Practice Support Coordinator (Legal Secretary)

The role

Alongside world-class legal careers, Clifford Chance offers excellent opportunities in the support functions that underpin its business operations. By joining us in Business Professionals, 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, 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 the exceptional client service relies on us all succeeding, both individually and as a team.

This position is responsible for providing proactive practice support and administration support the lawyers of the Firm primarily in relation to billable client work, and ensuring clients are serviced in a professional manner and in accordance with the Firm's policies and procedures. This includes being a part of a client matter team and supporting all matter-related processes from matter inception to project completion, billing and collection. The Practice Support Coordinator will take full ownership of the delivery of their key responsibilities detailed below.

Key Responsibilities

Clearance, Risk, Compliance and Commercial Disciplines

• Proactively supporting the process for inception of new clients and matters including all related conflicts clearance and file opening processes (working with the Firm's inception system) ensuring the Firm's policies and processes are adhered to.

• Providing full financial, risk and compliance management support from inception through to billing: including conflict clearance/checking of all parties, drafting or supporting the finalization of engagement letters, supporting the firm's commercial discipline initiatives including setting up and maintaining Matter Balance Reports and ensuring fee estimates and phases are included, setting up and maintaining security access on sensitive matters in Security Policy Manager (SPM) and ensuring the relevant team members are added, setting up and maintaining project email distribution lists, setting up iManage site with appropriate folder structure and ensuring all relevant information is included, creating and informing the deal team of any time recording rules taking account of and monitoring specific client e-billing rules and sending regular reminders to the deal team, amending narratives if required, drafting bill letters, drafting emails and taking responsibility for sending client matter updates.

• Arranging and attending monthly billing and collections review meetings and proactively preparing and following up on action points with relevant managing associates, other Practice Support Coordinators and the billing team.

• Actively working in partnership with Finance Team to raise timely and accurate invoices.

• Proactively managing debt collection processes and procedures working with the matter team and Finance Team.

• Managing, processing and delegating (where appropriate) all matter related expenses and invoices including liaising with Accounts Payable when required.

Matter Management and Matter Team Support

• Acting as a point of liaison and support for a matter team including planning, assisting with the management of timelines, dates and deliverables, a Best Delivery Checklist for the matter, coordinating and setting up of appointments and conference calls, internally and externally with clients and ensuring that all appointments and conference calls are entered into lawyers' calendars.

• Assist in preparing and drafting letters, email correspondence, pitch and presentation documentation and meeting agendas.

• Managing beginning-to-end document management processes: amending, collating PDFs and renaming, proofreading, generic blacklining and liaising with specialist CC teams such as DPU, Legal Support Centre, Newcastle, as appropriate.

• Assisting with good housekeeping of documentation including post-closing administration as required including the set-up and maintenance of the matter document storage site: ensuring deliverables such as share certificates and security are registered, preparing bound volumes, ensuring that digital and hard copy versions are available, sending out bound volumes to all parties as required, bind originals of large documents, make copies of all originals and distribute as needed.

• Supporting the identification and execution of KETL opportunities including internal matter reviews.

Business Development

• Updating lawyers' CVs and profiles.

• Informing BD of the schedules of visiting lawyers and working with BD on the relevant logistics.

• Gather information on lawyers' BD activities and ensure that information is entered and maintained on the BD tracker and InterAction.

• Provide support as necessary for major events as necessary from time to time

Team Coverage

• Providing support to buddies in all aspect of work when buddies are on leave and when there is an overflow of work

Your experience

• 3 to 5 years work experience in a similar or relevant role within a professional services environment

• Intermediate to advanced level of proficiency in Microsoft Word, Outlook Excel and PowerPoint

• Native Japanese with excellent English language skills (TOEIC 900 and above)

• Strong organisation skills and meticulous attention to detail

• A proactive, mature and collaborative approach to managing work and relationships within and across teams

Who we are

We are one of the largest international law firms in the world. With over 30 offices across the globe, we strive to exceed the expectations of our clients, providing them with the highest-quality advice and legal insight, which combines the firm’s global standards with in-depth local expertise.

Our firm, work and people span jurisdictions, cultures, and languages. We offer our clients a truly international perspective. We believe every career should be rewarding and stimulating - full of opportunities to learn, thrive, and grow. That’s why we’re so proud of our inclusive, friendly, and team-based approach to work.

You’ll find our clients in commercial and industrial sectors, the financial investor community, governments, regulators, trade bodies, and not-for-profit organisations. But no matter who they are or why they’ve reached out to us, we provide a world-class service every step of the way. And that’s possible thanks to the entrepreneurial spirit and conscientious approach to work that you’ll find across all of our teams.

Whichever area of the business you join, you’ll become an integral part an innovative, diverse and ambitious team of people. Clifford Chance is a place where the brightest minds and the best of colleagues meet.

The Clifford Chance Principles embody what we stand for and aspire to be:

• Exceeding clients' expectations
  We are committed to helping our clients achieve their goals by providing commercially focused legal advice of the highest quality that will consistently exceed their expectations.

• Local excellence, global standards
  We ensure we can benefit our clients by combining the highest global standards of business and law with local excellence of service and by maintaining the depth, quality and scale of resources necessary to meet our clients' needs whenever and wherever they arise.

• Investing in talent
  To deliver on our commitment to our clients, we recruit and develop the best people. We believe that, by delivering great client service, we will be involved in the most interesting and challenging client work and, as a result, achieve the reputation and the high levels of profitability which are essential to attracting and retaining the best people.

• An adaptable and approachable team
  We believe in the power of collaboration, collegiality and teamwork and we have an open, approachable style. We expect our people to be flexible and creative and to have the desire and drive to embrace new experiences and challenges. We require everyone to put the interests of our clients and the Firm before their own.

• Strength through diversity
  We are proud of our firm and value the diversity of the people and cultures within it. In our firm people succeed according to their merits.

• Community
  Our strength comes from our one firm approach and our partnership ethos. They underpin our ability to deliver excellent client service and create a working environment where talented people can succeed. We are ambitious for our clients and ourselves but we understand the importance of making a positive impact on the community at large.

• An ambition for success
  We are determined to be the leader of an elite group of international law firms and to be at the top of the profession in each market where we practice. Our aim is to be regarded as one of the world's leading professional services organizations.

• Thinking ahead
  To be at the forefront of the legal profession requires foresight, a desire to share ideas and a willingness to have a voice on issues of importance. We have the confidence to challenge existing thinking and to push boundaries.

Equal opportunities statement

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

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