspiration and an equality of experience to everyone who works in our firm. 

Find out more about our inclusive culture here